A Moment of Reflection in Printmaking

Over the past several decades, venerable arts organizations like the L.A. Printmaking Society have been marginalized--too conservative, not trendy enough. It’s been so long since I’ve seen an exhibition such as the one on view at Loyola Marymount University’s Laband Art Gallery, it came as a poetic shock.

Instead of seeming musty and passe, “The 14th National Biennial Exhibition of the Los Angeles Printmaking Society� plays like a tuning fork of contemporary art’s current situation.

A modest show in an unpretentious venue, one might expect to find that the authors of its 60-odd works are worthy academics and local heroes. Such artists are on hand, but they are also joined by a surprising number of heavy hitters from both coasts. Roy Lichtenstein is represented, as are Larry Rivers and Bruce Nauman. So are Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, Llyn Foulkes, Michael McMillen and Peter Alexander.

Some of these artists are or have been considered among art’s superstars. But this exhibition plays like a realization that today not even the most outrageous, highest paid artist on the planet can gain the attention attracted by an entertainment executive who gets $90 million for failing at his job.

Instead, if the art world wants to maintain its integrity, it has to admit that it exists on a smaller, more personal, more human scale than the gargantuan electronic culture that engulfs it.

Most of the work in the exhibition reflects a belief that this is a time for withdrawal into intimate realms where the latest trend is not relevant and one’s thoughts are one’s own.

For me, the most telling image here is by an artist from Hingham, Mass., Wilfred Loring. Titled “Line Dancing,� it’s an aquatint depicting wash flapping in the breeze on a clothesline. The scene looks like the backyard of some beat-up, anonymous suburb on the edge of nowhere. Whoever lives there is so far out of the consumer mainstream they don’t even have an automatic dryer. The image seems to say, “Hey, if I had a gadget like that, I’d miss the pleasure of watching this ballet of wet clothes every Monday. Look at them flying around making all those beautiful transparencies and shadows.�

Ruscha picks up the thought in “US,� an embossed picture of wheat blowing in the wind. Rivers extend the metaphor in “Blue Collar Holiday.� Other depictions of ordinary folks doing their thing include Masha Schweitzer’s picture of a tenement family looking out its window. Ann Chernow offers a charming ‘30s-nostalgia print of a couple of moxie girls saying, “Let’s Not Be Sensible.�

Lichtenstein extends the meditative metaphor into mandarin realms with his “Landscape With Poet� (visually translated from the Chinese into his familiar dot patterns). L.R. Montgomery varies the Asian motif in a more literal but still Monet-like color woodcut, “Vermilion Bridge.�

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The aura of calm that envelops the exhibition seems like a pause, a time to rethink things. One of Alexander’s two prints, “Linda,� comes from a series in which he took images from old stag films and translated them into dreamily erotic visual verse.

Other artists convey retreat into ancestral cultures where the reassurance of tradition is somewhat disturbed. J. Alfred Calderon’s “Manto A Tamayo� uses motifs from native Mexican dance that hint at violence within festivity. David Serrano’s “Fandango� is nuanced toward the irrational.

A troubled conscience emerges from the past in Cosette Dudley’s “Executive Order 9066: Betty and Her Dog.� Its motif looks like a family album snapshot from the ‘40s. Its subjects are three little girls with their pet pooches. Two girls are white, the other evidently Japanese American. In three versions she is slowly effaced from the picture, replaced by a red stamp reading, “Security Risk.�

There’s a noticeable paucity of purely abstract art on view. Since abstract art abounds in printmaking, leaving it out probably represents a decision by L.A. County Museum of Art curator Bruce Davis, who selected the show. His choices emphasize a mood of thoughtfulness, but it’s directed toward the everyday world rather than the theoretical.

Because of illness, Davis was unable to select prizewinners. Laband gallery director Gordon Fuglie stepped in for that task. He was inclined to honor less well-recognized artists. The exhibition is part of a 17-venue celebration of printmaking being held locally through February titled “Southern California Perspectives in Printmaking.�

* Loyola Marymount University, Laband Art Gallery, 7900 Loyola Blvd., through March 1, closed Sundays-Thursdays, (310) 338-2880.