Scarred for Life was first inspired by a former dancer who’d fallen from a tree, subsequently wheelchair-bound but no less compelling.  Her reparative surgery left a long, curving scar down her back – now reproduced in shades of blue alongside her portrait.  Her back is turned to the camera, with a long blue stretch of paint crossing the scar, and she looks over her shoulder from the wheelchair.  Meyer’s exhibit features not only colorful, lively impressions of scars, but the unique stories and portraits (also Meyer’s) behind each diversion from the Platonic body ideal.  Some of the surgical scars come from chronic needs, others from the most private of emergencies: scoliosis or a lung transplant, self-mutilation or near-death experiences. Meyer’s work accomplishes his considerable goal of turning “these lasting monuments, often thought of as unsightly, into things of beauty.” Martha de Perez, the tireless curator at the Art Share Los Angeles gallery, felt that this message of positive body image and personal narrative would create a powerful gallery show for the venue.

Art Share is a nonprofit arts outreach and support center in the Downtown Arts District, with gallery, performance, classroom, and residential spaces in the converted warehouse at Fourth Place and Hewitt. The juxtaposition of threat and recovery, scars and success, in Meyer’s work can be viewed as a reflection of the organization itself, which redirects young local energy away from violence and destruction, and instead toward expression and creation. The high success rate (gauged in part by high school graduations) stems from free art, music, and dance classes, mentoring, and special programs according to students’ needs.  All of this, though, relies in part on the underpinning of a strong arts community in Los Angeles, including artists like Meyer, events like the Downtown Art Walk, and the Art Share-centered Open Studio Tour series in the Arts District.  In addition to showing his works in the gallery space at Art Share, Meyer will be helping teach one of the free art classes offered to students there.

The exhibition has also been to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, New York University’s Medical School Gallery, and the Brevard Museum of Art in Florida.  But most of the subjects in Scarred For Life are local – and several will be in attendance at the reception Friday night, along with students like Assistant Curator Enrique Lopez and Art Share’s Executive Director, Tracy Kelly.  Art Share’s gallery events tend to draw a lively crowd of artists, buyers, students, Arts District residents, and visitors from around the city and California.

Read more about Meyer at www.tedmeyer.com and www.artyourworld.com. For more information about Art Share, visit www.artsharela.org.

[Editor’s Note: The author also does free PR for the nonprofit Art Share.]

Robert Rauschenberg at Gemini

“Rauschenberg at Gemini” continues through March 21 
at the Armory Center for the Arts. Curator Jay Belloli has assembled many of Robert Rauschenberg’s most famous prints, print series, and multiples produced between 1967 and 2001 at Gemini G.E.L., the world-famous multiples workshop in Los Angeles, which was organized in 1966 and is still run by two of the founders, Sidney Felsen and Stanley Grinstein. Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

Southwest Chamber Music will perform two concerts with music by Rauschenberg’s friend, composer John Cage, in the Caldwell Gallery. The Rauschenberg works surrounding the musicians will be from the Stone Moon Series, Samarkand Series and Cardbird Series, and feature the first poster for Earth Day. The Saturday, Jan. 23, concert will include a performance of Cage’s landmark silent piece, 4’33”. The Saturday, Feb. 6, concert will include “Litany for the Whale.” Tickets for each  8 p.m. performance are $10 – $38. For information, (800) 726-7147, www.swmusic.org

Armory Center for the Arts,
145 N. Raymond Ave.,
Pasadena, www.armoryarts.org

Costumes from the Oscar-winning film "The Duchess" are included in the 2010 "Art of Motion Picture Costume Design" exhibition at FIDM.

Visit the FIDM Museums & Galleries for the chance to see the work of award-winning costume designers in exquisite detail, as the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising presents the 18^th annual “Art of Motion Picture Costume Design” exhibition Feb. 9 through April 17. In addition to costumes from 2009 films, designs worn by Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes in “The Duchess,” the 2009 Oscar winner for Best Costume Design, will also be on display.

The exhibition is a fun sneak peek behind the Hollywood scenes and a unique opportunity to appreciate the art of silver screen fashion up close. Admission is free, and hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

FIDM, 919 S. Grand Ave., LA, (213) 623-5821, ext. 2224, http://fidm.edu

Ingres' "Comtesse d'Haussonville" is on view at the Norton Simon Museum.

