Pacific Standard Time CROSSCURRENTS AT THE GETTY by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp

As I race from Los Angeles to Pomona to San Diego and back, struggling to keep up with all the shows promising to unveil the missing history of art in Infrared Log Cabins For The Garden And Your Wellbeing Southern California, my thinking repeatedly returns to "Crosscurrents in L.A.: Painting and Sculpture from 1950 to 1970," the exhibition at the Getty Museum. The show truly provides the core How to Lose Weight Rapidly and Get Healthier of the Getty Foundation's larger initiative, which launched more than 60 exhibitions around the Southland.

"Crosscurrents in L.A." features many of the Art History 101 color plates of contemporary art -- Ed Ruscha's The Los Angeles County Museum of Art Your Creativity Quotient - How To Boost It&[censored] ip; on Fire (1965-1968), John Baldessari's Quality Material (1967-68), David Hockney's A Bigger Splash (1967), Ed Kienholz's Walter Hopps Hopps Hopps (1959). For most viewers, these artworks have been nothing more than reproductions. Much of the art in "Crosscurrents" comes from museums and collections outside of L.A., and is included thanks to the Getty Museum's considerable clout. After the show closes in Los Angeles on Feb. 5, 2012, many of the works move on to the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, where a version of the exhibition is slated to open on Mar. 15, 2012

Being fairly familiar with the material, I was surprised by the sheer quantity of visual delight. One of the ongoing ironies of the massive Getty Center complex is its modest amount of temporary exhibition space. This show of 76 works by 40 artists was a challenge. Without the vast square footage of the typical contemporary art museum, the curators were forced to be concise. The galleries are definitely crowded, but the lighting and installation compensate to a great degree.

Instead of a chronological presentation of many works by a single artist, Pop and abstract paintings produced during the same period share the same gallery. Sam Francis' Untitled (1967), a ten-foot-tall canvas of bright white edged in blue and red, hangs near Ruscha's ten-foot-wide Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas, (1963), which happens to be painted in similar colors.

The energy of Abstract Expressionism in L.A. was weaker in painting than in Home Owners Set to Benefit From Green Deal clay sculpture, a difference testified to by the five-foot-tall, rhino-skinned stoneware of Peter Voulkos' Little Big Horn (1959), or John Mason's meandering How Spanish Mediterranean Decor Can Improve Your Home wall-mounted clay forms Blue Wall (1959). And then there is the outrageous foot-tall red egg by Ken Price from 1963, which brings the irreverence of Pop to the realm of craft.

In lieu of expressionist painting, the show features first-rate examples of L.A. hard-edge abstraction, such as Lorser Feitelson's complex and asymmetrical Magical Space Forms (1948) and his iconic, simple Untitled (Red on White Optical) (1964), a serpentine red line on a white canvas. A gorgeous work by John McLaughlin, #18-1961 (1961), two floating azure rectangles on a cream colored field, complements Joe Goode's Torn Cloud Painting 73 (1972), a pale blue canvas that is cut open to reveal white underneath. A pair of dodecagonal resin paintings by Ron Davis made me wonder if anyone is working on a survey of his work.

The influence of the Beats can be seen in assemblage with a literary aspect, such as the tumble of used books in The Librarian (1960) by George Herms, verifax collage by Wallace Berman and the window frames containing arcane and poetic imagery by Betye Saar. The era's political consciousness is reflected in Ed Bereal's searing American Beauty (1965), a small tree shaped like a human figure that grows from a spray-painted white metal dome bearing a swastika of stars and stripes.