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Los Angeles Art Show carves unique niche.(Special Report)

Art Business News February 1, 2005 | Meyers, Laura LOS ANGELES — When a group of 16 gallery owners specializing in regional, traditional and period art formed the Fine Art Dealers Association (FADA) in 1990, and five years later launched a small annual art fair, little did they know that a decade later it would become the West Coast’s premier high-end art show. this web site laguna beach ca

The Los Angeles Art Show celebrated its 10th anniversary Oct. 14-17, with 54 exhibiting art dealers and some 15,000 attendees who wandered through aisles filled with more than 3,200 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints–many of them described as “museum quality.” The art fair, still sponsored by FADA, featured a wide range of classical, modern and current works spanning the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, from old masters Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Gustave Courbet to contemporary artists Damien Hirst and David Hockney, collectively valued at more than $50 million.

The opening gala reception, attended by some 3,000 art aficionados, benefited the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Art Museum Council (AMC). AMC raises substantial funds for museum programs and acquisitions through this event, as well as its Art Rental & Sales Gallery (ARSG), which showcases the works of some 350 emerging Southern California artists.

Along with high attendance, sales appeared strong. The Redfern Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA, sold three paintings during the opening night gala, including California Plein Air Impressionist Granville Redmon’s “Golden Wild Flowers,’ priced at a hefty $650,000. Mark Sublette, Medicine Man Gallery, Tucson, AZ, closed a circa $35,000 deal on a Western painting, “Tans Adobe Home” by Oscar E. Berninghaus, while DeRuis Fine Arts, also of Laguna Beach, CA, sold Johann Berthelson’s 1940 “Brooklyn Bridge” priced at $10,000.

In addition, red “sold” tags dotted two paintings by Dennis Doheny at William A. Karges Fine Art, Beverly Hills and Carmel, CA; two David Ballew paintings at Mitchell Brown, Scottsdale, AZ, and, at Gerald Peters Gallery, New York City, the Wayne Thiebaud watercolor, “Lemon Meringue Slices.” Marsha Child Contemporary, Princeton, NJ, racked up 14 sales of abstract paintings by Polish emigre Ilona Zaremba, whose work is collected by actor Steve Martin among other art enthusiasts.

“I’ve sold a couple of Maynard Dixon paintings, and a lot of contemporary artists,” Sublette happily reported, including a $3,450 painting, “Sunny Haze,” by artist Glenn Duncan and several pieces by popular equine sculptor Star York.

As always, art dealers brought special-focus exhibits of single artists. For instance, Kelley Gallery, Pasadena, CA, showcased the works of Charles E Keck, a California Scene watercolorist whose mid-century paintings are priced in the $3,200-$4,500 range. Trigg Ison Fine Art, West Hollywood, CA, introduced the estate of Jirayr Zorthian, another mid-century artist whose work reveals Art Deco and Social Realism influences.

Thomas McCormick Gallery, Chicago, presented abstract paintings by Jan Matulka, who was “widely known as one of the earliest American advocates of Modernist, avant-garde painting in the 1920s,” observes McCormick. “He helped integrate European tenets of Cubism, Precisionism and Surrealism into the language of the American art scene” McCormick Gallery had just launched a two-year touring exhibition of Matulka’s 1921-1950 works, and those brought to the L.A. Art Show represented “a number of paintings I had stashed away” McCormick added. “People are very, very interested.” Sullivan Goss–An American Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA–showed several works by Lockwood de Forest, Sr., an American landscapist who was influenced by the Hudson River School. His “Nocturnes,’ which dealer Frank Goss described as “solitary atmospheric studies” were painted en plein air, illuminated only by candlelight. Sullivan Goss also exhibited a group of works by Richard Haines, a prolific WPA muralist whose later work evolved into a Symbolist-post-Surrealist aesthetic influenced by Cubism and Abstraction. Haines won numerous prizes in his day, but “he always marched to his own drummer. He wasn’t in the mainstream,” observes Goss, who recently sought out Haines’ surviving family members to acquire his material, about 125 paintings in all. “His works had been in basements for years, dirty and suffering neglect.” Spanierman Gallery, New York City, which specializes in 19th-and early 20th-century American paintings, as well as cutting edge contemporary artists like Gottfried Heinwein, showcased a large group of works by American Impressionist Alson Skinner Clark. A noted painter of California landscapes, Clark was trained by William Merritt Chase and James A. McNeill Whistler, and eventually became associated with the artist Guy Rose.