You probably recognized her, or thought you did, even if you didn’t know who she was or who had painted her. She appeared in full color on the cover of Life magazine in 1937, though that’s probably not where you saw her. As one early critic noted, she is “one of those images that appear in dreams.”

She is the “Comtesse d’Haussonville,” painted by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780-1867) in 1845. You can meet her at the Norton Simon Museum through Jan. 25, 2010, while she is visiting California for the first time as part of an art exchange program with The Frick Collection in New York City.

Like the Mona Lisa, the Comtesse is worth the visit alone – though an impressive related exhibit at the Norton Simon, “Gaze: Portraiture After Ingres,” surveys portraits from the early 19th century to the present. She is, in the words of Associate Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator of The Frick Collection Colin Bailey, one of the most “compelling and beguiling” portraits of the 19th century.

Unlike the Mona Lisa, it is far easier to spend some quality time with the Comtesse. Presumably the crowds in Pasadena won’t be as unrelenting as those basking in the Mona Lisa’s smile at the Louvre, but even if they are, the Comtesse is a large painting (approximately 4-by-3 feet as opposed to the Mona Lisa’s 30-by-20 inches) that doesn’t require being right on top of it to admire it.

The painting of 27-year-old Louise-Albertine de Broglie, a French aristocrat who was married to Vicomte Othenin d’Haussonville in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, appropriately commands a room in the European art galleries, flanked by two of Ingres’ drawings, also on loan from The Frick Collection (one a study for the “Comtesse” and another for his history painting, “The Golden Age”). “She is in good company,” pointed out Carol Togneri, chief curator of the Norton Simon Museum at a press event with Bailey. The painting is installed with the Norton Simon’s Ingres portrait of Baron Joseph-Pierre Vialetes de Mortarieu (1805-06) and large-scale noble portraits, including one of a countess, by other artists.

Though Ingres considered portraiture a less noble endeavor than his history paintings, Bailey said, he is famous as a master of that form. One look at the Comtesse says a thousand words about why. The Comtesse has most likely just come back from an evening at the opera; she was a music lover and a pianist who knew Chopin. Her ice-blue silk cocktail dress, red hair ribbon and gold and turquoise jewelry, as well as the calling cards, opera glasses, evening bag, porcelain and flowers on the velvet-draped mantel behind her are rendered in exquisite detail. Bailey pointed out that there is luminous light and practically a rainbow of blues in the portrait. Her gaze is very thoughtful, perhaps reflecting the fact that she was a writer of romantic novels and a biography of English poet Lord Byron. Her left hand is held beneath her chin in a contemplative fashion. It’s a “canonical” pose from ancient Roman sculpture and definitely part of what makes the portrait particularly striking and memorable.

Bailey noted that Ingres contemplated the portrait for three years and probably made as many as 80 preparatory drawings, 16 of which are known, before working on it intensively between January and June 1845.

Yet, despite the seeming perfection of the portrait, Ingres abandoned reality to suit his artistic needs – the Comtesse’s reflection is visible when it shouldn’t be, her right arm seems to originate from her ribcage rather than her shoulder, her fingers appear to have no bones. That approach would appeal to avant-garde artists like Picasso who played with reality and abstraction, said Leah Lembeck, the assistant curator at the Norton Simon who organized “Gaze: Portraiture After Ingres.”

The exhibit features 150 paintings, sculpture, etchings and photographs, mainly from the Norton Simon collection. In addition to the exquisite portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne by Modigliani, a wonderful watercolor-and-ink work by Klee, a Warhol self-portrait, Van Gogh and Picasso etchings, and Duchamp’s take on the Mona Lisa, there is an interesting section of portraits of famous artists by famous artists.

Picasso's "Woman with a Book" is part of a new exhibit on portraiture at the Norton Simon Museum.

