Fisher Gallery

"Roman Portraiture: Images of Character and Virtue," an exhibition of 14 marble portraits on loan from the J. Paul Getty Museum, opens today at USC's Fisher Gallery. Most visitors will assume that this exhibition and its accompanying, fully researched catalogue were prepared by the museum's staff. After all, the exhibition, because it deals with antiquities, may be considered more complex than the average contemporary art show.

A five-artist exhibition at USC's Fisher Gallery goes out of its way to show that clay can be used -- like paint, steel and paper -- to make great art. It's an irrefutable argument, ably made by guest curators Tressa R. Miller and Trevor Norris. Their point is that there is no point in treating clay as a second-class citizen in the big mixing pot of contemporary art, which is filled with hybrids and mongrels of all shapes and stripes. But their argument is academic.

It is a pitifully insecure piece of art criticism that sows only scorn. For the record: Arnaldo Pomodoro's monumental sculptures are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hirshhorn Museum, Stanford University and at least 60 other public collections in the United States, Asia and Europe. One of his major pieces has long held a position of honor in the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Pomodoro's one-man exhibits are too numerous to list. To list the international art prizes he has been awarded would also fill pages.

Albert Contreras paints as if he's making up for lost time. In a delicious little survey at USC's Fisher Gallery, the 72-year-old artist jams so much color, texture and juicy freshness into a single room that it's hard not to feel like a kid in a candy shop -- thrilled silly by the possibilities yet still savvy enough to know that such treats are rare and all the sweeter for being infrequent. Curator Max F.

Four paintings donated to USC in 1965 by the late Armand Hammer but that the industrialist borrowed back several years ago and held in defiance of requests for their return will be given back to the university next month, USC's Fisher Gallery has announced. The paintings include "The Nativity" by the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens.

A five-artist exhibition at USC's Fisher Gallery goes out of its way to show that clay can be used -- like paint, steel and paper -- to make great art. It's an irrefutable argument, ably made by guest curators Tressa R. Miller and Trevor Norris. Their point is that there is no point in treating clay as a second-class citizen in the big mixing pot of contemporary art, which is filled with hybrids and mongrels of all shapes and stripes. But their argument is academic.

The USC Atelier, which has operated in the Santa Monica Place shopping center for more than seven years, will close April 1 due to financial constraints. "The old battle to keep the art spaces alive is pretty tough sometimes," said director Noel Korten, who has been with USC's satellite gallery since it opened in 1982. "There aren't any good guys and bad guys in this one, it's just that there's never been quite enough money for the arts."

The blacklist is returning to Los Angeles. But instead of another round of congressional witch hunts and redbaiting that abused Hollywood filmmakers and many other American citizens for their political beliefs--or alleged beliefs--in the late 1940s and early '50s, plans are underway for an artwork designed to inform the public about that infamous period of history and help prevent a rerun.

USC's Fisher Gallery is a tripartite affair that lends itself to three-ring exhibitions. That's what it has, through April 27, in the congregation of Barbara Strasen's conceptual investigations, Ford Crull's paintings and selections from Diana Zlotnick's collection. The only connection among the shows is that all the art is contemporary and more or less rooted in Southern California soil.

Juxtaposing cow bones and coins, snakes and computer technology, and shamanism and Christianity, installations by three contemporary Brazilian artists at USC's Fisher Gallery explore two distinct realms. "The work is mystical, and it relates to the environment and nature, and the human body and invisible energies and spiritual ideas," says Susan M. Anderson, who curated the exhibit while taking a little time off from her regular job as curator of exhibitions at the Laguna Art Museum.

Given the international nature of today's art scene, one would be hard pressed to stroll into most exhibitions of contemporary work and guess the nationality of the artists. The current show at USC's Fisher Gallery is no exception.

The blacklist is returning to Los Angeles. But instead of another round of congressional witch hunts and redbaiting that abused Hollywood filmmakers and many other American citizens for their political beliefs--or alleged beliefs--in the late 1940s and early '50s, plans are underway for an artwork designed to inform the public about that infamous period of history and help prevent a rerun.

Juxtaposing cow bones and coins, snakes and computer technology, and shamanism and Christianity, installations by three contemporary Brazilian artists at USC's Fisher Gallery explore two distinct realms. "The work is mystical, and it relates to the environment and nature, and the human body and invisible energies and spiritual ideas," says Susan M. Anderson, who curated the exhibit while taking a little time off from her regular job as curator of exhibitions at the Laguna Art Museum.

Four paintings donated to USC in 1965 by the late Armand Hammer but that the industrialist borrowed back several years ago and held in defiance of requests for their return will be given back to the university next month, USC's Fisher Gallery has announced. The paintings include "The Nativity" by the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens.

USC's exhibition, "Finish Fetish" is, sad to say, of greater symbolic than artistic significance. It harks back to those thrilling days of '60s yesteryear when the world was a go-go and L.A. art made it sit up and goggle for the first time. It was the dawning of the age of Lotusland's Cool School whose art remains in some ways the town's trademark. It was art that reflected an era when L.A. felt good about itself arriving as a cultural force.

Russian literature reflects a belief that suffering redeems the soul, ennobles the spirit and improves one's art. Dostoevski believed it, so did Tolstoy. If you are stuck being miserable, it's comforting to hope that that is at least good for something. By now, everybody knows that nonconformist artists in the Soviet Union had a very bad time until glasnost set them free.

Albert Contreras paints as if he's making up for lost time. In a delicious little survey at USC's Fisher Gallery, the 72-year-old artist jams so much color, texture and juicy freshness into a single room that it's hard not to feel like a kid in a candy shop -- thrilled silly by the possibilities yet still savvy enough to know that such treats are rare and all the sweeter for being infrequent. Curator Max F.

Russian literature reflects a belief that suffering redeems the soul, ennobles the spirit and improves one's art. Dostoevski believed it, so did Tolstoy. If you are stuck being miserable, it's comforting to hope that that is at least good for something. By now, everybody knows that nonconformist artists in the Soviet Union had a very bad time until glasnost set them free.

"Roman Portraiture: Images of Character and Virtue," an exhibition of 14 marble portraits on loan from the J. Paul Getty Museum, opens today at USC's Fisher Gallery. Most visitors will assume that this exhibition and its accompanying, fully researched catalogue were prepared by the museum's staff. After all, the exhibition, because it deals with antiquities, may be considered more complex than the average contemporary art show.

The USC Atelier, which has operated in the Santa Monica Place shopping center for more than seven years, will close April 1 due to financial constraints. "The old battle to keep the art spaces alive is pretty tough sometimes," said director Noel Korten, who has been with USC's satellite gallery since it opened in 1982. "There aren't any good guys and bad guys in this one, it's just that there's never been quite enough money for the arts."