ART REVIEWS : McCarthy’s Influential, Early Photos

A small show of early works by Paul McCarthy at Blum & Poe Gallery is an eye-opening treasure trove. Each of the five series of black-and-white photographs from 1970 to 1974 not only documents a previously unexhibited stage of the legendary performance artist’s development, but also provides a substantial if largely unrecognized foundation for much of a subsequent generation’s art.

Along with Robert Smithson and Ed Ruscha, McCarthy wielded a camera not in the manner of a traditional photographer, but as a tool any artist might use to make work. Focused on the human body, its place in society and its relationship to the natural world, McCarthy’s serial pictures document a childlike desire to know--to experience the feeling of one’s surroundings, up close and in person, rather than from a distance.

A kooky, hands-on directness animates all of his photos. One piece consists of 24 views of Sunset Boulevard, lined up one after another along a gallery wall.

Unlike Ruscha’s similar series, which neatly catalogs every building on a section of the strip, McCarthy’s images are shot straight out of his car’s windshield, as if the artist was so enthralled by the constantly changing view whizzing through his window that he couldn’t be bothered to pull over, set up a composition and then snap the picture. These images embody a sense of being thrilled by the moment, of finding, in the most ordinary occurrences, wondrous fascination.

A second series consists of a grid of juxtaposed photos made as McCarthy moved his camera closer and closer to a broken bit of mirror lying on the floor of a nondescript room. The closer his lens came to the mirror’s surface, the more the room disappeared from the picture, leaving only a view of the ceiling.

Grouped together, these photos echo the form of Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty,” a thin peninsula he built in a Utah lake. In contrast to Smithson’s monumental meditation on humanity’s precarious, often puny place in nature’s vast landscape, McCarthy’s grid charts an inward spiral, one that moves through subjective impressions as it measures the distance separating inner, psychological states from the external world.

Likewise, “The Painter” offers a flat-footed chronicle of the artist’s struggle to make a place in the world for his inner sentiments. A nearly abstract mix of close-ups and more distant photos, this jarring grid of images depicts McCarthy wrestling with paint, canvas and paper in a rented storefront as passersby peer through the window. Simultaneously goofy and serious, this tragicomic performance is a low-budget, do-it-yourself attempt to partake of the pleasures of abstract painting without getting caught up in its stodgy pretensions.

Like his other photographs, and the performances and sculptures that followed, “The Painter” reveals that McCarthy’s desire to find some kind of connection between inner and outer realities supersedes his need to criticize other artists’ failures. If these little-known works were more influential, contemporary art might be more generous and open-ended, certainly less self-satisfied.

* Blum & Poe Gallery, 2042 Broadway, Santa Monica, (310) 453-8311, through Jan. 13. Closed Sundays-Tuesdays.

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Technical marvels: Over the holiday season, many Los Angeles photography galleries have presented group exhibitions whose only organizing principle seemed to be the inclusion of a wide variety of prints, in an even wider variety of price ranges. Peter Fetterman Gallery has approached the gift-buying public somewhat differently, exhibiting Neil Folberg’s dazzling, light-saturated color photographs of synagogues along with a handsome coffee-table book, “And I Shall Dwell Among Them: Historic Synagogues of the World,” recently published by Aperture.

Folberg spent three years traveling around Europe, Morocco, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Poland, Hungary, Israel, India, the United States and the Caribbean, visiting famous and little-known synagogues with a single assistant and about 200 pounds of equipment.

His sumptuous photographs are a technical marvel: Requiring up to 50 negatives to be layered atop one another to make one print, they bathe the often ornate interiors of otherwise dimly lit synagogues with an omnipresent, otherworldly glow. Suffused with this extraordinary light, which appears to emanate from everywhere simultaneously, even the lowliest objects in Folberg’s pictures have the rich, sensuous presence of cherished artifacts.

The photographer’s lovingly constructed prints also celebrate diversity. One faith’s capacity to adapt to radically different cultures, climates and circumstances is manifest in an impressive range of styles: All-over patterning common to Arabic architecture freely commingles with the bare walls and plain wood of the Reformation, along with extravagant examples of Baroque ornamentation; crisp, neocolonial symmetry, and the hot modernity of cheap neon lights.

Throughout the exhibition and the book, Folberg’s attention to detail bears witness to Judaism’s flexibility, suggesting that no peoples’ identity can be read in symbols but must be discovered somewhere else--in the spirit of things rather than their appearance.

* Peter Fetterman Gallery, Bergamot Station A7, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 453-6463, through Saturday.