Ingres influenced generations of artists, including Seurat, Degas and Renoir. But of all the artists represented in “Gaze,” Picasso was the most visibly influenced by Ingres, Lembeck noted. (In turn, Picasso had the greatest influence on portraiture of any 20th-century artist.) In the gorgeously colorful and textured “Woman with a Book” (1932), he transforms Ingres’ 1856 portrait of Madame Moitessier into “a dreamy portrait” of his mistress and muse Marie-Therese Walter, Lembeck said. A small photo of the Ingres painting allows comparison.

“Gaze” reveals the history of portraiture from the 19th century, as artists moved away from paid commissions and were free to experiment with style. Those styles are so various that it’s easy to forget that the works on display have a significant feature in common. If you were to think about how many ways a portrait could be executed, you would never imagine everything you will see in this exhibit.

Edgar Munhall, curator emeritus from The Frick Collection and the man who literally wrote the book on the “Comtesse,” will give a lecture on Saturday, Nov. 7, at 4 p.m. at the Norton Simon Museum. Visit the museum’s website for other lectures and events related to the “Comtesse” and “Gaze.”

Image credits:

“Comtesse d’Haussonville,” dated 1845
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780–1867)
Oil on canvas, 51 ⅞ x 36 ¼ inches (131.8 x 92)
The Frick Collection, New York
Photo: Michael Bodycomb

“Woman with a Book,” 1932
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)
Oil on canvas
51-3/8 x 38-1/2 in. (130.5 x 97.8 cm)
The Norton Simon Foundation, F.1969.38.10.P
© 2009 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Iconic artist Rachel Rosenthal / photo by Michael Childers

How often does it happen that an art world giant has a big birthday and we’re all invited to the party? Well, Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica provides just such a rare opportunity when it hosts “Rachel Rosenthal’s Birthday Bash 83” on Saturday, Nov. 7, from 7-11 p.m.

Rosenthal, an iconic interdisciplinary performance artist, was named a Living Cultural Treasure of Los Angeles in 2000. As artistic director and founder of the Rachel Rosenthal Company, she developed revolutionary performance pieces and teaching methods inspired by Jean-Louis Barrault’s concept of total theater and Antonin Artaud’s Le Theatre et Son Double. She has performed all over the world, often focusing on subjects such as animal rights and humankind’s impact on the planet. Entertainment Today said: “There is nothing quite like a Rachel Rosenthal artistic materialization. Seeing (her) and experiencing her after-show discussion session firsthand is like sitting for a few minutes with Plato, listening to Rousseau or Jung or Thoreau speak in person. An evening with Rachel Rosenthal will stay with you a lifetime; do it for your future.” Check out Rosenthal’s YouTube Channel for a glimpse of her work.

The Nov. 7 party celebrates not only Rosenthal’s 83rd birthday but also the Rachel Rosenthal Company’s new TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble and her new book “The DbD Experience – Chance Knows What It’s Doing!” (where DbD stands for Doing by Doing, Rosenthal’s signature brand of improvisational theater). Live music will be provided by Amy Knoles from the California E.A.R. Unit and Jean Paul Monsché of the Mad Alsacians. An auction will include 83 abstract, conceptual and representational portraits of Rosenthal by established and emerging artists including famous names such as John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Mike Kelley, Betye Saar and Robert Rauschenberg. Proceeds from the auction will benefit the new theater ensemble and fund student scholarships and visiting artist stipends.

Tickets ($25) are available at the door on Saturday and online. Track 16 Gallery is at Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 264-4678, http://www.track16.com.

Your secret self needs an appropriately surreal and festive environment, and this party will not disappoint. In addition to a Surrealist photo booth, Fellini-esque movies, and a Magic Carpet walk-off, there will be the mandatory libations and cuisine. DJ Eddie Ruscha will provide the evening’s soundtrack. Tickets start at $350 (it is a benefit). But as the price soars, so do your own benefits; donors in the $1,500 to $25,000 range get various exclusive treats, including “your secret self immortalized in a private session with photographer Leonard Nimoy” (yes, the “Star Trek” star; he and wife Susan are honorary hosts for the occasion). Other goodies include limited-edition portrait prints: “Butch” by Barkley L. Hendricks and “Lovely Six Foota” by Mickalene Thomas. Patrons donating $10,000 or more earn the opportunity to have their secret self costume created by high-profile designers like Brett Westfall/Unholy Matrimony/Commes des Garçons, Brian Lichtenberg, Edith Palm, Jenni Kayne, Pamela Barish, Scout, Society for Rational Dress, or The Row.

