Bigger Canvas for L.A. Art : Current Gallery Scene More Vigorous Than Ever; Record Number of Openings Reported; Impact of Stock Market Plunge Still Uncertain

The Los Angeles area art gallery scene declared itself with unprecedented vigor when the fall season opened with a record number of new exhibitions--52 in one week.

It’s too soon to tell if the plunge in the stock market will knock the steam out of the local gallery boom, but Los Angeles dealers are sharply attuned to the market vibrations. “I don’t foresee (a crash),” said Peter Goulds, who has weathered previous recessions during 12 years as owner of L.A. Louver Gallery in Venice.

Goulds said he primarily represents artists and sells their work to people whose financial interests are diversified and do not buy art for its speculative value. “But I do think that people heavily involved with the resale market will be affected by this,” he said. “There’s a lot of funny money out there, and auction prices have become unbelievably inflated in the wake of recent publicity about art as investment.”

“I think prices of tried-and-true artists may suffer,” said Joni Gordon, owner of Newspace Gallery in Hollywood, “but I’m in a pretty good position” because of concentrating on “young, fresh talent” that sells at relatively low prices. “I do think a time of attrition is at hand” for the high end of the market, she added. “And it will probably affect art consultants (who often sell to corporations). If I were a bank president, I don’t think I’d be building a company collection right now,” she said, “but it’s a wonderful time to buy the work of artists who are just getting established.”

Exploding less than a year after the inauguration of the Museum of Contemporary Art and the County Museum of Art’s Robert O. Anderson Building had brought worldwide attention to Los Angeles, the recent surge of new and enlarged galleries seemed to crystallize the city’s growth as a contemporary art center.

As the season has progressed, the number of openings has dropped off to an average of about 25 per week, but that is a 10% increase over last year, when a proliferation of galleries was already obvious.

Numbers of galleries are up, and so is competition, according to Robert Halff, who began collecting art nearly 30 years ago. “What has changed is that you used to be able to take a painting home--whether it was a Francis Bacon or a Willem de Kooning--and think about it for a week or two. Now, if you are interested in something by a young, so-called hot artist, you have to make a quick decision,” he said in a telephone interview.

Another sign of the times, according to Halff, is that a collector currently wanting to buy the work of an artist in demand must not only have a friendly relationship with the Los Angeles dealer who handles the work but also with the artist’s New York dealer.

Successful artists and dealers try to “place” artworks in prestigious collections and to ensure that they will eventually be given to museums. Collectors can find themselves being interviewed by artists and dealers for the privilege of paying a five-, six- or seven-figure price tag.

“One artist has been to my house three times to see if he approves of my collection,” Halff said. “Fortunately he does, but I’m still waiting for a (promised) painting.”

Relatively few artists and galleries can afford to be so discriminating, however. The city still teems with artists struggling to find gallery representation and collectors to buy their work. With clients who may base their decisions on an emotional reaction, change their minds and pay off their accounts over long periods of time, the gallery business is notoriously difficult.

But the growth of the scene and its increasingly competitive flavor are undeniable.

Aficionados may argue about whether the art is better or worse than it was in sleepier times, whether artists are more interested in career moves than aesthetics and whether the machinations of the marketplace have taken the joy out of collecting, but everyone agrees that commercial galleries have proliferated and that the fine visual arts have heightened their visibility in Los Angeles.

This impression is backed up by numbers. A survey of listings and reviews in The Times over the past 25 years shows that the volume of art galleries and museums has increased fairly steadily, except for a slight dip during the early ‘70s. Averaged over the 25-year period, the growth of show spaces for visual art works out to an annual increase of around 10%.

More striking comparisons can be made. In the mid-’60s, a legendary boom time for Los Angeles galleries, these pages listed about 35 commercial galleries and provided critical coverage of about 25 of them. Today, The Times regularly reviews about 60 of the nearly 100 galleries listed weekly.

Trying to keep up with Southern California’s current gallery scene is roughly equivalent to running a perpetual marathon. No sooner do you catch up with one cycle of exhibitions than you approach another round of openings, not to mention new galleries.

“I used to take a Friday or Saturday and just go to 15 or 16 galleries,” said Pam Berg, who moved to Los Angeles from London in 1962, “but now it’s overwhelming. About all I can manage at one time is a group of shows on the Westside or in Santa Monica.” A collector on “a shoestring budget” who also says prices of art have gone over her limit, Berg is typical of art watchers who have had to adjust their habits to the booming gallery scene.

At the recent opening of Tortue Gallery’s show of Jim Morphesis’ painting, Orange County collectors Dick and Lou Newquist had just visited a new exhibition of Anthony Caro’s bronzes at the James Corcoran Gallery and were already planning their next trip to Los Angeles galleries--just as soon as they get back from looking at art in San Francisco and New York.

Even professional critics who, as a matter of routine, used to see all noteworthy exhibitions in the area have had to resign themselves to being less thorough, while people who have been vaguely aware of the local art boom take one look at current listings of art shows and say they don’t know where to start.

According to veteran Los Angeles collectors, the art scene has changed dramatically since the late ‘50s and early ‘60s when it was comparatively quiet but still exciting. “It was a lot easier then,” said Halff, who remembers important early dealers “who were knowledgeable and had good contacts in New York and Europe.”

Dalzell Hatfield held forth in the Ambassador Hotel; Paul Kantor, Pierre Matisse, William Copley and Frank Perls had influential galleries in Beverly Hills; and La Cienega Boulevard began to shape up as a gallery row where--among many others--Charles Feingarten, Rex Evans, Esther-Robles, David Stuart, Felix Landau, Ernest Raboff, Irving Blum and the legendary Ferus Gallery did business along with offbeat show places like Ceeje.

