For an art form rooted in timeless fantasies and sublime landscapes, Surrealism is surprisingly in the here and now.
Specifically, it's here, at the Louis Stern Fine Arts Gallery, and now, through Nov. 12.
Surrealism has survived as a vital and relevant art form long after other styles, namely Cubism and Impressionism, have disappeared. This is largely because it lacks the political and stylistic ties that have limited other art forms to a particular look or era. The only requirement of surrealist art is that it springs from the subconscious or the fantastic.
"Imaginary Realities: Surrealism Then and Now," on display at the Louis Stern Fine Arts Gallery, and the plethora of other current surrealist exhibits in L.A. are a testament to the fact that the world of the human subconscious is a fascinating and ever-changing one that continuously sparks interest and art.
"Surrealism is an ongoing thing, because it's created in the minds of human beings. We all think, we have these ideas, we have these fantasies, these dreams. Some of us have the ability to translate them into images," gallery owner Louis Stern says.
His current exhibition is a visual diary of Surrealism's diverse and growing history that spans every era, style, media and culture - from Salvador Dali to Billy Wilder, from the humorous to the eerie or just plain bizarre.
Many timid onlookers are afraid that they lack the skills required to "read" a surrealist work, when all that is necessary is an open mind and an imagination willing to enter the whimsical, absurd, or sublime worlds the artists conjure.
"I think that one of the interesting aspects of all of this is that the interpretations are so subjective. You can get three people to look at a surrealistic picture and you're going to have three different opinions," Stern says.
"Our mind permits us to concoct very, very strange combinations. There is no limit with surrealism, and that is what makes it so interesting," he continues.
Surrealism is to art what the most outlandish of fairy tales is to literature - a dreamlike place of fantasy that stands reality on its head, a place where furniture is made of astroturf and men wear capes and crowns made of vegetables.
Jon Swihart renders the latter image beautifully in a 1990 untitled work on display at the gallery. The oil-on-canvas depicts a lone, sandaled traveler descending forbidding rocks in a mesh cape covered with vibrant radishes, spinach, flowers and jalapenos. Carrots radiate in a circle from the leafy crown on his head, and he holds what passes in his world as a staff - a shovel similarly decorated, but with the random addition of a rabbit's face on the scoop. The monumental, prophet-like figure stands against a plush blue sky that rounds out the image of an idyllic, yet desolate and strange, Eden.
No matter how it is rendered, all of the artists represented incorporate this element of dreams where things are almost perfect, yet somehow completely unfamiliar and out of place.
"(Rene) Magritte always incorporates a dreamlike quality - the distortions, the total departure from reality - and it is the title for our show. They're imaginary realities," Stern says.
Stern's exhibit boasts many of Surrealism's biggest names - including Magritte - alongside some of the artists they have influenced. Dali, Jean Arp, Man Ray and Max Ernst all share wall space with the most talented '90s artists, many of whom are from L.A. Considering that Ray lived on Vine St. in Hollywood and Dali worked on the sets of Alfred Hitchcock films, this should not be too surprising. L.A. (and Surrealism itself) was also a haven for those escaping the horrors of the Nazis and World War II in Europe.
"L.A. has a very strong heritage of surrealism. It involves not only art, but writing as well, and the cinema. Let's face it - there's a lot of surrealism in films. In the old days it was created by people like Dali.... Today, naturally they don't need the artists, because they can do it all through digital manipulation and computers," Stern says.
"But I think that the surrealist tradition continues in California, and that's why I thought that the show made sense. I've always wanted to do one, but I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to get the kind of material that I wanted to get, because surrealist works are quite scarce.
"I really didn't know whether it would make any sense for me to do that in a commercial gallery setting - go to the trouble and expense of mounting a show and selling works. Nevertheless, I was always anxious to go forward with it. And when UCLA scheduled the Magritte show and I learned about it, I thought it would be a good time to present it," Stern says.
Stern's fears were apparently unfounded, because the gallery does give a fairly comprehensive glimpse of Surrealism, which is pretty hard to do.
"We presented the roots of Surrealism, the masters and innovators. Surrealism is an offshoot of Dada and is based on the writings of Andre Breton and the manifesto he wrote on Surrealism in the mid-1920s," Stern says. Though these beginnings are important, the movement has continued to break artistic ground, unlike many styles of art.
"With the Fauves, artists went crazy with the palette and produced these brilliant, bold paintings that were full of impact. That was between 1903 and 1906. Then, just after that, you had Cubism, with the innovators - Picasso, Braque and Grieg," Stern says. But the styles' constricting limitations made it difficult for new artists to expand them.
"Cubism is Cubism.... The only one to really take a spin on Cubism was Leger. ... (Artists' attitudes were) 'That's been done,'" he continues. "And once it's done, like with Impressionism, it's time to move on."
But Surrealism focused not on the city and its politics or on certain shapes and colors, but on pure escape. Its intangible subject and form have allowed it to grow and change as times and dreams have. It has yet to "be done."
"Surrealism is not exclusive. The innovators deserve credit - the ability that Dali had to create these almost photographic images that are totally incongruous, totally distorted, that have really nothing to do with what we know as reality," Stern says.
This trend, in completely different form and subject matter, continues today. Doug Webb's painting of a New York fountain filled with tire-sized coins "troubles the viewer because everything is real, yet it can't happen that way because coins aren't that large. ... It throws us," Stern says. "Our senses are thrown off-course. We're seeing something we're not used to seeing."
Often viewers are thrown off-balance by the art's humor or shocking elements. "If you look at books on Surrealism, a lot of times you'll catch yourself snickering," Stern says. Dali may remain the king of humor, but though he was shocking for his time, works today are far more foreign and even offensive to some. Stern mentions an installation he saw once where a man chopped cows in half so viewers could peer inside.
He feels this trend parallels the general rise in the "shock threshold" of our culture.
"We're doing things today that no one would dream of now," he says of everything from bare-breasted women on regular television to Clinton's approval rating despite his extra-marital affairs. "If J.F.K. had been implicated in some sort of a scandal with a woman the way Clinton has been implicated with Gennifer Flowers and the others... he wouldn't have had a snowball's chance in hell of being re-elected," Stern says of our increasingly permissive and promiscuous culture.
"It's a phenomenon of our civilization."
This does not mean, however, that all must buy into it. Stern has an 18-year-old daughter that he would like to shield from some of the more explicit elements of free expression, such as the work of legendary photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe, whose photographs of oral sex and anal penetration by a bull whip have whipped conservatives and liberals alike into a frenzy.
"(My daughter and) I were invited to a big Mapplethorpe show. And I had mixed emotions about whether I would want her exposed to that. And the issue of freedom of speech and expression and so on, which I think plays upon the aspects of what one can produce.
"An individual can come up and say, 'I want to show you this because it's something I created.' And it happens to be offensive to you. Now, is it my right to display it? And is it your right not to see it?" Stern asks.
Ultimately, Stern feels there has to be a sense of balance. Though Surrealism is often less controversial simply because it deals with such abstract fantasies that no single interpretation can be drawn, it still may cross that line. While Stern and the general public may not consider grossly offensive images or "artistic performances" art, those works will still find a public.
"There are people who are always looking for something shocking and new out there. And you'll always find someone that will be attracted to it," Stern says.
ART: "Imaginary Realities: Surrealism Then and Now" shows at the Louis Stern Fine Art Gallery through Nov. 12. Gallery hours are Tue- Fri 10- 6, Sat 11- 5. Closed Sunday. Free entrance. Call (310) 276- 0147 for more info.