Reflections of two artists

The poet Ezra Pound coined the slogan for Modernism in 1935. “Make it new,” he said. This meant liberating music from tonality, painting from perspective and language from syntax. Eventually, it became permission to “appropriate” all kinds of things and use them as subjects for art. Then, in a confusing bit of nomenclature sometimes called postmodernism, it became permission to “re-appropriate,” to turn reflexively back on the act of appropriation and make art the subject of art.

This is the life’s work of Richard Pettibone. A Pettibone retrospective is at the Laguna Art Museum through May 28. Walking through it is like taking a mini tour of 20th century art. Pettibone’s version of re-appropriating is to take works by other artists such as Jasper Johns or Andy Warhol and reproduce them in high detail, but in miniature form.

This act of shrinking happens to entire artistic movements as well, such as photorealism: Pettibone painted Polaroid-sized paintings of Polaroids of paintings.

You can tell there’s a lot of humor involved in this. There’s also a lot of repetition of the same joke, and even the repetition of the same joke becomes a joke. There is, for example, a collection of Warhol’s famous paintings of Campbell’s Soup cans. Warhol’s versions were done on a huge scale. But Pettibone reduces them down to approximately the same size as the actual cans, so the whole Warhol opus fits neatly into a space the size of a grocery store shelf.

Another version does the same painting of a Campbell’s Pepper Pot soup can and reduces it two more times, one placed over the other, a reduction of a reduction.

What’s the point, you may ask? Art as commodity. Art is self-referential. Art has no point (Dadaism). Art is conceptual. Art is like a chameleon on a mirror, endlessly contemplating its own reflection.

Once that point has been made, how do you “make it new” again? Step into the room containing the F. Scott Hess exhibit and you will see the answer, sweeping in its scope and highly complex, up to and including a reference to Warhol.

I went to see Pettibone’s work. It’s not to be missed. But the large-scale narrative canvases of Hess blew me away.

The room contains Hess’s recent series (2003), “The Seven Laughters of God,” in addition to other work. There is a concise explanation of the Egyptian myth that inspired the series, so I won’t go into that here. Actually, it’s not required knowledge. What you do need to really appreciate what Hess is doing is an understanding of what’s going on in the Pettibone exhibit: the sense of fatigue and cynicism found in 20th century painting.

Here is what makes Hess’s work stand out: He is technically proficient in all the aspects of old master methods in oil: perspective, light, composition, and most of all, the human figure. His paintings are loaded with symbolic (even allegorical) content. His work is philosophically complex and places high demands on the viewer’s knowledge of western thought. It is (gasp) intellectual.

The exhibit introduction directs us to the great painters of the Renaissance to see Hess’s influences, but I thought immediately of the pre-Raphaelites. Literate, skilled, and highly respectful of the craftsmanship of painting, artists like Ford Maddox Brown or Dante Gabriel Rossetti told stories of intense moral complexity in highly detailed canvases. They, too, looked back to make it new, back to the late Middle Ages.

In the early years of the 20th century, in this age of post-post-modernism, this is really unfashionable. Jasper Johns is still painting, after all. It is, as a result, new.

The third canvas in Hess’s series is titled “Mind.” All the titles in the series are allegorical. They represent the growth of an artist into maturity, the subject of the series. They also use the young artist as a figure for art itself.

In “Mind” (oil on canvas, 54 by 66), the young artist depicted has set up his easel outdoors, among dense trees and overlooking a hillside. The canvas he has been working on faces the viewer, but instead of a plein-air scene, it is the artist’s own face.

It is important to note that the version of himself that he has painted is done in the thick, directional brushwork style of Van Gogh, and that the brushwork forms a vortex centered on the artist’s eye, like a hurricane.

The mirror he has been gazing in is mounted over the canvas, and the face of the artist is the exact shape and size of the circular mirror, as if the artist was unable to see past himself to finish out the square of the canvas. The artist has painted “Mimus Polyglottus” under his own face.

This is an immediate reference to the Northern Mockingbird that is excitedly shouting at the artist in a nearby tree. “Mimus polyglottus” is its scientific name, but more importantly it is Latin for, roughly, “imitator of many songs.”

You can tell that I could spend the equivalent of many columns discussing the implications of this one canvas. The accompanying text directs us to see this as a version of the Annunciation. But that is misdirection: The most powerful reference is in the mirror. It is a comment on the Roman philosopher Horace’s dictum that art must hold a mirror up to nature.

Instead, this artist holds a mirror up to himself, even though he is surrounded by beauty. The result is derivative ? an imitation of Van Gogh. The mockingbird, whose song is a medley of other birds’ music, is chastising the artist. The look of revelation on his face is reflected in the title he has given his self portrait: I am merely an imitator of many voices, it implies.

I haven’t even mentioned the rich detail in the surrounding trees, the agave cactus, the coyote skull in the underbrush, the observatory on the distant hill (Griffith Park?). The setting of the painting gives it an additional layer of content. The painting is not, in fact, a derivative self-portrait. It is a painting of the beauty of nature and a painting of a painter painting. It is both at the same time, and as such, makes the painter a universal figure for art. There are six more canvases that tackle the role of art, and the responsibility of the artist.

Is art a mirror, or a lamp? Does it imitate, or illuminate? Wandering between rooms, between Pettibone and Hess, you may find an answer.