L.A. Art Fair: Here to Stay? : The outlook appears bright as ART/LA88 focuses attention on artists from 20 countries

When artist Tadashi Tonoshiki of Tokyo arrives at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Thursday, he plans to “violate and transform” its pristine plaza with 1,000 used tires made into a kind of monument to societal waste.

When Italian artist Piero Gilardi gets there, he intends to assemble a life-size chess game with foam-rubber, human-faced trees for kings, rooks and pawns.

When Roy Cook, owner of Zimbabwe’s Matombo Gallery, uncrates his wares, an aura of the past will merge with the present in sleek, abstract stone sculptures that recall primitive Africa.

And when Leo Castelli, the vaunted senior statesman of New York’s art gallery elite, sets up shop, he’ll unveil works by artists whose names could make up a Who’s Who in contemporary art: Warhol, Johns, Oldenburg, Serra and Rosenquist among them.

Suddenly the sprawling hall at the south side of downtown L.A. will become a kind of global museum where culture and commerce coexist. About 3,200 artworks by 1,200 artists will be on sale from Saturday through Dec. 14--all part of the Third International Contemporary Art Fair. Gobbling up about eight times the gallery space of the Grand Avenue Museum of Contemporary Art, the fair, a.k.a. ART/LA88, will offer works in myriad media and styles from about 155 galleries in 20 countries.

“I loved it,” said Victor Herstein, a Los Angeles-based painter and one of many enthusiastic 1987 fair-goers. “It’s like going to New York for a day and having all three districts of art--SoHo, 57th Street and the upper east side--under one roof.”

To put it into perspective . . . the emergence of the art fair is part of the growing prominence of the Los Angeles arts scene. The city, the greatest economic power in the West, appears to be evolving ever faster into a world-class arts center, recently bedecked with new and expanded museums, a proliferation of commercial galleries and a recurring international arts festival that originated in 1984 with the Olympic Arts Festival.

Just two weeks ago, the Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts was formed. The $20-million city arts funding program brings Los Angeles up to par with other major American cities, arts leaders say, by increasing municipal arts support by about five times. A permanent local art fair, modeled after prestigious forerunners in Chicago, Basel, Cologne and elsewhere, could only be another feather in the city’s cultural cap, art aficionados said.

“The fair makes L.A. much more of a truly major city, nationally and internationally,” said Stanley Grinstein, co-owner of the Gemini G.E.L. Gallery, who has exhibited at fairs in Basel and Chicago 11 times and is on the Los Angeles fair’s advisory board.

The question, on the eve of the local fair’s pivotal third outing, is how well is it succeeding? Is it setting down solid roots? Will it claim its permanent place beside similar, established ventures worldwide?

Fair exhibitors rarely reveal their sales totals--probably the ultimate measure of success. But if healthy gallery return rates are any gauge, the outlook for this year’s edition is bright, said Brian Angel, director of the fair for the Andry Montgomery Group of London, which produces cultural and trade events worldwide.

At press time, about 50% of 155 galleries expected this year attended the 1987 fair. Of the total, 35 showrooms are based in Los Angeles. About 70% of those are returnees.

“The real test of a fair’s success is the response it receives from quality galleries internationally,” Angel said recently. “The L.A. fair is passing this test with flying colors.”

Mary Michalik, director of the venerated, 9-year-old Chicago International Art Exposition, said that that fair has return rates for galleries in Chicago and worldwide of 100% and 75% respectively. But she lauded Los Angeles’ record.

“That’s pretty reasonable,” said Michalik, who’s had the job for five years. “It’s not bad at all.”

Fair organizers also point out that some well-respected dealers have signed up for their first time this year, along with 13 new Los Angeles outlets. Chief among them are Castelli, who, in 1960, first sold “False Start,” the Jasper Johns painting sold at Sotheby’s in New York last month for $17 million, the highest price ever paid for a work of contemporary art. Also debuting this year is Anthony d’Offay, owner of one of London’s top showrooms.

“No, we haven’t had D’Offay, but we’d love to,” said Chicago fair director Michalik, noting Castelli’s longtime presence at the Windy City’s expo.

Los Angeles dealers who have taken part in the fair also praise and support it, by about 2-to-1.

“It’s very advantageous for us,” said Pamela Tapp, director of the Karl Bornstein Gallery. “Not only do we sell works, but we made contacts with collectors, dealers and art consultants in and out of town that were invaluable.”

Local and out-of-state dealers, as well as curators, collectors and museum professionals, also say the fair has improved since its debut in 1986.

That year, the event drew less-than-hoped-for publicity, attendance and spending, overshadowed by openings of MOCA’s new museum and the Anderson wing at the County Museum of Art, fair organizers claimed.

But their ensuing efforts appeared to have helped the situation. Attendance totals jumped from about 14,600 to 26,000 the second time around and many art fair veterans--dealers, collectors, critics and others--rated the quality of the art, generally judged as very good the first time, even higher.

