Norton Simon Museum "Tract House #4" is part of the Lewis
Baltz exhibit "Tract House Photographs 1969-1971" at Pasadena’s
Norton Simon Museum.
“Lewis Baltz: Tract House Photographs,
1969-1971″ Norton Simon
Museum Through Feb. 11
Sometimes you have to just stop and smell the stucco.
“Lewis Baltz: Tract House Photographs, 1969-1971,” an
exhibit currently on display at the Norton Simon Museum, is a
striking series of 25 black and white photographs that successfully
conjure up that regrettably familiar, chalky aroma. Baltz, who
spent his formative years in the middle of a post-World War II
Orange County housing boom, documents Southern California
construction sites with a chillingly detached, insightful
perspective. The images are stark. Off-center framing of doors and
other meager fixtures emphasize the invariably barren exteriors of
the structures. Wider shots reveal that each house is planted
squarely in a perplexing mixture of mud and dust. In places, the
dirt has been stirred and scuffed up, and it clouds the pasty
stucco like a bruise. Windows are smeared with the remnants of
hasty stucco application. The buildings look old and run down, even
though they have yet to be inhabited. One particular pair of
photographs focuses attention on the chimneys of two separate
houses. Save for an arbitrary, unimaginative distinction in their
basic outlines, the chimneys are completely identical, right down
to the shade and arrangement of the brick. It’s like looking
at two prison cells. There are no curves, no significant structural
variations, and certainly no people captured in these photographs.
The sites appear to be entirely devoid of evidence of life. Baltz
is painfully precise in his choice of subjects, and the implication
of his work is consistently powerful and disturbing. He makes it
impossible to ignore the harsh impersonality of American
prefabricated housing; he clearly illustrates the lack of identity
and the sense of hopelessness which lurks at the core of these
buildings. He makes it equally impossible to look away. To move
from piece to piece in this exhibit is to be subjected to a
calculated, systematic barrage of images, as cold and relentless as
slides in a glaring projector. “I was trying to find a
vocabulary to mediate my sense of the unspeakable horror at being
born when and where I was,” Baltz once said of his work. For
many, his project may hit a little too close to home.
Kelly Haigh
“Richard Diebenkorn” Norton Simon Museum Through April
8
An easily overlooked nook that lies just beyond the entrance of
Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum currently brims with a certain
coffeehouse appeal. Patrons who escape the magnetic draw of the
museum’s main halls, which boast works by such heavyweights
as Rembrandt, Monet and Van Gogh, will discover a small collection
of early paintings by Richard Diebenkorn, a student of abstract
expressionism and a teacher at UCLA from 1966 through 1973. The
exhibit features two of his large, figurative oil paintings. One
depicts a bleary-eyed collection of bottles; the other suggests the
subdued, indeterminate greens of a Berkeley-inspired landscape.
Both oils are broad and sketchy, but decipherable interpretations
of the objects their titles claim they portray. Also featured are
14 smaller, abstract gouaches on paper, all of which are untitled
and painted in 1950. (Most of them came from the same private
collection.) Gouache is a thick, bold alternative to watercolor,
and Diebenkorn utilizes the medium well, producing varying
combinations of brittle black lines and generous dollops of color.
The pieces are energetic and attractive, but to the untrained eye,
they are rather indistinguishable from one another, especially in
their current arrangement. They hang naked, shoulder to shoulder,
on an otherwise drab, featureless wall, facing a firing squad of
countless pairs of untrained eyes. Unfortunately, none of
Diebenkorn’s “Ocean Park” paintings, which he
produced late in his career, are displayed. These highly acclaimed
works were inspired by a community near Santa Monica and would
obviously have tremendous relevance to any Southern Californian
exhibit. This Norton Simon exhibit suffers from a lack of variety
and the utter omission of his most prominent work, which just
happens to express the artist’s impressions of our area. At
best, the exhibit is simply incomplete; at worst, it is misleading.
It is vaguely apparent that something important is missing, and the
remaining pieces seem lonely and oddly stifled in a sterile
environment. According to the museum’s biographical
information on the artist, Diebenkorn was a fan of improvisational
jazz. Perhaps this collection would have a greater impact if the
paintings were hung on the faded brick walls of some cozy cafe, and
if the hushed shuffle of feet were replaced with some of the lively
notes that surely inspired his impulsive, interpretive works.
Kelly Haigh