FEELING SURREAL IN LA-LA LAND : MAGRITTE, MAN RAY EXHIBITS DETAIL THE EXPRESSION OF A MAJOR EUROPEAN ART MOVEMENT IN CALIFORNIA.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

Cool and ironic on the surface, surrealism had a cruel streak. It bristled sarcastically at ``art for art's sake.'' It pounced on the idea that art need only be beautiful or ``realistic.''

Rejecting conventional wisdom, even common sense, surrealism embraced the irrational. It turned away from perception to the inner realm of the subconscious, the unknown terrain of dreams and nightmares.

``Art should be a monster which casts servile minds into terror,'' raved one early manifesto. From the end of World War I to the dawn of the Cold War, that nose-thumbing cry was taken up across Europe, first by the dadaists, then by their heirs, the surrealists.

Given the movement's subterranean focus, there's a certain perverse pleasure in noting that fun-loving Los Angeles currently is hosting several surrealist exhibitions. The most visible are ``Rene Magritte: The Poetry of Silence'' at the UCLA Armand Hammer Museum and Cultural Center, the first major West Coast show of the artist in three decades, and ``Man Ray: Paris () LA,'' an unusually large sales exhibition of paintings, sculpture, drawings and prints by the American-born surrealist Man Ray.

Co-presented by the Track 16 and Robert Berman galleries at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, the latter show focuses on the highly productive decade (1940-51) that Man Ray spent in Southern California.

Yet the question persists: How much interest could this sunny consumer paradise have in a movement conceived by disgruntled Europeans?

Plenty, as it turns out - though why is anyone's guess.

``As I'm sure the other galleries have told you, this wasn't planned,'' Hammer exhibit curator Elizabeth Shepherd says of the surrealist convergence.

``Surrealism has a loyal following, an interesting fraternity'' in the Golden State, says Louis Stern, whose West Hollywood gallery is offering works for sale by Magritte, Salvador Dali and others as part of its current show ``Imaginary Realities: Surrealism, Then and Now.''

Consisting of 45 paintings, gouaches and sculptures, 33 of them from the famous Menil Collection in Houston, the Magritte show at the Hammer provides a survey of the artist's career from the early 1920s to the late '60s.

Several signature works appear in the show, such as ``Les Amants (The Lovers),'' in which a kissing couple's heads are eerily enshrouded in fabric; ``Le Survivant (The Survivor),'' a portrait of a blood-drenched rifle, set with horrifying casualness against a floral-patterned wall; and ``Golconde,'' with its scores of near-anonymous, bowler-hatted men floating mutely above a drab row of houses.

Almost inevitably, there also is ``La Trahison des Images (The Treachery of Images).'' Painted in 1929, Magritte's famous image of a pipe explodes the concept of visual representation by attaching the words ``Ceci n'est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe)'' to its surface. True enough: It's not a pipe, but a picture of a pipe.

Perhaps more than any of his surrealist peers, Magritte has been cursed with familiarity. His images - whether of pipes, flaming tubas, fat green apples or gravity-defying rocks - have been endlessly aped and parodied, their menacing edges blunted by repetition. His startling juxtapositions have become the stuff of department store window displays.

Magritte is apparently so safe that a mainstream Hollywood movie, Barry Levinson's ``Toys'' (1992), could outfit Robin Williams in a bowler hat and feel confident its audience would get the joke.

Yet the Magritte we think we know has always been an elusive chap. Even his brush strokes are calmly impersonal, as if Magritte, a former wallpaper company worker, sought to blend into his own imaginary worlds.

``There's no sense of a unique personality or a virtuoso behind the work,'' curator Elizabeth Shepherd says. ``He really didn't want the viewer or the historian to be distracted by his personality.''

Magritte's anonymous technique is echoed by the evasive nature of his subjects. As Shepherd sums up the artist's philosophy: ``Magritte felt very strongly that his painting should not express an idea, but create an idea.''

