For Love and Money : Mild-Mannered Art Broker Profits From Good Works

Michael Goldberg, a well-known New York painter, often hears from art world scavengers searching for his early work, middlemen who are eager to trade on his cachet as a second-tier figure from a postwar era whose most famous artist was Jackson Pollock.

He turns these callers away, saying he would rather sell newer work. But James Lodge’s approach was different. Goldberg liked his gentle insistence that the painter must have some strong canvases from the 1950s. Invited to Goldberg’s studio, Lodge found them: dusty, crumbling, rolled in a closet. Quickly, he had five cleaned and sold them to collectors for thousands of dollars.

Lodge is the only art consultant of national reputation who works out of Orange County and is one of the most respected people in his field in California. Placing the work of America’s best-known artists in local homes and offices or helping Orange County artists sell their work to corporate clients nationwide, Lodge makes his living from contacts at all levels of the bustling American art scene of the 1980s--working with artists, dealers, curators, collectors and corporations.

At 58, Lodge, whose art-filled office is in a nondescript Irvine business park, is a former Nebraska pediatrician turned art-world insider. He says he is in it for profit, while also satisfying a passion for art.

In a week’s work, he might develop a new market for a New York artist, help arrange a local exhibition for a UC Irvine art professor and assist an Orange County collector prepare for the New York auction of a 15th-Century landscape.

“I don’t want the image of being the art investor’s guru,” Lodge said. “I think it is a big mistake to sell art for its investment potential. It should be sold on the basis of its quality and its desirability and the passion of the collector. Period. You get people who are disappointed in art if they can’t trade on it as a commodity. That is not a collector. That is an investor.”

Robert Miller, founder of the Robert Miller Galleries in New York, was one of several gallery owners in Manhattan who described Lodge as a sincere art lover who knows how to make a business of it.

“That kind of person is of value to the community of art dealers as well as the community of collectors,” Miller said. “There are people who know what they are doing and those who don’t. He is one of those who does.”

Goldberg described him more succinctly: “The art world is full of sleaze bags, and Jim is not one of them.” The painter was among several people who said the amount of legwork Lodge does to develop his associations--with clients ranging from artists to executives--is unusual for such a consultant.

About 10 of Lodge’s 25 regular corporate and individual clients nationwide are in Orange County, but he said corporate collectors here lack the aesthetic daring he sees in urban centers. He said Orange County companies usually want decorative art as opposed to more challenging works.

“I work with companies to find them quality, attractive art to display, but nine out of 10 of them are really interested in suitable, pleasing art. With a few exceptions, Orange County is relatively flat as a place for serious collectors.”

Lodge, who lives in Irvine largely because his wife’s family is nearby, often promotes local artists. Peat Marwick, the accounting firm, wanted colorful pieces with a modern feel for its Costa Mesa office. The 100 works Lodge sold Peat Marwick included two sculptural clay pots by Tustin artist Pat Crabb.

“He deals with the biggest names in the world in terms of painting and sculpture, but he is very much in tune with what is good and what is up-and-coming in California and Orange County,” said Crabb, 40. “He’s placed about a couple dozen of my pieces with major corporations across the United States.

“He came to me because he was looking for some sort of a primitive look, and my artwork deals with very primitive imagery on ceramic vessels. He gets very involved with the art himself. He’s an emotional person with strong tastes.”

Perhaps, but the first impression Lodge makes is one of mildness. Think Marcus Welby with a flair for selling: Lodge says his gross annual sales range between $1.5 million and $2 million, and his commission on a work runs between 5% and 20% per work.

Lodge sits on the acquisitions committee of the Newport Harbor Art Museum, which he says acts as a kind of club for people who have art as a common interest. Fifteen to 20 serious collectors are associated with the museum, and some of them have bought art through Lodge. He sold three pieces to museum trustee Robert B. McLain, including works by veteran painter Sam Francis and emerging New York sculptor Win Knowlton.

McLain, who owns about 30 works of art, remembered how Lodge took him to meet Francis about a year ago. “He arranged for me to buy the painting directly from Sam Francis. We went to Sam’s house in Santa Monica. I saw one I liked, but Sam said it wasn’t for sale. I called Jim back and said, ‘Can we make an offer?’ He did and it was accepted. It was a 1958 painting and really beautiful.”

Lodge’s clients say he has all the sophistication one could expect of a New York City art broker but without any pretension. He doesn’t have the extensive art history background that some others bring to their work. But his wife, Jane, who oversees many of the business details at James Lodge & Associates, says that doesn’t matter. “He’s read a lot and talked to people and educated himself,” she said.

Lodge, who was raised in Whigham, Ga., a rural town with 300 people, attended Emory University in Atlanta and the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, but it was during three years he spent as an Army doctor in France in the late 1950s that he developed an interest in art.

After leaving the military, he settled into a medical practice in Lincoln, Neb. There, he started attending art shows at the Sheldon Memorial Gallery at the University of Nebraska. He joined the gallery’s board of directors in early 1968 and started meeting local collectors, including developer Paul Schorr. “We became friends,” Schorr recalled. “He had a passion for art, and he was very knowledgeable. He began giving us advice about what to buy.”

Lodge started going to New York to meet dealers and artists, buying art for collectors back in Nebraska. He moved to Orange County in 1977, where he has done the same work but with an increased emphasis on company collections. Art is a highly personal thing, yet corporate art-buying often means shaping a consensus about what people want to see on their office walls. “People have to know what they want, or trust the person they delegate (to deal with the art consultant),” he said.

Lodge has high hopes for a corporate art project in which he is involved at University Tower, an Irvine office building that serves private companies and UC Irvine. The developers of the $30-million, 191,000-square-foot building, Ferguson Partners Asset Management, Co., recently renovated the building’s lobby to include four glass-enclosed exhibition areas that will hold changing displays of visual art by local artists, as well as some with national reputations.

“We thought (the art) would be good to add some flair to the lobby and to give it some interest,” said Chris Mahon, who manages the building for Ferguson Partners. Now on display in the space is ceramic sculpture by Julia Klemek, who teaches at UC Irvine.

“The right word for Jim’s role in all this is ‘curator,’ ” said Mahon. “He’s the person we’ve gone to to keep things fresh, to keep us from falling into a pattern--and maybe even to get us something a little bit controversial.”

Today, Lodge still combs gallery racks for overlooked gems. He still visits studios, as he did with Goldberg. His itinerary for a trip to New York last week included a visit to the studio of actor Robert De Niro’s father, also named Robert, who is a painter.

“I think that De Niro’s work is quite fine,” Lodge said. “It is tough, very painterly, in a highly abstract and expressionist style. He has never sold well. His style does not appeal to everybody.

“I think De Niro is somebody I’m interested in now. I think that we can look back on his work and say there is something meaningful for the ‘80s about what De Niro was doing 20 years ago.”

Meaningful and potentially valuable?

“Oh, yes, I think the prices will go up for him. I intend to recommend him to my clients, but my main interest is that this is work with quality.”