Beginning in 1962, Monday evening “Art Walk” brought crowds to La Cienega Boulevard where galleries opened their doors, offered free wine and no-interest, long-term payments. “It got so that we would drop money (as down payments) in each gallery because you could buy art on time,” said Elyse Grinstein, who with her husband, Stanley, got involved with art in the mid-’50s. She remembers “Art Walk” as an event that inspired “camaraderie” and provided an opportunity for collectors. At peak times, as many as 25 or 30 galleries participated in the Monday openings. Nearly 50 galleries opened on the boulevard during the ‘60s, though many were short-lived.

“Art Walk” became such a popular institution that in September, 1969, The Times redesigned its gallery column with separate reviews for each exhibition and called it--what else?--”Art Walk.” The name stuck until 1979 when the column was renamed “The Galleries,” long after the Monday night openings had folded and the gallery scene had spread to other parts of West Hollywood and downtown with outposts in neighboring areas.

Dealers blamed the demise of Las Cienega’s “Art Walk” on everything from Monday Night Football to an influx of gallery goers not necessarily interested in art. Erosion of that gallery row and the departure of Artforum magazine, founded in Los Angeles in 1962 and relocated in New York in 1967, led to gloomy predictions of the end of art in Los Angeles, but it survived a fallow period only to pop up in locations scattered from San Diego to Santa Barbara.

Gemini G.E.L., a publisher of fine art prints and a center for artists’ collaboration, founded in 1966 by Stanley Grinstein, Sidney B. Felsen and Kenneth Tyler, has continued to entice major artists to Los Angeles. (An exhibition celebrating 20 years of Gemini productions opens Nov. 1 at the County Museum of Art.)

Meanwhile, though dealer Irving Blum left for New York (only to return last year) and Nicholas Wilder moved off the street to nearby Santa Monica Boulevard, La Cienega never stopped being home to the art trade. Some addresses have served so many galleries over the years that takes a historian to keep track of them. Rosamund Felsen’s space, at 669 N. La Cienega Blvd., for example, was originally a storage space and guest quarters for Esther-Robles Gallery and subsequently housed the Rolf Nelson, Eugenia Butler, Reiko Mizuno, Broxton and Timothea Stewart galleries.

While many storefronts have been overtaken by carpet and antique dealers, La Cienega still retains such old-timers as Ankrum and Heritage while continuing to draw new blood. Manny Silverman, president of Art Services for 22 years, is the latest to hang out a shingle. He opens Saturday with an exhibition of Sam Francis’ work from 1959 to 1964.

“I feel comfortable here,” Silverman said, when asked why he settled on La Cienega. “I worked in the Raboff Gallery here many years ago and Art Services is right around the corner.” Planning to show modern works suitable for people’s homes, he said the “intimate” spaces of La Cienega establishments are better suited to his “house-size” art than larger showrooms that typify new Santa Monica galleries.

Los Angeles seems to defy centralization of all kinds, so it should be no surprise that the gallery scene has undergone several geographical shifts as dealers and artists try to consolidate but almost inevitably splinter. These days, though, the splinters are larger. In a few places, people can park their cars once and see as many as seven galleries. That’s a far cry from New York’s Soho and 57th Street districts, but the cluster concept--most evident now along Colorado Boulevard in Santa Monica--is generally considered crucial to the health of the galleries.

When the La Cienega scene first dissipated, galleries spread into a wider area of West Hollywood, where Nicholas Wilder, James Corcoran, Margo Leavin and Asher/Faure provided high quality exhibitions. By the late ‘70s, L.A. Louver and Ace galleries in Venice had added the beachside community to the itineraries of art watchers.

Those two areas retain their interest, but downtown hasn’t fared so well. Low rents and anticipation of the Museum of Contemporary Art--founded in 1979 and launched in its permanent structure last December--made the urban center the most talked about art scene in 1980. But by 1985 it had largely disappeared--the victim of a scruffy environment that reportedly made wealthy Westsiders uneasy and of the galleries’ failure to centralize. Exhibition openings and an annual celebration called Los Angeles Visual Arts (LAVA) brought crowds to the former industrial sites, but collectors didn’t return with enough regularity or spend enough money to sustain all the entrepreneurs.

The 1981 opening of Jan Baum’s building at 170 S. La Brea Ave. signalled a new gallery row, which continues to flourish despite recent defections to Santa Monica. At least 15 galleries currently do business on La Brea, including two new ones: Fahey/Klein, now about six months old, and Kirsten Kiser, a brand new forum for architecture.

The most astonishing development in the gallery proliferation has sprouted in Santa Monica. James Corcoran’s move there from West Hollywood was considered an important omen because his prestigious operation is often cited as the best Los Angeles has to offer. When Irving Blum, an admired dealer who gave many local collectors their start, decided to return to Los Angeles and open a branch of his New York gallery in Santa Monica, the beachside city seemed to have had been doubly anointed.

At this point, his establishment, BlumHelman Gallery, is flanked by HoffmanBorman, Pence, Maloney and Ruth Bachofner galleries. Just across Colorado Boulevard on 10th Street, Chicago dealer Roy Boyd has moved from his former La Brea location; in a corresponding position on 9th Street, San Francisco dealer Dorothy Goldeen is hosting her splendid new gallery’s second exhibition.

“We were standing around talking with friends at a recent opening of the Colorado group of galleries, when somebody said, ‘It’s just like the old Monday nights on La Cienega,’ ” Elyse Grinstein commented. Declaring that Los Angeles has been home to significant artists for several decades, she allowed that the art scene has definitely become “much more important. There is nothing we want that we can’t get here. Everything is moving West.”