“I think tremendous progress was made between the first year and last year,” said MOCA Director Richard Koshalek, also on the fair’s advisory board. “The general feeling was that the quality of art had improved and it was better organized.”

However, problems troubling the first two fairs have disgruntled dealers here and abroad, keeping some from returning.

Certain European dealers have been disappointed by lackluster sales, generally less than Los Angeles galleries’. Often they felt that most fair visitors (about 70% of whom were from Los Angeles County, organizers said, and 20% from California) were ignorant of European contemporary art, indeed were provincial.

“We were showing such major artists as Richard Deacon and Tony Cragg, and people were saying ‘who are these artists?’ ” bristled Nicholas Logsdail, director of the highly respected Lisson Gallery in London. “There’s hardly any other place in the Western world that wouldn’t know of them.

“We might consider coming again in a year or two,” he said in a phone conversation from London. “We did sufficiently well, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that you can’t educate people on the spot when they have no knowledge about anything in the first place.”

(Fair costs are particularly steep for overseas dealers. They must pay shipping fees as well as booth rental, which this year increased from $21.50 to $23 per square foot. Last year, the owner of London’s Thumb Gallery, also staying home this time, said she spent $30,000 in all. A local dealer said he spent about half that.)

Some Los Angeles dealers also have their complaints and won’t return this year, such as one veteran gallery owner who requested anonymity.

“I’ve done very well, but I sold to all my own clients,” said the dealer who will opt out of the fair for the first time this year. “I’m looking for a much more international audience to make it worthwhile.”

Dan Saxon, co-owner of Saxon-Lee Gallery, who had a similar experience, said that during his four-year participation at the Chicago fair, he saw “important collectors and museum people, art consultants from virtually every major city in the U.S. as well as Europe. I didn’t see that at the L.A. fair for two years.”

Some Los Angeles dealers said the timing of the fair, held between holidays when folks are preoccupied with festivities and gift giving, was, as one said, “atrocious.”

And, there are some major local dealers who have never taken part, including James Corcoran, considered by many to own Los Angeles number one gallery, who said he just doesn’t like to exhibit at art fairs.

“If L.A. galleries do not wish to participate, we must respect their choice,” Angel said. “Yet, it would be foolish of me not to express disappointment. The development of any international art fair needs and deserves the support of the local galleries who will be the ultimate beneficiaries of the expanded art-buying public which art fairs generate.”

As for local dealers’ charge that they sold only to California buyers, Angel said his crew has focused this year on educating and expanding the number of potential art buyers. Those efforts have included a New York news conference announcing the event and quarterly newsletters sent to 200 major collectors, 2,000 corporate art consultants and 320 museum directors worldwide, all of whom were to be invited to Los Angeles collectors’ homes this weekend for refreshments and lectures on contemporary art.

Reacting to foreign dealers’ complaints of ignorance about some out-of-town artists, fair organizers have whipped up a first-time “museum quality” exhibition for ART/LA88 that will feature “the most important new contemporary art” from Japan and Italy by 10 artists who have had little exposure in the United States.

Curated by MOCA chief curator Mary Jane Jacob and New York-based curator Lynn Gumpert, “East Meets West: Japanese and Italian Art Today” is to include Tonoshiki’s tire installation and Gilardi’s chess set. It will be complemented by a two-day symposium (see art lecture listings). Angel also maintained that with time, local familiarity with foreign dealers’ art will continue to build, increasing foreign dealers’ sales and their presence at the fair. And, he is especially pleased with such 1988 newcomers as D’Offay and Castelli (though the latter said he’s coming this year primarily to receive the fair’s second “International Art Award.” “The organizers of the art fair are anxious to have me there and of course I try to satisfy their desire,” Castelli said.)

Jean Milant, a leading Los Angeles dealer and one of an 11-person committee which helped select fair exhibitors, also noted that Hans Mayer and Eva Poll, important German dealers, have signed up for their third Los Angeles art fair.

“Of course we’ve lost some galleries, we don’t expect--nor do we want--the same ones year after year,” Angel said.

As for the holiday crunch, Angel said December is one of the few months not already occupied by another art fair. Though there are no summer fairs, he didn’t choose that time because “the art world goes to sleep.”

“It takes several years for a fair to build,” said local dealer Grinstein. “There’s a momentum to each one that gets stronger and stronger every year, then eventually tops out. It’s going to take a little while for the international and national audience to understand how important this fair is. At this stage I’d hope no one would get discouraged; I think it’s showing every sign of turning into a major international fair, but we need to give it a really another year to accomplish that.”

Angel agrees, in word and, it seems, in deed: He’s booked the convention center through 1990.

ART/LA88 Tickets

ART/LA88 runs Saturday and Sunday from noon to 10 p.m. and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday from noon-8 p.m. General admission is $10 daily, $6 for museum members, students and senior citizens, and $15 for a two-day pass. Tickets are available at the Los Angeles Convention Center, downtown, during fair hours. Most art works are priced in the four or five figure range.