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During the year before her suicide in 1971, Diane Arbus traveled to several institutions for mentally retarded women outside of New York and photographed their inhabitants. Of the 29 pictures she decided to print, 22 are presented at Jan Kesner Gallery. These rarely seen photographs are some of the most hauntingly compassionate images made with a camera.
Almost all of the photographs were taken on Halloween, when the members of these strangely exclusive societies put on masks and acted out childhood rituals common to the rest of society. In these deeply moving pictures, Arbus abandoned her trademark use of tight cropping, exaggerated angles and the harsh light of the flash in favor of a more softened, emphatic presentation. Individual trick-or-treaters and some in small groups look directly into the camera before barren, out-of-focus landscapes cast in the long shadows of the late afternoon sun.
The range of expressions Arbus has captured is remarkable in its startling shifts from carefree glee to utter trepidation, ecstatic self-abandonment to shy withdrawal, and simple boredom to neighborly love. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of her photographs is the way they combine sentiments we all share with experiences we can imagine but never know. Jan Kesner Gallery, 164 N. La Brea Ave., (213) 938-6834, through June 6. Closed Sundays and Mondays.
Half-Way Measures: Cady Noland's installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art looks as if it ran out of funding before it could be finished. Push-pins stick through blurry color Xeroxes on the gallery's walls. Leftover aluminum scaffolding is scattered in a corner and partially hidden behind a sheet-metal barricade. And the tools usually used in installing an exhibition, including hardware and paint buckets, lie around the room as if the installer were fired without warning.
The unfinished quality of Noland's work is deliberate. "Accidental" marks made on the museum's normally pristine white walls are meant to alert us to the fact that real labor is involved in creating the atmosphere of timeless perfection in which art is usually exhibited. Chain-link fences and adjustable steel blockades make physical the fact that museums function by establishing boundaries, between good and bad art, as well as between different social groups.
By focusing on issues outside aesthetics, Noland's art demands that the...