Works About Work : Artists confront the toll capitalism takes on the family and the psyche

The corporation, once considered the place to be for anyone chasing the American Dream, has come under much public scrutiny during the past few years.

Fraud, mismanagement, bankruptcies, massive layoffs, the loss of employee benefits and women’s inability to break through glass ceilings have shaken some people’s faith in corporate goodness. Most recently, Americans have been wondering why the heads of the Big Three car manufacturers get paid so much when thousands of auto workers are sent to the unemployment line.

Two Los Angeles artists, Richard Shelton and Margaret Lazzari, have spent the last few years contemplating the corporation’s effect on its employees. Exhibits of their work exploring this theme are on view; Lazzari’s mixed media drawings on paper are at the Laband Art Gallery at Loyola Marymount University; Shelton’s paintings are at Sherry Frumkin Gallery in Santa Monica.

Shelton says he has tapped his experience as the son of a great capitalist for several of his images in his “Corporate Art Series.” “Dad Trilogy” represents Dad always coming or going while Mom takes care of the children.

The central image of the oil-on-concrete trilogy is of Mom pushing a baby in a stroller toward us as Dad walks in the other direction. Dad is dressed in his business suit, yet its wrinkles are more than obvious. Mom is wearing jeans, clearly not going to a power breakfast. Dad and Mom are headless figures. The only face we see in this work is that of the baby’s, and he doesn’t look happy. “In my mind, the baby has been neglected,” Shelton said.

In the painting on the left of the trilogy, Dad walks up the street toward us, briefcase in hand. In the painting on the right, he is walking away, briefcase and garment bag in hand. Shelton said businessmen who see the trilogy proclaim, “That’s my life, always going to the next city.”

In “Family Outing,” Mom and several kids are there, all of them headless. Dad is nowhere to be seen. In “Bored Room,” we are exposed only to the underside of a conference table, where several pairs of corporate feet, newspapers and attache cases are gathered around a pair of feet placed at the head. “There are religious connotations here, a gathering like the Last Supper,” Shelton said.

“At the Altar” depicts a pious member of the corporate club standing in a proprietary way in front of a bank, while a kneeling man looks up to photograph the facade. In the foreground, a woman is crying.

These paintings are partial narratives with no conclusions. It is up to the viewer to complete them. In many of Shelton’s works, his realistic, painterly scenes are surrounded by an abstract, conceptual frame made of painted plaster. This element makes the works appear like found pieces of a much larger whole.

“Because of our economic system, we all live a fragmentary existence. We’re not in touch with ourselves, not complete beings, because we have no time,” Shelton said. “While the corporation offers people the ultimate good--things we feel we deserve, such as comfort and leisure--it is also destroying us.”

Shelton’s “Handgun Series,” in which painted hands extended in the gesture of pointed guns tell stories about religion, patriotism and domestic relationships, is also in the gallery with “Mystic Lies/Forgotten Truths,” a show of sculpture by California artist Delos Van Earl.

“Corporate Art Series,” by Richard Shelton at Sherry Frumkin Gallery, 1440 9th St., Santa Monica, through Jan. 25. Open 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Call (310) 393-1853.

CORPORATE LOOK: Margaret Lazzari has focused specifically on the individuals within the corporate structure in her show, “Middle Managers, Bureaucrats & ‘Young Entrepreneurs.’ ”

The 19 portraits, 10 of them small studies of male faces, nine of them large three-quarter portraits of men and women, are based on photographs of executives found in the pages of magazines such as Fortune and Savvy. But they have also been infused with impressions of the corporate world gleaned from her brothers and sister, who have worked in that world, and her observations of business school students.

Among the drawings of men, one finds some who are smug, arrogant, brash or cocky, but also others who look frustrated and insecure. “I am exploring what power does to people. A person becomes a position whether it’s head of a corporation or yes-man,” Lazzari said.

In “Junior Executive V: Slasher” (the V is a Roman numeral 5), the young executive’s tie hangs untied around his neck, and his shirt is open, revealing his abdomen and an animal-like nature. “Young men out of business school are often aggressive and physical, driven by appetites that have been masked behind corporate productivity talk,” Lazzari said.

In “Dream of Rising to the Top,” the young man is being transported to new heights supported by flying nymphs. He wants to do good things, but he also wants the power. In “OK?” a balding executive makes the OK sign with his thumb and forefinger while he points toward the viewer with his other forefinger. But his face tells a different story. He’s been around the corporate structure longer than these other two gents; he’s not sure anything is OK.

Lazzari presents three women in different stages of their careers, all dressed for success but running on a treadmill. Each portrait contains an insert--a pink square drawn over the torso that presents the truth about the woman’s place within the corporate structure. “Woman Executive: I” is older, and the corporate hierarchy has refused her its rewards. In the insert area, her hands are crossed, indicating a lack of power and, Lazzari said, recalling images of Christ before Pontius Pilate.

A much younger “Woman Executive: II” has bumped up against a glass ceiling. Her insert exposes her abdomen, suggesting that sexuality is always a factor for women in business. “Woman Executive: III” wears a brightly colored patterned scarf tied tightly around her neck. The insert contains a stuffed toy dog in the same pattern as the scarf. “This woman is still in the mothering role, and possibly a junior in position to the person she mothers,” Lazzari said.

“Middle Managers, Bureaucrats & ‘ Young Entrepreneurs”’ at Laband Art Gallery, Loyola Marymount University, Loyola Boulevard and West 80th Street, Los Angeles, through Feb. 29. Open 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday. Call (310) 338-2880.

MOLDED ART: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art recently acquired a major ceramic work, “No Deposit, No Return” (1961) by Robert Arneson. A clay beer bottle with a turquoise moonshine “X” decoration on one side, it bears the words, no deposit and is topped by what looks like a metal cap. It is considered the watershed work that signaled clay’s first acceptance as a content-oriented, valid art medium.

“No Deposit, No Return” is on view on the second floor of LACMA’s Anderson building. And for ceramics enthusiasts who would like a more extensive look at the museum’s 20th-Century ceramics collection, the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood is displaying about 40 works by almost as many artists, in the show, “Clay Today: Contemporary Ceramists and Their Work.”

The colorful, intriguingly shaped bottles, bowls, platters, plates, vases and teapots represent studio clay art from the past decade created by such leading artists as Betty Woodman, Ron Nagel and John Mason. A majority of the works are from the Howard and Gwen Laurie Smits collection, which LACMA acquired in 1987.

Particularly appealing are Woodman’s “Pillow Pitcher,” Elsa Rady’s “Winged Victory,” Roseline Delisle’s black and white vessels, “Jarre Simple 3” and “Triptyque 4.” Also engaging are the playful variations on teapots by Richard Notkin (“Skeleton Teapot” and “Cooling Tower Teapot”), Carmen Collell, Linda Gunn-Russell and Nicholas Homoky. “Sonar Coffeepot” by Dorothy Hafner was not originally made as a prototype, but it became one when it was adopted by the German company Rosenthal as part of its studio production line.

The late 20th-Century phenomenon of studio ceramics features objects that are made by a single artist responsible for all aspects of creation, from concept to completion. The studio clay movement transformed clay from a narrowly functional medium into an expressive art form capable of expressing content.

“Clay Today: Contemporary Ceramists and Their Work,” at the Pacific Design Center, Green Building Rotunda, 8687 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, through Feb. 28. Open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Call (310) 657-0800, Ext. 261.