However sinister the dreams of Brauner, who undeniably culls them as a connoisseur, the Rumanian-born artist’s humor remains intact. A Surrealist who was there when it happened, in Bucharest on his own and in Paris with the regulars, Brauner has maintained a stylistic integrity over the years. His thirty-four drawings and encaustics are a lively testament to his impeccable draftsmanship and ironic wit: His mechanical men, for instance, are not so much like Leger-type Wizard of Oz robots as they are like Chaplin’s famed cinema spoof of the man on the assembly line. His work is littered with the symbols of skeletonized men, many little fishes, and a phallus or two. (Los Angeles police need not be concerned here; his sex is strictly neuter.) Surrealism is coming back, they say, but Brauner, fortunately, never went away.

—Larry Rottersman