LOOKING AT HOCKNEY LOOKING AT HOCKNEY AT MOCA, ARTIST PLACES SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA IN FOCUS.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

Stamped on the background in small, pale, red letters of the photo collage ``Robert Littman Floating in My Pool'' (1982) are the words ``Buy for Pleasure Only, Not Recommended for Investment.''

The 1982 work is part of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art's ``David Hockney Retrospective: Photoworks'' exhibit, and the comment and the collage itself go a long way toward bringing you into the world of the British artist who has carved out Southern California as his territory since he moved here in the '60s.

There is usually something playful and pleasurable about a Hockney work. Many of his early paintings - like the 1967 ``A Bigger Splash,'' showing the spray from a lone figure who has just entered the water after diving into a placid pool under a cloudless sky - are a balance of cool abstraction and pleasing subject matter.

The works in the exhibition, which opened last Sunday, show a similar delicious tension. ``Hockney's art always pulls in two directions,'' one critic noted recently, ``toward a decorative joie de vivre and spontaneity, or toward a perceptual scrutiny almost claustrophobic in its intensity.''

Showing up at a preview of the exhibition looking very much like the subject of one of his works - the Englishman in L.A. with his summery tan outfit and pastel shirt - the artist admitted to reporters that it took him a while to take photography seriously. As MOCA director Jeremy Strick observes, many of Hockney's first photographic works - such as ``Peter on a Diving Board'' (1968) - have a direct connection to his early paintings. Some were even done as preparation for a painting. But once Hockney began to see photography as an independent medium, however, he began taking it to a new level, says Strick.

Where this is readily apparent is in photo collages assembled to make one picture. Hockney began producing these in the 1980s. Some were created from dozens of Polaroids while others might be from a half-dozen or so 35-millimeter prints. Works such as `'Pearblossom Hwy.'' (1986), which is on loan from the J. Paul Getty Museum; ``The Brooklyn Bridge'' (1982); ``Prehistoric Museum Near Palm Springs'' (1982); and the two photo collages of the Zen Gardens at the Ryoanji Temple (1983) show how stunningly effective this technique is.

``We do see everything in focus all the time but not so with a camera,'' notes Hockney. Each photo he took, though, would be in focus, as Hockney moved the camera over the scene, sometimes creating an overlap, other times a gap in the final collage. In this way, Hockney allows the viewer to examine the individual points of the work while at the same time rethinking how they look as the total picture.

``By taking multiple photographs, Hockney could extend the sense of time as an element in his works and bring in multiple perspectives,'' says Strick.

As technology advanced, Hockney has refined and redefined his photographic ambitions. In 1982, he took Polaroids of the Grand Canyon, and though he created photo collages of them, it wasn't until 1997 that he had an affordable method - a laser printer - that the artist was able to turn them into ``The Grand Canyon South Rim With Rail,'' 88 prints pieced together that take up nearly two walls in the room of the exhibit.

Since the eye moves from point to point as it views such a vast vista, the question, says Strick, is ``How do you make an image of the Grand Canyon to approximate the experience of it?''

As you walk through the exhibit, which was organized by the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany (MOCA is the only U.S. stop), it becomes apparent that Hockney is always asking such questions about his art.

``I don't think there is an artist that is more intellectually ambitious,'' says Strick. ``Hockney has an extraordinarily wide range of knowledge, and he has thought in very original ways about the history of art. But he's also an artist that's enormously accessible, and he takes profound and complex ideas about art and uses them for the foundations of works that are just extra enjoyable and pleasure-giving and delightful.''

Part of the reason Hockney is so appealing is that he includes you so very much in his world. Many of his works are of friends (a number of famous ones like Billy Wilder, Dennis Hopper or Tony Bennett) or lovers or objects around his house, his pool (of course) and even his dogs. (Begging the question, ``If you or I put up pictures of our dogs in a museum, is it art?'')

Other times he includes himself in the picture, as he does with ``David Hockney and Karen Kuhlran Looking at Photographs of Yorkshire'' (1993), which greets you at the entrance to the exhibit. The wall-size mural of color laser-prints is as self-referential as you can get. What the museum goer looks at are people looking at a picture of people looking at a landscape. And then there are times Hockney only gives a hint of himself - his shadow, the toe of his shoe or sock or a small image in the mirror.

So while we get this portal into Hockney's life, you sense as he talks about his art that he'd rather be making it, and where he likes to make it is in ``the quiet of L.A., where they leave you alone.'' His importance as an image-maker of the city probably can't be overstated. ``In some ways we see Southern California through Hockney's eyes,'' says Strick.

And though Hockney isn't much interested in being involved in that other Southern California imagemaker - movies - he is aware of the advances in computer-generation and animation in the medium. (He jokes, though, ``that from my experience with high tech, you always need some scissors and a pot of glue.'') Still he does see a similarity in famed art centers in the past like Venice and Hollywood today: ``They were full of people trying to find very vivid ways to depict reality.''

But Hockney isn't worried about films blotting out his art. The fate of most Hollywood movies, he notes, are that they are seen once, never to be seen again. His work is in museums, ``where pictures don't talk and don't move and they last longer.''

``In a way, I'd worry about the future of movies in this town,'' he adds wryly.

But Hockney didn't come here for the movies. Aside from the privacy, one of the primary reasons he loves L.A. is the light. Raising a question from one reporter that sounds like it's out of a movie: Does the light help keep him away from the dark side in his work?

His answer was pure logic: ``When you're interested in light, the dark side makes it difficult to see.''

DAVID HOCKNEY RETROSPECTIVE: PHOTOWORKS

Where: Museum of Contemporary Art, 250 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles.

When: Open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday; through Oct. 21. Closed Monday.

Tickets: General admission $6, seniors 65 and over and students with ID $4, children under 12 free. Call [phone] for information.

CAPTION(S):

6 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) ``David Hockeny at Pearblossom Hwy...,'' Palmdale, Calif., December 13, 2000

(2 -- color) ``Pearblossom Hwy.,'' 1986

(3 -- color) ``Paint Trolley, L.A.,'' 1985

(4 -- color) ``Photographing Annie Leibovitz While She's Photographing Me,'' Mojave Desert, 1983

(5) ``Prehistoric Museum Near Palm Springs,'' 1982

(6) ``Myself and Peter Schlesinger Paris December 1969''