Art on view will include installations by Miriam Wosk and selected photographs from “Secret Selves,” Nimoy’s July 2010 exhibition at MASS MoCA (in North Adams, Massachusetts). Plus, “Allen Ruppersberg: You and Me or The Art of Give and Take” continues through Dec. 19. Ruppersberg, who (along with conceptual artists John Baldessari, Douglas Huebler, and Bruce Nauman) helped redefine art in the 1970s, created two installations specifically for the museum. Both of them incorporate items from the artist’s collection of 20th-century cultural ephemera and are interactive. “The Never Ending Book Part 2/Art and Therefore Ourselves” includes more than 15,000 pages of Xeroxed images from Ruppersberg’s book collection, and visitors are encouraged to take a few pages home to create a “book” of their own. “The Sound and the Story/The Hugo Ball Award for 20th Century Graphics” invites guests to rearrange materials on pegboards to create their own narrative.

Purchase tickets to the Halla Gala online; call (310) 586-6488, ext. 116; or email anna.nickila@smmoa.org.

Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art

At the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, you can stroll more than a dozen gardens with 14,000 varieties of plants, stopping to smell the jasmine, contemplate bonsai, or snap a photo in a grove of palm trees — all under the glorious California sun. But Curator Jessica Todd Smith is hoping the new Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art will lure you indoors.

When Smith led a press tour before the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art opened on May 30 after an extensive renovation, she excitedly pointed out some of the highlights of the collection (which began in 1979 with 50 paintings and now totals more than 9,400 objects) and recent acquisitions. The new exhibit space, a combination of the 1984 Virginia Steele Scott Galleries and the 2005 Lois and Robert F. Erburu Gallery, provides more than 16,000 square feet for the American art collection. Painting, sculpture and decorative art from the late-17th to the mid-20th centuries are arranged chronologically in thematic rooms.

The new galleries, with their high ceilings and bright, airy rooms, breathe life into the works, many of which could seem old and stuffy in a less fresh and contemporary setting. Also, Hal Nelson’s artful arrangements of the collection’s decorative arts bring deserved attention to silver, furniture, and ceramics.

Works of the Arts and Crafts movement

Inside the main entrance across from the Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science, visitors are greeted by a thistle-themed stained glass window by George Washington Maher set in the wall so it is literally a window onto an Arts and Crafts-themed room, where a Frank Lloyd Wright dining table and chairs are displayed.

In a room devoted to 19th-century marble sculpture, walls painted a decorator olive green provide a perfect backdrop for Harriett Goodhue Hosmer’s work, a definite highlight of the galleries. Hosmer’s “Zenobia in Chains,” which reigns over the space, was a coup for the Huntington, when John Murdoch, director of art collections, discovered it at auction in London. It hasn’t been on display since the early 20th century and was considered lost or destroyed until it turned up in a private collection. The 1859 sculpture is regarded as Hosmer’s greatest work.

"Zenobia in Chains"

The artist chose to depict the Syrian ruler at the moment she was led through Rome in shackles. Yet as Smith pointed out, Zenobia is “not defeated; she has taken ownership of her captivity.” Her captor Aurelian actually freed her because he was so impressed by her strength, an attribute Hosmer captures in the nearly 7-foot-high sculpture’s majestic posture. The artistry, from the intricacies of the queen’s robe and its buttons and embellishments down to her toes, is remarkable — so remarkable, in fact, that some journals at the time claimed it couldn’t have been done by a woman.  Hosmer’s “Puck” sculpture, another work of extraordinary detail, is exquisitely installed beneath a skylight.

