VISUAL ARTS / LEAH OLLMAN : San Diego Continues to Struggle to Come of Age as a Center for the Arts

An uneasy blend of jaundice and optimism grips the gallery scene here--envy and resentment that San Diego is not abuzz with culture like Los Angeles or New York, mixed with persistent hopes that the city may yet become at least a minor mecca of the arts. When the balance between these sentiments shifts, a dent is made in the status quo. This month, the balance has been tipped first to one side, then the other, as one gallery closes with a sneer and another embarks on an ambitious expansion.

After 10 years in operation, the A.R.T./Beasley Gallery announced that it will close its Old Town business at the end of July. The gallery provided a venue for over 50 local artists and 80 others, mostly from the West Coast. Co-owner John McConnell attributed the gallery’s closing to an inability to bid competitively on corporate accounts, which comprised roughly 80% of the gallery’s business.

The fact that individual collectors accounted for only 20% of its business points to the real cause that Beasley and other galleries dealing in original (as opposed to multiple) works of art have suffered.

“People here do not put a lot of money into art,” McConnell said. “They don’t take the time they need to get to know an individual piece of art. They want to consume things instantly.”

People buy what they know, he said, trusting familiarity with an advertised product rather than a deeply cultivated, personal sense of taste.

“San Diegans like something that’s recognizable, something that they’ve seen, a brand name. They don’t take the time to develop their own taste in art, their own individual preferences. It’s a growing, changing city. Maybe people are just concerned with making their first mortgages.”

For these reasons, galleries selling what McConnell calls “fast-food art,” sizable editions by well-known but not necessarily important artists, continue to thrive as others drop off.

“Fast-food art is easily digestible, well-advertised, an identifiable product. You know what you’re getting all the time, just like a fast-food restaurant, where the menu never changes. You don’t have to relate to what you’re eating.”

The Beasley itself is not known for its challenging exhibitions, and its safety first policy has not endeared it to serious arts patrons in the area. But its motives were far more honorable than those chains of galleries whose idea of good art is a framed Nagel poster. The problem for any gallery owner interested in promoting higher integrity art is that there aren’t enough buyers who know the difference.

How many serious collectors are there in San Diego?

“I have no idea,” McConnell said. “We haven’t met them.”

They do exist, though, contends Henry Vincent, who is counting on them to support the relocation and expansion of his year-old Nivada Gallery. The gallery, originally named the Henry Vincent Gallery, suddenly dematerialized in June, due to an unsympathetic Hillcrest landlord. Vincent is currently negotiating on a new, larger space downtown.

“As downtown expands,” he said, “it will eventually be able to support galleries. As the city grows, it’ll happen. San Diego has a lot of potential.”

Most of the collectors who live here do their buying in L.A. or New York, Vincent said. By showing work of major artists such as Edward Ruscha, alongside younger, lesser-knowns, Vincent hopes to instill collectors with enough confidence in the local scene to want to spend their money here.

With little precedent for such activity, Vincent will have to rely on his own optimism and persistence to propel the gallery forward, into its next stage as an independent business. A young artist himself, Vincent is aware that only a fraction of artists and galleries can subsist on their own merit. Most artists have to double up on jobs to pay the rent; most galleries double up on function to cover the overhead.

Vincent’s small but elegant Hillcrest space served as both gallery and apartment. Other galleries in town have survived--at least temporarily--through equally schizophrenic means, using the gallery as office space for a cleaning company, a hair salon, or a marble fabrication showroom.

The most common combination has been that of gallery and frame shop. The Beasley Gallery operated a framing service that was “breaking even,” according to McConnell, and will continue under different ownership once the gallery has closed. The Gallery Store downtown also both exhibited art and framed it, but closed its loft-like space last year to make more room for the practical side of the business.

Framing art is pretty safe, compared to making it or selling it. The question is, just what is everyone putting in all of those frames? Is it quick and convenient and shrouded in hype? Or does it fill the mind, making everyday experiences a bit richer?

In these days when the bottom line refers only to material satisfaction, gallery dealers like Vincent are to be commended for putting themselves out on a limb to ensure, among other things, a healthy alternative to the modern decorator’s fast food diet.