ART AND UPHEAVAL 2 PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITIONS AT THE GETTY CAPTURE UNGUARDED GENIUS, CHANGING TIMES.

Byline: Sandra Barrera Staff Writer

The turbulent 1960s and great 20th-century artists are the subjects of two very different photo exhibits now on view at the Getty Museum.

``Photographs of Artists by Alexander Liberman'' looks at the aging art luminaries at the center of Liberman's environmental portraits. The photos were taken during the course of his 50-year career at Vogue and Conde Nast Publications. But the images are more illuminating than they are masterful.

``There's a lot of information that someone who's doing research on the various artists depicted can get from these photographs as well,'' says Glenn Phillips, curator of the exhibit, which is at the Getty Research Institute through Oct. 19.

The Russian-born Liberman, who died in 1999 at the age of 87, was well-known for his rapid-succession-style photographs that captured world-renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp and Henri Matisse at home or at work in the studio.

A painter and sculptor himself, Liberman took special note of his subjects' surroundings whenever photographing or filming them.

In the 1955 chromogenic print titled ``Alberto Giacometti in His Paris Studio,'' the artist's ideas can be seen etched on the walls.

There are prints in which Liberman zeros in on crudely shaped figures, vases, masks and frames in the studio of his most photographed subject, Picasso. And in another series of photographs, he concentrates on the artists' hands, including those of Duchamp as he plays chess.

``Strange Days: Photographs From the Sixties by Winogrand, Eggleston and Arbus,'' showing in the Getty's West Pavilion gallery through Oct. 5, marks the first time the work of Garry Winogrand, William Eggleston and Diane Arbus have been presented together and in a way that forces people to look at the photographers' contributions during the '60s.

With the women's liberation movement in full swing, Winogrand directed his cynical albeit humorous eye at beauties on the street in a variety of social situations. Eggleston's images, meanwhile, were indifferent and offhanded.

``It's really as if he was walking or driving through quiet streets and saw something - a dog or someone walking down the street who caught his fancy - and he photographed them, but they're all very incidental as opposed to Winogrand's and Arbus','' says Judith Keller, curator of the exhibit. ``He's really the quiet, ironic eye, Eggleston (who has outlived the other two).''

Arbus' work was more critical of American society. And it began the moment she stepped away from the world of fashion photography and began getting acquainted with fringe dwellers.

Nudist colonies, nuclear families and carnival sideshow attractions instead of models were now her subjects. About the same time she began photographing these subjects the magazines she freelanced for began publishing the works of ``new journalists'' Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson.

``They wanted to be reporting on what was going on in the world, but they wanted to do it in a very personal way,'' Keller says, adding, ``They wanted to put themselves in the midst of it and write it in first person, and her work and her ideas for story subjects was very much in tune with that.''

In the 1962 negative ``A Castle in Disneyland,'' Arbus captures an eerie Sleeping Beauty's Castle all dark and foreboding with a single white swan swimming in the moat. This, like much of Arbus' work, is perhaps better-known than that of Winogrand or Eggleston's simply because she committed suicide in 1971 at age 47.

All she left were her haunted images.

``Arbus had a more pessimistic and melancholy view of the world and was very critical of American society,'' Keller says. ``But really what you're seeing here are three different reactions to that period of the '60s and, of course, how it affected these three photographers depended to some extent on their ages at the time, where they were living and also on their personalities.''

Sandra Barrera, [phone]

sandra.barrera(at)dailynews.com

STRANGE DAYS: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE SIXTIES BY WINOGRAND, EGGLESTON AND ARBUS

Where: West Pavilion of the Getty, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles.

When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Through Oct. 5.

PHOTOGRAPHS OF ARTISTS BY ALEXANDER LIBERMAN

Where: The Research Institute at the Getty, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles.

When: Same hours as above; through Oct. 19.

Tickets: Both exhibitions are free. Parking is $5. Information at [phone] or www.getty.edu.

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

(1 -- 4) At the Getty Center, Diane Arbus' ``Headless Woman,'' left, holds court in the ``Strange Days'' exhibit; Alexander Liberman's portraits of Alexander Calder, above, Marc Chagall, top, and Henri Matisse, right, are among the candid looks at some of the giants of 20th-century art.