Gallery 169 will open a 35-year retrospective of David Levinthal’s photographs with a reception on Saturday, March 5 at 4 p.m., 169 W. Channel Rd. in Santa Monica Canyon. The photographer’s imaginative work is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Levinthal, 61, has been question’ing social conventions and mores through the creative use of toy figurines since he was a graduate student at Yale in 1972, employing them to create what he calls ‘a surrogate reality.’ He captured images of toy soldiers and tanks for ‘Hitler Moves East,’ a book he co-authored with Yale classmate Gary Trudeau, creator of the editorial cartoon ‘Doonesbury.’ ’Bookstores put it in the history section,’ Levinthal says, because they didn’t know how to categorize it within the world of photography in 1977. The artist has photographed small-scale soldiers and cowboys, the iconic Barbie doll and other miniatures in tableaus of his own creation to explore the myth of the American West, the idealized ‘perfection’ of the female icons of the 1950s, sexual fantasy and the atrocities of war. ’I have endeavored to create a ‘fictional world’ that simultaneously calls into question our sense of truth and credibility,’ Levinthal says. Early on, he often photographed toys on a bare floor and that art ‘has a rawness to it that I really love to this day.’ Still, he’s never quite sure what the camera will find. Constructing his now more elaborate sets, he sees them in full, but is often surprised by what comes to light when he narrows his focus through the lens. The objects can ‘take on another persona.’ A limited depth of field imbues the inanimate figures with life and even a sense of movement. Models of erotic dancers, built from kits and used in his series ‘XXX,’ were so life-like through Levinthal’s lens that some who first saw the images, exhibited in Paris in 2000, asked, ‘Which of these are the real women and which are dolls?’ In context, Levinthal’s playthings are far from frivolous. The images explore the ‘whole concept of toys and play, and how toys are used to socialize children in some ways,’ Levinthal says. Researching toys during the wars in Iraq and Af’ghan’istan, he found that state-of-the-art artillery and equipment were being updated on store shelves as quickly as in the field. ‘The fact that they’re making them in real time as this war is being forged’is fascinating and a little unsettling at the same time.’ Newly found objects often serve as a catalyst. Walking through an an’tiques and toy show, Levinthal encountered black memorabilia, like Aunt Jemima crockery and black minstrels in porcelain. He was moved to photograph the pieces with a large-format, 20′ by 24′ camera. ‘These objects themselves are so powerful,’ he says, that he decided to present them virtually unstaged in his series ‘Blackface.’ That title, along with others, like ‘Bad Barbie’ and ‘Mein Kampf,’ give a sense of the emotionally charged nature of Levinthal’s subject matter, no matter that toys are typically the means of expression. The retrospective will run through May 1. Contact: Robyn Rosenfeld at (323) 855-6913.
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