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It is hard to find artists who put color above all else. So many other things can preoccupy their creativity and get in the way. But there was a time when color reigned supreme. Color Field artists like Gene Davis, Clyfford Still, Sam Gilliam, Hans Hofmann, Helen Frankenthaler and Mark Rothko made hue of singular importance, but diverged significantly in the ways this focus was manifested. Many of their works are on view in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s “Color as Field: American Painting, 1950-1975″ exhibit running through May 26, 2008.

Gene Davis adorned his canvases with thin, ruler-straight lines of color. He used bright, glossy acrylics and repeated the colors to establish a visual rhythm that comes off as jazzy and upbeat. Clyfford Still stands out for his use of thick impasto paint and ragged, choppy application. His organization of color is loose, not geometric or rigid at all, but there is a certain level of control indicated by the fact that the different colors on his palette rarely mix or tint one another. Mark Rothko rejected the notion that his work was abstract expressionist, let alone part of the color field movement. Yet his multiforms—vertical canvases with large rectangular blocks of contrasting, but complementary, colors—indicate that he was part of this movement, willing or not.

A whole generation of artists was lured by the promise of pure, saturated color. Their treatment of pigment was incredibly individualistic, but all of them understood and responded to one of the integral aspects of visual art—the primacy of color.

(Helen Frankenthaler, Flood, Whitney Museum of American Art © 2007 Helen Frankenthaler. Photograph Geoffrey Clements. Courtesy of the American Federation of Arts)

Los Angeles County Art Museum has a shiny new building, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum. It is a welcome addition of large, beautiful space to the institutional LA art scene, with Jeff Koon’s “Tulips” offering a shiny welcome in the entrance plaza. Once you pass the ticket check, an escalator takes you to the top floor to begin your visit with a splash of the top works of the last fifty years.

The inaugural exhibition is set up to show groups of works by various artists, a change up from the “one-piece-per” that often limits a period survey. The galleries have walls that allow for room-like groupings, and the work was installed with plenty of space to let it and the viewers breathe.

But what’s the story on the security guards? They are everywhere – even present in LACMA’s own picture in the link above. I got one in my snapshot of “Tulips.” They were in every quadrant of the galleries, hovering like nervous nannies. There was one stationed less than three feet from the Jeff Koon’s stainless steel balloon-like “Rabbit” at all times. “Rabbit” is barely more than three feet tall itself, and so the experience of it was dwarfed by the aggressive presence of the guard. Not that I’m a fan of roping off work, but a discrete foot high rope four feet out could have done a similar job of keeping sticky fingers off the steel, while affording the viewer an uninhibited 360 view.

The final indignity was their presence in the Serra galleries on the lowest floor. Interacting with a Serra is a deeply personal experience for me, as I like to take the time to really feel the emotional manipulation inherent in the spaces his work creates. Serra’s “Band” is a continuous ribbon of undulating steel that takes you through interior and exterior spaces as you follow its line. Each interior space can act as cocoon or confinement, depending on how the angles at the top lean in or out, inciting alternating anxiety or relief. Truly masterful. But my contemplation of this was severely cramped by the guard that followed me into each interior space, at one point going so far as to interrupt my thoughts with an extended greeting.

Come on, BCAM, back off a little. Yes, your art is valuable, but loosen up on the tight orchestration of how we get to experience it.

Photo credit: “Tulip” by Jeff Koons, BCAM, entrance plaza, March 2008, by Sam Hunter.

As I discussed last week, Cai Guo-Qiang’s Inopportune: Stage One is a powerful headlining piece for the retrospective of his work at the Guggenheim. This installation, perhaps rightly so, gets the lion’s share of the attention and press. But the show as a whole goes a long way toward giving a sense of Cai’s methodology, thematic interests and creative scope.

Cai grew up during China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 70s. In many ways, his artistic interests were conceived during that period. His standout innovation, however, is drawn from a far more ancient Chinese source. Harnessing the combustive power of gunpowder, Cai ignites canvas, paper, and even clothing. The resulting burn-marks patterns and scorches are incendiary and atypical, meticulously executed yet spontaneous. These pieces are often presented in counterpoint to photographs documenting Cai’s explosion events, which have taken place all over the world.

