The American painter R.B. Kitaj (1932–2007) spent most of his career in London, making his name in the early 1960s, along with his friend David Hockney, as a key figure of British Pop Art. He has far less of a reputation here, a situation that will not be helped by this uneven survey.
The offerings range from a tiny 1957 portrait of a woman done competently in the style of Henri Matisse to canvases painted in Los Angeles late in the artist’s life. The latter feature renderings in jejunely bright colors of naked ladies sporting with the older bearded artist.
In between those time periods came portentously symbolic Neo-Expressionist paintings such as Germania (The Tunnel), from 1985, in which the eponymous Freudian motif is flanked by a small nude woman with a baby and a large clothed male figure—the artist again—exhibiting a cane and an exposed wiener. A blond toddler holding an open book prances in front of them.
Only Kitaj’s works from the 1960s and ’70s, of which there are far too few, demonstrate why he was once seen as a major player of British painting. In Pacific Coast Highway (Across the Pacific), from 1973, a number of stylish figures melt into each other and into a vaporous, glowing seaside setting. The effect is elegant, dreamlike and slightly sinister.