Another large collection of early 20th-century California paintings was presented by Trotter Galleries, Carmel, CA. In 1937, artist Will Sparks completed a series of 37 paintings depicting the historic California Missions. Two years later, the entire group was purchased by the Spreckles (sugar) family, and it was eventually gifted to an organization in Santa Barbara. A decade ago, a collector purchased the entire lot, and now the collection is again for sale as a group (asking price: $550,000). “We are hoping for a public venue,” explains gallery co-owner Paula Trotter. “We feel very responsible to keep the entire collection together, and I really hope it ends up in a place where school children can enjoy these very historical paintings.” Still, notwithstanding the continuing high quality of these and other works displayed at the FADA show, and the strength of the Los Angeles art market itself, this art fair, managed by K.R. Martindale Show Management, has routinely struggled to achieve a high media profile. There have been half a dozen different public relations firms marketing the event over the years. And even with the strong cutting-edge, contemporary component this year, and symposiums headlined by famed interior designer Greg Jordan and television personality Dean Edell, M.D. (who is also a collector and artist), there was little press about the 2004 event.

The first FADA Art Fair, held in 1995, was guilelessly intended as an alternative venue to showcase the 16 FADA members’ traditional, classical and historical focus, and to be a counterpoint to more typical art expositions, which present contemporary and avant-garde works. Soon, the annual FADA Show became known as the West Coast source for 19th-and 20th-century works of European and American Impressionism, plein air and classical landscape, Barbizon, maritime, Hudson River School, Western, academic and salon art, portraiture, WPA, Ashcan School and Regionalism, including Taos Society, Hoosiers, and California Scene. site laguna beach ca

However, media coverage was sporadic at best, in large measure because West Coast critics and arts editors tended to cover contemporary works. Moreover, some Los Angeles collectors had begun to consider the FADA show a hidebound art fair.

By the late 1990s, the exhibitor base was expanded to include galleries with a mid-century and modern focus, and in 2002, the FADA Show was extensively reconceived by adding a major contemporary component. The now-renamed L.A. Art Show today draws two sets of collectors: one group, drawn in by cutting-edge contemporary galleries; the other group steadfast patrons of FADA’s primary focus, scholarly traditional, period and regional art. And the two overlap more easily these days, with many old-line FADA members presenting not only traditional 19th-and early 20th-century works, but also paintings and sculptures by living contemporary artists working in traditional styles.

For instance, Mitchell Brown presented works by Zivko Zic and David Ballew, priced in the $2,500-$3,000+ range. “Our collectors have a strong interest in the historic works we represent, but they also like these contemporary works with traditional style,” explains dealer Jeff Mitchell. “Zivko is a man I’ve known for many years–he’s 80 years old, still painting, and we will be doing a major exhibition of his work this February in Scottsdale.” William A. Karges Fine Art, which has represented contemporary landscape painter Dennis Doheny for near a decade, has had great success with the artist, who was exhibited alongside the likes of Edgar Payne, William Wendt, Maurice Braun and John Gamble, among many early 20th-century California artists. “We sell everything he paints,” says Whitney Ganz, director of the Beverly Hills gallery.

And Mark Sublette actually brought along artist Francis Livingston, who painted retro urbanscapes, beach scenes and Ferris wheels for an attentive audience during the L.A. show. Sublette exhibited a full wall of Livingston’s works, which range in price from $1,800 to $4,000. “I have found that the contemporary art is becoming as important to me as the deceased work” Sublette says, as he explains his decision to devote more exhibit space to living artists. “Part of that may be the maturity of the Los Angeles Art Show, and part of that may be the maturity of me.” For the 10th anniversary fair, the event’s organizers also curated a special exhibit of emerging artists. “Kim [Martindale] wanted to develop a new aspect of the show for a new generation of artists,” says Lisa Lefner, director of Artists Relations for the Los Angeles Art Show. “We decided we would show artists’ colonies every year,” starting in 2004 with The Brewery Lofts colony in downtown Los Angeles. The L.A. Art Show co-sponsored the Brewery’s annual art walk, held the same weekend as the fair, and also exhibited works by 10 of the colony’s artists, including figurative painter Nathan Rohlander.

“This has been a great opportunity for these artists,” says Lefner. “And the audience and visiting galleries like it because it makes the show innovative and fresh.” Meyers, Laura