ART REVIEW : GREAT DIVIDE BETWEEN 2 SHOWS

The Municipal Art Gallery’s spacious interior is crisply divided between “Lloyd Hamrol: Works, Projects, Proposals” and “Drawing: A Classical Continuum,” but divisions go even deeper than the titles indicate.

The tandem exhibitions of contemporary art (to April 13) weigh an individual against a group, sculpture against drawing, abstraction against figuration, outdoor work against indoor art and a public mode against a private one. All of which would be very interesting if both shows weren’t fundamentally unsatisfying.

The reasons for disappointment are as different as the art: Hamrol’s show is boring because there’s so little real art in it; the drawing exhibition simply disintegrates into a muddle as it fails to follow through on its curatorial premise.

The drawing show features works by 12 contemporary artists, “whose work reflects a reverence for classical art,” according to curator Marie de Alcuaz. In a brief essay, she writes: “They create beautiful drawings which emulate the classical through devotion to clarity of form, balance, symmetry and craftsmanship.”

She’s right about the “beautiful drawings”; some fine work is shown by such accomplished artists as Joyce Treiman, Don Lagerberg, David Hockney and Peter Liashkov. But only about half the work is actually guided by classical principles.

One gets the impression that De Alcuaz has mistaken the artists’ “interest in the classical” with an aesthetic affinity for it. Connecting all figurative art with classicism, she defines the term so broadly that it has no meaning. To put Patrick Morrison’s expressionistic portraits in the same show with John Nava’s cool comparisons of standing nudes and architectural columns makes as much sense as saying that violet and yellow are closely related hues because they inhabit the same color wheel.

David Ligare, with his immaculate updates of Greek themes, belongs in this exhibition, but does Joyce Treiman, whose varied oeuvre is woven together with fervid emotion? A Neo-Classical muse oversees most of Carolyn Cardenas’ awkward products but not her drawing of an unkempt kitchen sink and overflowing cupboards. Louis Fox’s nicely rendered whippets exemplify classical fastidiousness, but Sergio Ladron de Guevara C.’s watercolor still lifes are just a casual form of realism.

One of the most meaningful--if elementary--ways of understanding art is to differentiate between the opposing strains of classicism and romanticism that run through art history. Unlike realism, both are forms of idealism. The difference is that the classical mentality--whether in original Greek art or Renaissance, Neo-Classical and contemporary work inspired by it--is guided by the intellect. Classicism denotes a restrained, contained quest for perfection, epitomized by clearly defined forms and orderly arrangements.

Romanticism, on the other hand, is an emotional idealism. Its heroes are fatally flawed, its goals unattainable. Whether intensely agitated or quietly brooding, romantic art exudes a sort of dishevelment. Feelings gnaw at the edges of formal purity, either dispersing it into an emotional aura or tempestuously uprooting it.

Oddly enough, there are good examples of this in “Classical Continuum”: Morrison’s expressionistic nudes and flamboyantly patterned interiors, vigorously described in thick gestural lines of charcoal; Treiman’s loving portraits of her mother; Lagerberg’s introspective nudes, softly set down in pastel on colored paper.

Peter Liashkov’s romantic sensibility (perhaps best known through his torsos on glass) is tempered here in several charcoal drawings of headless nudes and one of a man’s head in profile--tipped back with eyes closed and neck muscles straining. He encloses these forms with lines (a beginner’s clue to classicism), but he doesn’t really contain them. Even the nudes, which seem to be straightforward, are profoundly imperfect, and the head has the wrenching power of a work by Gericault.

Brochure essays set forth an astonishingly circuitous and vague sense of history. But the exhibition is even more disturbing because it demonstrates a failure to comprehend the most basic tenets of visual expression.

“Lloyd Hamrol: Works, Projects, Proposals” actually does what it can to survey the far-flung efforts of a Los Angeles artist who has firmly established himself in the controversial territory of public sculpture. But because his monumentally scaled work is permanently installed outdoors in California, Florida, New Mexico, Georgia, Washington, Arkansas, Iowa and the District of Columbia, the gallery is reduced to showing models and photographs (of both completed and planned works), plus one large installation designed for the gallery.

The only firsthand experience of Hamrol’s aesthetic is provided in an imposing installation of long plywood boxes. He has nearly filled one section of the gallery with 12-foot-long stained modules, arranged horizontally and vertically in a looming maze of staggered channels and passageways.

The installation is as clean-lined and unpretentious as his outdoor works, but its ominous quality of dark enclosure seems antithetical to the open expansiveness of the outdoor pieces represented. Visiting youngsters from local schools don’t mind, however. They are having a fine time playing noisy games of hide-and-seek behind its columns, as well as discovering its meanings.

In this case, the kids may reveal as much as they learn about Hamrol’s sculpture. In their clamor to run through the installation, they point out the artist’s persistent inclination to engage his audience in structures that can be walked through or sprawled upon. That’s no easy feat for a sculptor of spare abstractions, and if Hamrol lacks the natural grace of Isamu Noguchi, he also lacks the will to be abrasive and dictatorial a la Richard Serra.

Typical of Hamrol’s user-friendly sensibility are works that alter the landscape quite unobtrusively. “Highground,” at the University of New Mexico, seems to lift a circle of lawn and set it back down at an angle. His aptly named “Log Ramps,” at Western Washington University, appears to be a pleasant spot for outdoor reading or daydreaming. “L.A. Roxhole,” in a private Los Angeles collection, looks rather like a sunken, pebbled doughnut with a place to nestle in its concave center. Rough granite markers with polished tops function as sky mirrors and picnic tables in a park in Monterey.

Unlike such “participatory” sculpture, a piece under construction on 4th Street in downtown Los Angeles is only to be looked at--primarily from moving vehicles. This sculpture, “Uptown Rocker,” is a huge concrete arc with a parade of colorful cars about to spill off it. It’s a cute idea that threatens to send Hamrol off in a new trivial direction, but no doubt it will be very popular.