Rear Window

Pierson overcame her own doubts so well that she's now talking about a future attempt to secure Lemoine Redmond's assets in the name of a foundation for young artists (and yes, that the people doing the securing happen to beyoung artists seems awfully convenient). At the same time, Pierson claims to have had reservations about Baers' desire to sell the artworks associated with the show. "I had a sneaking suspicion that Michael wanted to put her stuff up for sale," Pierson says carefully, "and it was decided that that was fine. But the gallery won't take a dime. It will all go into a charity trust to support artists."

Baers is without qualm. "The ethics of appropriation don't bother me," he says. "Tammy and Mark have very strong feelings about not profiting. I initially felt that way, but in some ways, I'd rather it be in a collector's hands than in mine."

For Baers, the show is a jumping-off point for further contemplation. He hasn't heard anything about a plan to create a foundation, and what he wants to see come of the project is a book that would be a collage of her writings and paintings, and more developed thinking on the issues raised by the show. "The narrative of her life is archetypal. [Author] D.J. Waldie saw the show and said, 'It's a very Los Angeles story,' and it is. L.A. has become the American City. Suburbia was honed to perfection here, and everyone's from somewhere else. It's the capital of dislocation." Of which Lemoine is emblematic: "Besides the artwork, there's this clear sense of a brain that traveled through the 20th century. You can see the whole backdrop -- her dates with soldiers in World War II, her show-biz aspirations . . . "

He's right: It's as an everywoman that Lemoine sings to us. But it would seem from the evidence that Lemoine Redmond, while attractive, was a far cry from star material -- and how many young girls in the '40s had their pictures taken in showgirl attire? Isn't it the equivalent of today, let's just say, working the auto show in a bikini? And while her paintings have the spark of imagination, and are by all means wonderful objects, to think that she's an undiscovered artist would be going too far. Lemoine may have been a failed artist, but it's far more likely that she simply didn't have enough beauty or talent to make a go of it in any area of the arts.

The fascination of Lemoine's existence ultimately lies in how mundane it all is; even at its most outrageous -- the paintings, the peanut-butter jars, the bags of fresh dry cleaning, the personal documents -- it all seems to somehow reflect the brutal, zany mediocrity of life in the interstices of Los Angeles. Everyone knows this view of L.A.: the gray-green pastures of failure that extend out as far as one can see in all directions, indistinct landscapes of toil and isolation, vast regions of unspecialness. Sometimes it's where you're from, and it's always where you hope you aren't going, but fear you will end up. The mystery is by nature unresolved, and unresolvable. Like death, it's a condition you can never really know until you get there.

2337 VALLEY VIEW DRIVE: THE MYSTERY OF LEMOINE REDMOND | The Lab | 835 S. Spring St., downtown | Through November 18