ARTSREVIEW’S PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST IN 1987

Last December, Dodie Kazanjian, editor-in-chief of Artsreview, the quarterly magazine of the National Endowment for the Arts, started asking people in the arts community who they think supports the individual artist working in America today.

One person led to another, and four months later she found herself with 57 interviews of artists, dealers, curators and collectors across the country.

The result is a recently released special issue of Artsreview that the endowment says details the trends, needs and problems of the individual visual artists.

Kazanjian describes the special issue as “a kind of group portrait of artists in 1987,” that is intended to give readers “a taste of what people around the country are thinking.”

In the forward, endowment chairman Frank Hodsoll said he hoped the interviews “will provide a few useful hints to the thousands of young and not-so-young artists seeking the magic entry key.”

Hodsoll also says that while today’s contemporary art is prized because it is new, “most artists still have a rough time earning their living through their art.”

Kazanjian said in an interview that among the things she learned from her interviews is that “there are very knowledgeable, passionate collectors who are very much aware of and in front of leading curators” when it comes to contemporary visual arts.

Those interviewed range from New York City artist Eric Fischl to Richard Koshalek, director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.

In his interview with Kazanjian, Koshalek says he believes that the greatest problem today for major museums is finding qualified leadership.

“There are very few trained people in the country to fill positions of curators and directors in these institutions,” he says. “There are 20 to 25 major museums looking for directors right now, and maybe more are also looking for curators. They are almost impossible to find.”

Koshalek is one of nearly a dozen Californians who are featured in the magazine, including art collector and Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs.

“I’m not a big collector from the standpoint of having a lot of money to spend on art,” Wachs says, adding that he spends a quarter of his annual income--$12,000 to $13,000--on art. “I spend almost as much on art as I do on my house because it’s a big part of my life,” he says. “I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction from it.”

Mary Jane Jacob, chief curator of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, says in her interview that she believes “the dealer is more important than the museum person today. There is a respect for what the dealer does and chooses more than the curator.”

Jacob also talks about private collectors who are starting their own museums. “I find that threatening as a museum person,” she says. “The civic commitment and the whole idea of the public museum as the guardian of our culture is eroding.”

“You don’t get money from those who are very rich any more, because they are supporting their own museums,” she adds.

Artists, too, have a chance to express their thoughts. New York’s Eric Fischl says “the collectors are the biggest support to the artist right now.”

“It definitely matters to me who collects my work,” he says. “It hurts that someone would buy something, warehouse it, and then sell it when it’s worth a lot of money--like a commodity.”

Los Angeles artist Marc Pally says he has yet to make enough from his art to support himself. “It is still a star system in which only a very few get the financial rewards that allow them to stop subsidizing their art making activities.”

(The special issue of Artsreview is available at $3.50 from the National Endowment for the Arts, 1100 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C., 20506.