By Suzanne Muchnic, Times Staff Writer
A white-winged, stuffed horse bursts through the top of a slick Chevy low-rider in the front gallery of Otis/Parsons’ Exhibition Center. In the next room, a lioness sprouts patches of landscape in her fur and a tiny plastic elephant chases terrified toy people along the queen of beasts’ backbone. The artist responsible for these strange sculptures is James Croak, who appears to be in cahoots with a taxidermist.
Croak’s "New Myths and Heroic Allegories" and McMillen’s installation, called "Aristotle’s Cage," are independently conceived and completely unrelated projects, but they reaffirm that there’s more going on in contemporary art than Neo-Expressionist painting. Young blood is pumping through the veins of California’s tradition of assemblage and creating new products that bear little resemblance to their Beat Generation ancestors.
Croak became known here for massive, abstract metal sculpture that appeared to owe a large debt to Frank Stella. In his new work at Otis/Parsons, through Dec.3, he has taken a radical, very ambitious departure both in form and content. Results are bizarre and impossible to ignore. Working with preserved horses, birds, reptiles and wild animals, he creates updates of mythical beings, such as Pegasus, a centaur and a sphinx. In a way, it seems that he’s cheating because his raw material is loaded with so much inherent interest and power but, as far as I know, what he has done with it is original.
Getting there first and staking out territory is important in a realm where everyone is looking for a viable trademark, but it’s only part of an aesthetic statement. Croak is on to something, yet he seems to exploit it to the point of grandstanding.
His "Pegasus" works in the way of spectacles, dazzling visitors with the mere fact of its existence. "Truth, Justice, Mercy," the artist’s self-portrait as a centaur (combining a tattooed cast of the artist’s head and upper body with a stuffed appaloosa), is far less successful.
The piece is so busy recalling the Greek sculpture "Laocoon," telling about cycles of life (as small animals devour smaller ones in a vignette at one side) and hitting us over the head with its significance that it destroys itself. It’s hard to tell whether the final blow is dealt by the artist’s self-mockery or his self-righteous preaching.
"Lioness," on the other hand, is a gentle, friendly-looking piece that lets the audience discover its humor and wicked undertow at a pace that can be assimilated. Unlike a stuffed monkey elaborately rigged up on a red stand and surrounded with everything from smoldering incense to playing cards, the lion appears quite naturally peculiar.
What finally links Croak and McMillen to assemblagists whose art looks unlike theirs is the moral tone that pervades the movement. While Ed Kienholz rages against a culture that estranges all but its beautiful people, Croak loudly protests our society’s misuse of its wild creatures and its artists. McMillen speaks in whispered tones, often tinged with humor, but there’s no denying the fervor behind his mysteries.