ART IN LOS ANGELES

WHERE, EXACTLY, IS LOS ANGELES? Somewhere between the studio lot and the Eagle Rock studio, Chinatown and Chinatown? Between the "playfield of the devil," as Richard Neutra called it, and the "hyperurban configuration" described by Fredric Jameson? Amid all the endless commonplaces about the city, Jameson's early-'90s reading still stands out, aptly charting a new disorientation and eclecticism in the buried entrances to the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and in the chain-link chic of Frank Gehry's Santa Monica house. If over the years Angelenos have gotten used to those swimmingly crossbred spaces, the continual transformations and unmoorings of Los Angeles have nonetheless outpaced us. …