A Brave New Art World? : Galleries Mount ART/LA90, Hoping Stability Has Returned to the Market

The New York art market hit the skids in November auctions, but you might not know it by looking at the lineup of participants in ART/LA90, the fifth international contemporary art fair at the Los Angeles Convention Center. About 165 galleries from 20 countries will offer thousands of artworks for sale at the annual event, which begins Wednesday night with a benefit preview and is open to the public on Thursday through Monday.

There has been some fallout this year, however. The Leo Castelli Gallery of New York, the biggest name at last year’s fair, will not be here. Castelli had planned to participate but he changed his mind after suffering damage in October when two vandals slashed paintings in his exhibition at FIAC, an art fair in Paris. Other galleries have bowed out because of the ailing economy. BlumHelman of New York and Santa Monica, Raab of Berlin and London, Ghislaine Hussenot of Paris and Marc Richards of Santa Monica are among familiar faces that will not be at ART/LA90.

“It seems like the year to take a pass on the fair, considering the economy,” said Los Angeles dealer Neil Ovsey, who has been a regular since the fair’s inception but opted out this year.

But many dealers have returned and at least 30 others have plunged in for the first time, including the Fred Hoffman Gallery and the Richard Kuhlenschmidt Gallery of Santa Monica and the Union of Soviet Artists from Moscow.

“I think the economy is wonderful. Lots of people are buying art,” said Dorothy Goldeen of Santa Monica. She will be back “with my usual enthusiasm” for the fifth year.

Outlooks for the fair vary sharply from dealer to dealer, but one thing is certain: A staggering array of art will be for sale at the Convention Center. There will be sculpture from Zimbabwe, paintings from Yugoslavia, sculpture from France, prints from Canada, conceptual art from the United States. A special feature, “The Belgian Show,” will showcase four young Belgian galleries including the Galerie des Beaux-Arts of Brussels which represents such major European artists as Christian Boltanski and Wolfgang Laib.

Among hopeful vendors, the Linda Cathcart Gallery of Santa Monica will offer an uncompromising roster of major pieces by such heavyweights as Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman, Louise Bourgeois, Sigmar Polke and Pat Steir.

Fay Gold of Atlanta will show a bold assortment of primitive paintings by “outsider” artists whose unschooled visions of human form often substitute psychic shock for physical reality.

Having made a hit last year with Attila Richard Lukacs’ shockingly realistic, life-size paintings of skinheads and other intimidating tough guys, Diane Farris of Vancouver will return with more works by Lukacs and other Canadians.

Visitors in the market for tried-and-true modernism can see works by Fernand Leger at a booth run by the Evelyn Aimis Gallery of Toronto. Bright striped paintings by Gene Davis will be available from Charles Cowles’ New York gallery.

Print collectors can check out Robert Indiana’s “The Hartley Elegies,” a limited edition of five large (77x53-inch) silk screens that pay tribute to Marsden Hartley’s “German Officer” paintings, at a booth run by Park Granada Editions of Tarzana.

Choices for photography buffs include Horace Bristol’s 1944 shot of torpedo planes, at G. Ray Hawkins’ booth, and Bruce of Los Angeles’ beefcake pictures from the ‘50s in Jan Kesner’s exhibition.

And for ceramics collectors, the Garth Clark Gallery--on hand for the first time--will offer works by an impressive slate of artists who live in Southern California or got their start here.

Will the fair be economically worthwhile for dealers who have paid between $12,500 and $37,500--plus stiff transportation and staffing costs--to show their wares to a crowd that numbered 30,000 last year?

Only time, turnstiles and receipt books will tell, but fair organizers are banking on a perception that “sanity has returned to the market”--as a fair press release announces--and hoping that collectors are in the mood to patronize dealers whose prices never approached the heights of spectacular auctions.

Attempting to turn recessionary gloom into a beacon of light for art fairs, ART/LA90 director Brian Angel said: “The movement is away from auction houses. Large-scale art fairs, such as the one in Los Angeles, are proliferating because their welcoming environment is light-years away from the elitism and price-hyping at auctions.”

The speculative factor that sent art prices into the stratosphere in the ‘80s certainly seems to have vanished, but the general health of the art market is subject to debate. Whispered reports of bargains in dealers’ back rooms and rumors of gallery closures are countered by denials of trouble.

No one disputes the fact that international art fairs have proliferated, however. At least 25 fairs boasting top galleries have taken place this year--so many that no dealer can make the rounds while minding the store at home. In fact few galleries are represented in more than two or three fairs a year, and the competition is fierce.

Los Angeles’ fair suffers the disadvantage of distance for East Coast and European dealers, and the five-year-old fair hasn’t yet measured up to longer established enterprises in Basel, Paris and Chicago, aficionados say. Every year fair organizers seem to fight an uphill battle as they try to entice top out-of-town galleries to participate.

Working to make the Los Angeles fair a distinctive, high-quality event, fair organizer Charlie Scheips says he tries to persuade dealers to present exhibitions that give an accurate picture of their galleries rather than to bring re-sale items in hopes of turning a quick profit.

Another tactic to boost interest in the fair is to center it in a whirlwind of activities and to tie it to a socially conscious theme. ART/LA90 will focus on environmental protection. A $150-a-ticket dinner tonight at Morton’s restaurant and a $75-a-ticket fair preview Wednesday night will both benefit the Natural Resources Defense Council, whose program combines legal action, scientific research and citizen education. Heal the Bay, an organization formed to clean up Santa Monica Bay, will benefit from a $30-a-ticket pre-fair brunch and art exhibition, sponsored by Kurland/Summers Gallery at the Seventh Street Bistro on Sunday.

The fair poster--from a painting by Vernon Fisher depicting a father and son cutting into a globe as if it were a pumpkin--ties into the environmental motif, as does a series of programs at the convention center.

Art fairs are complex productions that serve a variety of functions. For local dealers, a fair is a chance to promote their galleries to a vast audience. Recession or not, “this is our hometown fair. It’s a major event,” said Mark Moore, owner of the Works Gallery.