Another recent acquisition, actually a gift, is Samuel L. Francis’ 1980 abstract expressionist painting “Free Floating Clouds,” a 10-by-20-foot canvas that takes up an entire wall. It can’t be missed, and shouldn’t be. Smith pointed out that there is nothing else of this scale in the collection and predicted that it may surprise visitors. Indeed, that work and others in the mid-20th-century room by artists such as Robert Motherwell, Edward Ruscha, and Sam Maloof (who died in May) definitely stand out from the rest of the collection. But Smith indicated that the Huntington has no intention of purchasing contemporary works and competing with other institutions in Los Angeles with already impressive collections. So, in order to more fully represent abstraction, there are works on loan, including a fun Edward Ruscha painting from 1965 titled “Bird Drinks Creek Dry, Fish Escapes.”

Though this colorful room is a lively spot in the galleries, the Huntington’s collection is really distinguished by earlier American works. Some of the pieces to seek out include: a Grant Wood drawing, a sailboat painting by Edward Hopper, paintings by Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent, Gilbert Stuart’s iconic image (the iconic image) of George Washington (and a fun China service created for him and decorated with an angel and eagle), and a whole room dedicated to the architecture and design of Charles and Henry Greene.

"Davis Gulch, Lake Powell" by Karen Halverson

Finally, the inaugural exhibit in the Susan and Stephen Chandler Wing, designated for temporary exhibitions of light-sensitive drawings and photographs, is “Downstream: Colorado River Photographs of Karen Halverson,” on view through Sept. 28. The color images taken by Halverson during her exploration of the river in the summers of 1994 and 1995, are displayed with some of the first photographs ever taken of the Colorado River culled by Curator Jennifer Watts from the Huntington’s archive, which includes 800,000 photos with an emphasis on the American West.

When Watts saw Halverson’s work years ago, she was immediately attracted to the contrast between “pure beauty and desecration.” Halverson, who now lives in New York State, was at the galleries in May and talked about that idea that permeates this series. “What interests me, what makes me stop and grabs my attention, is the combination of something beautiful and something a little off, a little peculiar, or that symbolically represents the human relationship to the earth,” she said.

A prime example is “Davis Gulch, Lake Powell,” where we see a gorgeous wall of red rock looming over eight white plastic chairs on a small sandy beach. The natural rock formation absolutely dwarfs those seats left, Halverson discovered, by a houseboat invisible to her lens at that moment. Yet the story of the Colorado River is one in which humans seem bent on overpowering nature. Some of Halverson’s other images show the demise of the once-mighty river that has been sucked dry, its water diverted to cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. One photo shows an almost abstract image of a pipeline over baked earth, another of a dry riverbed at the river’s terminus in Mexico. “It’s a poignant story,” Halverson said.

This mixture of old and new in the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art makes the Huntington’s collection of American art a whole new treasure to explore. Indeed, President Steven Koblick who made some opening remarks before the galleries opened for the press tour, remarked that the Huntington is a “young, dynamic institution.” He added, “When people get a look at these galleries, they’re going to say, ‘This is the Huntington?’”

Photo credits:
The Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. View toward original Scott Gallery. Credit: The Huntington
Early 20th-century gallery featuring works of the Arts and Crafts movement.  Photo: Tim Street-Porter.
Harriet Goodhue Hosmer (1830–1908), “Zenobia in Chains,” 1859, marble (center) and “Puck,” after 1854, marble (left); Chauncey Butler Ives (1810-1894), “Ruth,” 1853, marble (right). Installation view.  Photo: Tim Street-Porter.
“Davis Gulch, Lake Powell,” from the “Downstream” series, 1994–95, archival pigment print,
20 x 24 in., courtesy of the artist.

Annie Lapin Installation

Have you ever walked in a painting? Sounds cool, doesn’t it? At the Pasadena Museum of California Art, you can literally walk into and around Annie Lapin’s “Parallel Deliria Iteration,” an installation that she describes as “a never-ending painting in three dimensions.” Let’s just say that right now the museum’s Project Room looks like an artist’s studio exploded. Lapin used new material and remnants from previous installations and her own studio to fill the PMCA’s Project Room with an artistic expression free of the usual constraints of canvas or frame – or anything else. Step in and let your imagination wander.

“Parallel Deliria Iteration” and three other new exhibitions are up through Sept. 20 at the PMCA. The main gallery has “You See: The Early Years of the UC Davis Faculty” and a related ceramic exhibit, “Edith Heath: Tabletop Modernist.” The back gallery features Benny Chan’s “Traffic” photographs.

