Faring Well at the Art Fair : Many Dealers Call Event the Most Successful Yet

If you believe the most ebullient dealers’ reports, Los Angeles’ third International Contemporary Art Fair, which closed Wednesday night at the Convention Center, was a roaring success.

“We sold 10 times as well as last year. In fact, we sold so much that we don’t have any work left for shows,” enthused Bennett Roberts of Richard/Bennett Gallery in Los Angeles, which represents emerging artists whose works are priced from around $1,000 to $10,000.

Leo Castelli’s venerated New York gallery, participating for the first time, sold about two-thirds of its fair inventory during the weekend, according to spokeswoman Mary Jo Marks. “We’ll probably come back next year,” she said. “Leo doesn’t need the exposure but he seems to be enjoying it. He loves Los Angeles.”

“We are very, very pleased. We did much better than we expected, about double last year’s business. We have been here all three years, and now it’s paying off,” said Jennifer Flay of the Ghislaine Hussenot Gallery in Paris.

The third annual fair had been privately billed as a make-it-or-break-it event. Though the first year’s organizational and scheduling problems were largely solved the second time around, dealers complained of a lack of publicity, lagging sales and a public that knows little about art that isn’t blue chip or made in Los Angeles.

The real test of the 1988 fair’s success--its sales figures--will not be made public, but interviews with dealers suggest that this year’s event was the most profitable to date, and organizers say that there definitely will be a return engagement.

Attendance at the gala preview and first four days of the fair totaled 25,954, and Wednesday was expected to bring in an additional 3,000-4,000 visitors, thus exceeding last year’s total of 26,000.

Sales of foreign art generally lagged behind American works, but most dealers exuded a positive spirit toward the fair. “It isn’t just sales. It’s dealer-to-dealer relationships and meeting new clients. Fairs are great advertising,” said New York dealer Nancy Hoffman.

Ingrid Raab, who operates galleries in Berlin and London and annually participates in five or six fairs worldwide, agreed, saying that on-the-spot sales are not the point of fairs.

She values the contacts with other dealers, the opportunity to see a lot of art and to meet new clients who come to her galleries and make purchases there. “It’s five days of information,” she said. “Besides, if you live in Berlin, you live on an island, and you have to get out.”

Getting out is costly, however. Raab, who said she hadn’t yet tallied her costs, spent about $20,000 on transportation for the art alone. Even for Los Angeles dealers, the fair price is a big nut to crack. At $23 a square foot, the average booth rental runs around $12,000 to $15,000.

But dealers seem to find themselves able to justify such expenses. Most say that profits are higher because the fair is coming of age and the audience has become aware of the educational and collecting opportunities afforded by such international event.

“There are more serious buyers. It’s less of a cultural phenomenon this year,” said David Leiber, director the Holy Solomon Gallery in New York.

“Last year people asked, ‘Who’s that artist?’ This year they asked, ‘How much?’ ” said Richard Polsky of Acme Art in Santa Monica.

But even as they crow about the fair’s success, many Los Angeles dealers speak sadly of the loss of important European dealers such as Annely Juda of London and complain bitterly about local colleagues who have abandoned the event or never joined it.

Among prominent Los Angeles galleries absent from this year’s fair are James Corcoran, Jan Baum, Saxon-Lee, Rosamund Felsen, Daniel Weinberg, BlumHelman, Tortue and Asher/Faure.

In answer to a complaint that there’s no point in Los Angeles dealers participating in a hometown fair because they only sell to their usual clients--Alice Ovsey said, “We do sell primarily to people we already know, but they don’t buy the same things here. Somehow the work looks different in this context.”

“The fair is critically important for this city,” said Dorothy Goldeen, a former San Francisco dealer who last year opened a gallery in Santa Monica. “When you go to the Chicago fair, all the Chicago dealers are there. The fair needs that kind of support.”

Goldeen disputed talk on the street about the fair taking business from local galleries. “We’re doing good business at the gallery,” she said, adding that a Sunday morning open house for a group of Santa Monica galleries attracted 200 people, most of whom continued on to the Convention Center.

One frequent complaint, that the fair opened on a weekend and petered out instead of building to a weekend climax, will be rectified next year. The fourth International Contemporary Art Fair opens on Dec. 7--a Thursday.