POP SMEAR

In the last panel of the exhibition, titled "Good, Better, Best," Bruce Kurtz wrote, "We tried to emphasize ambiguity, subtlety and difference of opinions in our texts for this exhibition." But he didn't have a lot of subtlety and ambiguity to work with in the first place.

As for those controversial text panels, do they work the way Kurtz wanted them to? These unusual text panels were the result of hours of discussion among the museum's executive staff--Ballinger, Kurtz, Krulick, et al.--and the new policy (or "mission," as Ballinger described it) is to make patrons more comfortable with their own opinions.

Just as pop art was a leveler between high art and mass art, so these text panels are supposed to reduce the intimidation many patrons feel when confronting works of art in a museum.

But do they really work that way? Maybe the effect is just the opposite. Kurtz's wall panels look as elitist as the traditional kind: Nicely printed, blown up on the walls, mounted on foamcore, they are the pronouncements of an expert. Making them provocative only makes them more intimidating. "L.A. Pop in the Sixties" will be on display through August 19, and "POP! Goes the Collection" until August 5, at the Phoenix Art Museum, 1625 North Central.

chris: try to use this one in the first leg; think of it as a subhead. anna

The brouhaha he's started has to do with, of all things, wall labels, those usually innocuous and often ignored bits of information.

Dowd's work is as flat as warm Coke. His paintings are as empty as Andy Warhol's eyes, and there's not much more to say about them.

"L.A. Pop in the Sixties" reveals that there really wasn't a coherent movement called L.A. pop, or enough to build an exhibition around.