PORTRAIT OF A CHAMELEON; ELEANOR ANTIN'S SELF-STYLED BODY OF WORK ON VIEW AT LACMA.

Byline: Reed Johnson Staff Writer

Throughout her innovative and resourceful career, Eleanor Antin has frequently existed in some or other state of exile, whether involuntary or slyly self-imposed.

She has been a female artist in a male-dominated occupation, a fervent but independent-minded feminist during the ``liberated'' '70s, and a bookish, Jewish ``New York brat'' transported to the land of palm trees and blissed-out smiles.

For 30 years, Antin has lived outside San Diego, where her husband, David, accepted a teaching post at the University of California campus in the late 1960s. Though she occasionally has set the pace for certain aspects of the New York art scene, she has chosen to stand slightly apart from that milieu, while making do with minuscule budgets and rudimentary production values.

So it was fitting when, a few weeks ago, Antin was spotted wearing a ``Visitor'' sticker on her left hand while being feted as the guest of honor at one of L.A.'s most prestigious cultural venues.

The occasion was the press preview of ``Eleanor Antin,'' the first comprehensive survey of the pioneering feminist artist, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Organized by Howard N. Fox, LACMA curator of contemporary art, the exhibition tracks Antin's multiple artistic and personal reinventions of the past 35 years, a period during which she repeatedly found new ways to insert herself and her various ``fictional personae'' into the often exclusionary world of contemporary art.

``The underlying unity among all of (her work) is this insistence upon telling stories,'' Fox says. ``And so she tells them in every way you can think of.''

She also tells them in ways that often undercut and interrogate each other. For example, in one of her fictional personae projects, she portrayed an impoverished ballerina in a comically poignant performance titled ``The Little Match Girl Ballet'' (1975). LACMA's survey supplies an additional layer of commentary by juxtaposing still photographs of Antin seeming to execute perfect pirouettes and arabesques with a video of the same routine that captures her every stumble and misstep.

It's a characteristically complex portrait, both boldly individualistic in its expression of a private fantasy and comically self-effacing at the same time.

``I can't help but be a little subversive and ironic,'' the artist says amiably. ``That's my nature.''

Antin is referring specifically to the tongue-in-cheek subtitles that appear in the witty, retro-Yiddish ``silent films'' she began making in the early 1990s. But she could as easily be speaking of the ``guerrillalike motivation to a lot of her methodology,'' as Fox puts it, that has characterized her entire career.

``Her work is almost Talmudic,'' Fox says. ``It's like commentary upon commentary, or layer upon layer.''

Structured chronologically, the exhibition undergoes what Fox describes as ``a deepening and darkening of mood'' as it moves toward the present.

It begins in the early 1960s, when artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Jim Dine were deflating the self-importance of abstract expressionism by plastering their works with found objects and other household detritus, just as the dadaists had done 50 years before.

Antin's early experiments in conceptual art are represented at LACMA by ``Blood of a Poet Box'' (1965-68), for which Antin persuaded 100 poets such as John Ashberry, John Cage and Allen Ginsberg, several of them friends, to each contribute a drop of blood that she preserved on microscopic slides.

The exhibition also includes the famous ``100 BOOTS'' (1971-73), a narrative series of 51 postcards chronicling the ``journey'' of 50 pairs of posed black rubber boots traversing a path from the Pacific Ocean to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where they were exhibited.

Antin's explorations of gender and identity issues are highlighted by the frequently exhibited ``Carving: A Traditional Sculpture.'' In this 1972 series of 144 photographs, Antin documented herself nude while in the process of losing 10 pounds during a 36-day diet.

This deadpan, pseudo-scientific skewering of conventional notions of feminine beauty, along with other feminist-inspired works by Antin, have been cited as major influences on their careers by many subsequent female artists. (This aspect of Antin's career is addressed in some detail in a catalog essay by Lisa E. Bloom.)

Antin also anticipated Cindy Sherman in her construction of three distinct, made-up ``fictional personae'' - the King, the Nurse and the Ballerina - which she acted out both in private and public settings. Like some low-budget auteur operating on the margins of Hollywood, Antin made all the costumes and props from scratch.

As the King, Antin walked the streets of San Diego County, collecting money in a tin cup and chatting with the locals.

``I was a little (leery), walking out there with a beard and a bosom,'' she says. ``I think I was saved because I look kind of like a Chaplin figure. I don't look scary.''

The collective vision that emerges from these works is one in which all the world's a kind of strange, tragic melodrama. We, the hapless actors, ``are the comedy,'' Antin says.

In person, in brown pullover and black pants, the petite artist, at 64, has retained the slightly anonymous, Everywoman quality that perfectly suits her identity-switching purposes.

``I guess in a sense I always prefer things when they're on the downslope,'' she says, ``because to me that's a truer image of life. I mean, the king's a loser, like I'm a loser, because the king's my political self. I was always on the losing end. And politically we're all losers, and we're all losers in life because ...''

She lets the thought trail off, unfinished.

``So I guess the pathos is built in. You might as well enjoy it while you're going downhill!''

THE FACTS

What: ``Eleanor Antin.''

Where: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd.

When: Through Aug. 23. Museum hours are noon to 8 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays; noon to 9 p.m. Fridays; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Closed Wednesdays.

Admission: Adults $7, students 18 and older with ID and seniors $5, children and younger students $1, children under 5 admitted free. The second Tuesday of every month is free to all.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) Eleanor Antin created the persona of The Nurse and all the props for her 1976 video ``The Adventures of a Nurse.''

(2) Antin's ``100 BOOTS'' (1971-73) chronicles the cross-country journey of 50 pairs of rubber boots.