Complementing the Magritte show is ``Visionary States: Surrealist Prints From the Gilbert Kaplan Collection.'' It features approximately 120 prints on loan from New York publisher Kaplan, a major surrealist collector since the 1960s. Among the 23 artists included is the prolific Man Ray, whose works at the Hammer and the Santa Monica gallery are as playful as Magritte's are ponderous.

Man Ray landed in Los Angeles after fleeing the Nazi occupation of his adopted France. With a cherished Picasso print in tow, he hitchhiked west from New York with a traveling necktie salesman.

What he found in L.A. was a virtual cultural wasteland, say gallery owners Robert Berman and Tom Patchett. At age 50, with no money and few powerful connections, Man Ray had to reinvent himself.

And he did, producing a flurry of photographs, paintings and assemblages, schmoozing with movie stars, lecturing the natives on art and co-habiting with a young dancer, Juliet Browner. With Juliet as his muse and, frequently, the subject of his photos, Man Ray helped inspire a West Coast school of surrealism (documented in last year's Hammer exhibition, ``Pacific Dreams'').

He also made a friend of newspaper scion William Copley, who remained his patron after the artist, weary of earthquakes and Hollywood ephemera, returned to Paris in 1951.

The one thing Man Ray refused to do during his California sojourn was chase the fast buck of commercial photography, which had provided a meal ticket earlier in his career.

``He wasn't like (Salvador) Dali, who could turn out shlock and sell it, just to get some money,'' says Dickran Tashjian, professor of art history at the University of California, Irvine, whose essay on Man Ray appears in the show's catalog.

Though their time together was brief, Los Angeles never forgot Man Ray, who died in 1976. He was honored with retrospectives at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1976 and the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1989.

``(Man Ray) embraced California,'' says Track 16's Patchett. ``He didn't treat it as a joke. Except for Hollywood.''

Berman and Patchett hope that at least one piece from their show, ``Le Beau Temps,'' will find a permanent home at a major California cultural institution. Touted by Berman as a ``surrealist masterpiece,'' the 1939 painting casts a discouraging glance at a future overshadowed by threats of war.

Looks as though surrealism and Southern California will be strange bedfellows for some time to come.

THE FACTS

The show: ``Rene Magritte: The Poetry of Silence'' and ``Visionary States: Surrealist Prints From the Gilbert Kaplan Collection.''

Where: Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles.

When: Hours are 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays. Through Jan. 5.

Tickets: $4.50 adults; $3 seniors, non-UCLA students, UCLA faculty/staff and Alumni Association members with ID; $1 UCLA students with ID; free for museum members and children 17 and younger. For information, call [phone].

The show: ``Man Ray: Paris () LA.''

Where: Track 16 and Robert Berman Galleries, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Building C1, Santa Monica.

When: Hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Through Jan. 31. Admission free. For information, call [phone].

Other exhibitions

The show: ``Imaginary Realities: Surrealism, Then and Now.''

Where: Louis Stern Fine Arts, 9002 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood.

When: Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays. Through Nov. 12. Admission free. For information, call [phone].

The show: ``Joseph Cornell: Collages and Box Constructions.''

Where: Manny Silverman Gallery, 619 N. Almont Drive, West Hollywood.

When: Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Through Nov. 9. Admission free. For information, call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

5 Photos

Photo: (1--2--Color)Rene Magritte's famous ``Golconde (G olconda)'' (1953), above, with its rainfall of bowler-hatted businessmen, and ``Les Amants (The Lovers)'' (1928), right, with its eerily enshrouded sweethearts, are included in ``Rene Magritte: The Poetry of Silence'' at the UCLA at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center.

(3--Color)Magritte's masterful combination of the mundane and the mystical are evident in ``Le Chant des Sirenes (The Sirens' Song)'' (1952) in the Hammer exhibit.

(4--Color) Man Ray's ``Object Indestructable'' is displayed in ``Man Ray: Paris () LA'' at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica.

(5--Color)Man Ray's companion, Juliet Browner, is the bewitching subject of ``Juliet'' in the Bergamot Station exhibit.