“You See” features work by Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, Manuel Neri, Wayne Thiebaud and William T. Wiley. These five artists arrived at UC Davis between 1960 and 1965 and were instrumental in creating the California funk art movement, characterized by humor, bawdiness, and irreverence. On view are 36 works, including three important works by Thiebaud and an enormous ceramic piece by Arneson created in homage to his ’50s-era tract home.

Heath Ceramics

Ceramics were big in the funk movement, so perhaps playing off that theme and the notion of artistic innovation, the PMCA presents the first retrospective of Edith Heath’s (1911-2005) work. Heath Ceramics, a pottery she founded in 1948 in Sausalito, is still going strong there and opened a store/gallery on Beverly Boulevard in LA. Heath helped define mid-century modernism with her ability to turn something like a handmade pitcher into an objet d’art, and her work is in the collections of museums such as New York’s MOMA. She also manufactured tile and, in addition to working with architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, created the tile exterior of the Norton Simon Museum with the firm of Ladd and Kelsey.

Finally, “Traffic” explores an unavoidable fact of life for Angelenos. Architectural photographer Benny Chan’s aerial photos of rush-hour traffic on LA freeways were taken in planes and helicopters with a 16 lb. camera he built for the project. His 62 inch-by-84 inch photos may prompt you to ask something that has certainly crossed my mind while idling on the 405 or 101: Will there come a time when the traffic will completely stop moving? Chan has expressed the severity of the problem this way: “Traffic jams in a megalopolis the size of Los Angeles are a function of our enormous population growth…. Our reluctance to take action sooner underscores our complacency, procrastination, and greed.”

Installation view of LACMA's "Pompeii and the Roman Villa"

“Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture Around the Bay of Naples” continues through Oct. 4 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Want free tickets? Here is info from LACMA’s website on how to get them:

June 9: Free Admission to Pompeii and the Roman Villa

LACMA is pleased to offer one day of totally free access—June 9—to the blockbuster exhibition Pompeii and the Roman Villa and the entire museum!

KCRW exclaims that you simply can’t afford to miss Pompeii and the Roman Villa’s sculptures, frescoes, and glass vessels that have never been see outside of Italy, and the L.A. Times hails the show as “absorbing, well-considered, and beautifully installed.”

This special day at LACMA is likely to sell out early, so be sure to reserve your tickets today.

Two ways to reserve your tickets:
To reserve your free tickets to Pompeii and the Roman Villa, you may visit lacma.org or stop by a LACMA Welcome Center. Tickets are not available by phone. Tickets are limited to four per reservation and do not include the Pompeii audio tour, which is available at $4 for members and $5 for nonmembers.

To reserve your tickets at lacma.org:

Go to the ticketing page
Select June 9 in the calendar in the upper right hand corner
Select the hour you would like to see the exhibition
Select “Add to Basket” (no cost will be added)
Pick your tickets up at LACMA’s Welcome Center

"Images de Deauville" by Paul Outerbridge

Something about “Images de Deauville,” the poster image for the “Paul Outerbridge: Command Performance” exhibit at the Getty, instantly drew me in. The 1936 photograph is an unusually striking, intensely colorful still life. In the foreground are a metallic sphere, a yellow cone, and a single die. Behind those geometric objects, a pink scallop shell, slender silver vase, and framed picture of a sailboat evoke the atmosphere of the French beach/resort town named in the title.

While the attraction was instant, I couldn’t immediately put my finger on what was so impressive about the image – the almost De Chirico-like juxtaposition of objects; the perfect, intricate Escher-like reflections in the sphere and the vase; the play of light and shadow; the exquisite composition?

Then it dawned on me: The fact that I thought of De Chirico and Escher meant I was looking at this image as a painting or drawing. I was seeing it as something that was not quite reality. Indeed, “Images de Deauville” seems too beautiful to be real; but because it is a photograph, it may be more accurate to say it’s hyper-real.

Outerbridge once said: “Art is life as seen through man’s inner craving for perfection and beauty – his escape from the sordid realities of life into a world of his imagining.”