His focus on the juxtaposition of individual actualization and the societal collective is one of his latest tangents. Producing “social projects” as they are called, Cai has opening museums in out-of-the-way sites that are not the standard venues for art viewing, bunkers for example. The artist takes on the role of museum curator, and orchestrates events that require a great deal of logistical groundwork and social involvement. Complicating these efforts is the staggering amount of resources—assistants, volunteers, laborers—the artist brings together for these events.

Photo credits: Cai Guo-Qiang, Fetus Movement II: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 9, 1992. Realized at Bundeswehr-Wasserübungsplatz military base, Hannover Munden, June 27,1992, 9:40 p.m., 9 seconds. Land area 15,000 sq. m. Gunpowder (90 kg), fuse (1,300 m), seismograph with nine sensors, electroencephalograph, and electrocardiograph. Commissioned by The Kassel International Art Exhibition. Photo by Masanobu Moriyama, courtesy Cai Studio.

A few years back, I had the pleasure of training to become a Getty Volunteer – one of the beige clad folks that direct human traffic to the trams, restaurants, and Van Gogh’s “Irises” at the Getty Center. As part of our education, we were treated to a wonderful lecture by Scott Schaefer, Getty’s curator of paintings, who took us on whirlwind tour of the last five years of painting and sculpture acquisitions.

One painting, Degas’ “After the Bath” stood apart from the crowd, not necessarily for its fine illustration of Degas’ later work, but for what Schaefer had to say about it. He pointed out that the nearby Norton Simon had a great collection of works by the artist, specifically of the “dancer” genre. When it came time to fill a Degas hole in the Getty’s collection, Schaefer didn’t want to get something that was already available to the local museum aficionados, unless it was of far superior quality. He felt that his task was to not only acquire the best piece he could find for the Getty, but one that also served to augment the collection of “greater Los Angeles.” Thus he wasn’t really on the hunt for another ballerina. I remember thinking that this was such a broad minded and refreshing perspective: to look at the area collaboratively, while maintaining a healthy, competitive eye for excellence.

I was reminded of Schaefer’s vision again as I read Suzanne Muchnic’s Los Angeles Times coverage of Getty’s newest treasure, Gauguin’s “Arii Matamoe (The Royal End).” At the end, Muchnic lists the other Gauguin works in LA, and quotes Schaefer’s assessment of the city’s Gauguin holdings, “Together,” Schaefer said, “the artworks represent the entire sweep of Gauguin’s career.” Should I ever get the opportunity to curate at such a level, I will keep my eye on Schaefer’s vision.

Charlotte Schulz is a young artist with a small show at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum that goes on through June. I was searching around the museum’s website, looking for upcoming events, and was surprised that an image of one of her drawings caught my attention and single-handedly convinced me to make a trip to the museum to see her work.

Schulz has a good command over her chosen medium. To really get the most out of charcoal on paper, an artist needs to understand that form isn’t created with line but with varying degrees of shadow. Schulz creates pools of light and murky shadows that are robust, substantial and perfectly balanced.

The scenes depicted in the drawings are peculiar. Spaces seem simultaneously indoors and out of doors. They are stark and mostly abandoned spaces, but are occupied by strategically placed objects like fighter planes, Corinthian columns, computers, tickertape, and floodlights. These nonsensical environments are then folded into, over and around other dreamlike settings drawn on the same page. None of them relate to one another thematically, but they are literally moored together by cordons that the artist has seen fit to draw throughout the scenes.

The whole affect is one of mild claustrophobia or panic. You feel jumpy and uneasy like you have just walked into the aftermath of something really horrible but you don’t know what. All you want is to get out as fast as you can. But your eyes can’t find a logical exit point. So you stick around, getting more and more disturbed, but sucked into one never-ending interior after another. It was an uncomfortable stay to be sure, but definitely worth the trip.

Photo credit: Charlotte Schulz, The maximum of all possible hate is realized in the eternal moment, and we cleave to our screens as it unfolds in that disquieting way (an incompossible) (detail), 2005. Courtesy of the artist.