Though skilled as a painter and illustrator, Outerbridge made his name in photography. He studied at the Clarence H. White School of Photography in New York in the early ’20s, and success came quickly. He sold prints to magazines like Vanity Fair while still a student. In 1929, some of his work was included in an international exhibition and acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art.

Photography in the’20s and ’30s (and even into the ’60s) had yet to reach the artistic status of painting, and the only real market for it was in advertising. Outerbridge, with his keen understanding of artistic technique, was among a small group of photographers that revolutionized print advertising.

In the Getty exhibit, which spans his career and features more than 100 photographs, we see how Outerbridge aspired to the level of fine art with his work. His technical and formal excellence is evident in his Cubist and Surrealist-influenced black-and-white photographs from the ’20s; his color images that appeared in various magazines, including Harper’s Bazaar and Vanity Fair, in the ’30s; and his controversial nudes.

It’s interesting to note that Outerbridge used a die in “Images de Deauville,” an item associated with games of chance. But, as Glynnis Reed, the museum teacher who led me on a tour of the exhibit, pointed out: “Outerbridge doesn’t leave anything to chance.”

Outerbridge planned his photos, meticulously preparing the objects, lighting, and composition. He even built “sets,” like the potting shed he constructed from weathered wood, pots, plants, gardening tools, and even an old window from a barn for a magazine ad.

“The majority of Outerbridge’s photographs were built rather than taken,” said Paul Martineau, assistant curator for the Getty Museum’s Department of Photographs. “He used the camera to express complex aesthetic ideas and created highly nuanced prints that demonstrated his virtuosity.”

Sometimes he modeled photographs after paintings, as in his 1936 “Dutch Girl” nude after Pablo Picasso. His 1937 “Kandinsky” still life includes the tools of his trade like a darkroom timer and folding ruler (and a bottle of vermouth) in a composition that resembles the abstract designs of the Russian painter.

His ’20s platinum and palladium prints are like miniature paintings. Outerbridge called some of them “Semi-Abstractions.” A Saltine box is transformed into a Cubist artwork simply with light and shadow, while a nude on a sofa has the soft, romantic look of an Impressionist painting.

In the ’30s, Outerbridge perfected the Carbro process, a new, highly complex technique for creating color prints from black-and-white negatives. Not only was it time-consuming (taking as long as 10 hours for one print), but it was also expensive (one print costing as much as $150). The intense and highly realistic colors are apparent in his still lifes for magazines, like “Tools With Blueprint” for House Beautiful magazine, and in his nudes, which capture true flesh tones.

His series of voyeuristic nudes and fetishistic nudes, like the disturbing 1937 “Woman With Claws” featuring a naked woman wearing gardening gloves with knives at the fingers, were controversial at the time. Certainly, nude photography was taboo and there was no market for it. Outerbridge said photographing nude models was, except for the “aesthetic enjoyment,” a difficult, expensive, and “thankless job.”

"Girl With Fan" by Paul Outerbridge

“Girl With Fan” is another fine example of Outerbridge’s attention to aesthetic details and his skill with the Carbro color process. The ornate chair with its lush maroon fabric and the rich forest green velvet of the model’s dress add a sense of classic beauty to the image. And the repetition of curves – in the chair, the model’s shoulders, and the fan – make for a lovely composition. Pictured on the fan, the body of the boy lying in the grass actually curves upward, suggesting the shape of the breasts hidden behind the silly image of chickens pecking at a snail on his bottom. The 1936 photograph has a beauty that could seemingly only have been created with a paintbrush, and that’s the magic of Outerbridge’s work.

The exhibit continues through Aug. 9 at the Getty Museum, www.getty.edu.

Check back for information on exhibits and events related to this show.

Photo credits:

“Images de Deauville,” 1936, by Paul Outerbridge/copyright Paul Outerbridge Jr./©2008 G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA/Gift of Mrs. Ralph Seward Allen, Museum of Modern Art, 1942, New York, NY, 174.1942/digital image courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY

“Girl With Fan,” 1936, by Paul Outerbridge/copyright Paul Outerbridge Jr./©2008 G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA/Gift of Mrs. Lois Outerbridge, Museum of Modern Art, 1970, New York, NY, 562.1970/digital image courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY