Collecting Art In Orange County : You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Dr. Rosayln M. Laudati and her husband, Dr. James B. Pick, live in Corona del Mar with an eclectic, serious-minded art collection including work by Donald Judd, Roy Lichtenstein, Eduardo Paolozzi and Edouard Vuillard. When they want to add to their holdings, they don’t browse in Laguna Beach--or anywhere else in Orange County--even though there are hundreds of art galleries here.

They usually head for Los Angeles. “I don’t know of any serious gallery in Orange County,” Laudati said.

Twenty years ago, Orange County could boast of only a few collectors of top-of-the-line contemporary art, ones whose purchases showed an awareness of international trends and styles. Since then, by most accounts, their ranks have increased somewhat, yet the number of local galleries prestigious or venturesome enough to meet their demands has diminished.

Collectors and art professionals offer a variety of reasons for the general unavailability of first-rank contemporary art:

The number of serious collectors is still too small to keep major galleries afloat, and taste may not be as sophisticated as some would like to think.

Pamela Goldstein, a member of the Newport Harbor Art Museum Acquisition Committee, said: “We’re all minor collectors--except for (Donald)Bren and a few other people. The taste out here is at a very suburban level, and I’m guilty of that myself. . . . People are comfortable and live well, but their taste is not terribly educated.”

Goldstein, who admits her own preferences lean toward cheerful, rather lightweight pieces, says space for art is at a premium in her own oceanfront home in Laguna Beach. Wall space is limited by the many windows that offer a view that could rival many a work of art.

* A market for first-rate art may exist but that dealers have yet to figure out ways to tap it.

* Nearby Los Angeles--which has become an international center for art over the past few years--is too seductive for Orange County collectors, not to mention artists who would rather have their work shown there. That situation is hardly peculiar to Orange County. Paul Schimmel, chief curator at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, notes that the same situation exists in Westchester County, the wealthy area north of New York City.

Still, some observers believe there are a number of steps Orange County dealers could take to change the situation here. Suggestions include maintaining a stock of works--independent of those in the changing exhibitions--that would appeal to the tastes of serious collectors;communicating regularly with clients and potential clients through newsletters, and guiding collectors toward contemporary art by first gaining their trust through sales of older, more traditional works.

Most of the commercial art galleries in Orange County are clustered in Laguna Beach, although there are pockets of activity in the other coastal cities as well as in Fullerton, Tustin and Orange. The unsophisticated browser, therefore, may think of Laguna as a mecca for art, but connoisseurs of contemporary art know that a very small number of galleries in town offer works on the level of those shown in major museums or acknowledged by respected critics. Instead, for the most part, they offer little more than popular works such as paintings of laughing clowns, crashing waves and knockoffs of yesterday’s hot styles.

Many of the people who buy these things could not care less about the art establishment’s view or even that there is an art establishment.

A few galleries around the county may advertise that they have Andy Warhol silk-screen prints, say, or Salvador Dali lithographs, but big names alone do not mean that an establishment is dedicated to selling first-rate work. A buyer should know that Warhol’s name has lost some of its luster since his death, as prints of his work have flooded the market. Similarly, the reputation of Dali (whose late works were not highly regarded by the art world, in any case)has been sullied by the many forgery allegations.

And beyond that, simply showing the works of a few famous people is not enough. A truly first-class gallery offers its clients a high level of knowledge about art and a full stable (not just one or two “teasers”)of artists whose work is well respected in critical circles.

BC Space, one Laguna gallery with an independent approach, shows photographs--generally by emerging artists--that frequently have a political or social agenda. But collectors don’t flock there, probably because of the gallery’s sequestered second-floor location and its strong focus on environmental and other social issues.

Two Orange County galleries repeatedly mentioned with approval by local art professionals and major collectors are no longer in existence:TLK Gallery, formerly in Costa Mesa, and the Jack Glenn Gallery, late of Corona del Mar. Glenn opened in 1969 and hung on till 1976. TLK opened in 1983 and folded in 1986.

Newport Beach collector Leon Lyon, a longtime member, with his wife, Molly, of several of Newport Harbor Art Museum’s membership groups, explains the art gallery situation here in business terms. What usually happens, he said, is that if there is the slightest opening for a top-notch gallery, “two or three people jump in there, so there must not be much demand. After the failure of the TLK Gallery and Jack Glenn . . . you would have to say there is no market here.

“But it’s a moving target. It’s changing all the time. There’s probably a growing demand. . . . I see (works of art)held by local people more and more in national shows. So I guess it’s a sort of chicken-and-egg question.”

Betty Turnbull, who was one of the owners of TLK Gallery, thinks first-rate contemporary art is still difficult to sell in Orange County despite “such a concentration of wealth and entrepreneurial activity.” Orange County residents, she said, “need to deal with something they have confidence in, something that they will not be criticized (by their friends)for owning.”

Turnbull told of one woman who bought a watercolor meant to be hung unframed, with its lower edge curling up. She returned the piece to the gallery a few days later, saying that her friends had told her that all watercolors have to be “properly” matted and framed, and that she felt embarrassed to have committed such an apparent faux pas.

Turnbull said that although the county’s museums offer good art education programs, the wealthy tend not to have the time to attend lectures or study. Those who regularly attend art lectures, she said, are students and people living on limited incomes.

Even so, Turnbull added, “it is not a question of just giving (people)more information. . . . Viewers have to find (the art)so compelling that they need to have it at home.”

And she approached her clients with that thought in mind. If she had confidence in the integrity of a piece at her gallery, she said, she would show it in the hope that “eventually people would see deeper and deeper into the different levels of that work so that they wouldn’t tire of it as they would of something that just happens to be a good combination of colors.

“What we were doing was building collectors,” she said. “Most collectors, unless they grew up around art, go through that period of not being certain and needing some validation. . . . As a dealer, I tried to bring (an educational approach)into the gallery so people wouldn’t just think I was giving them a soft or hard sell.”

Art galleries “shouldn’t be there just as a commodity, to sell,” Turnbull said. “They should be there as something that pushes the whole idea of art forward. Because art is like music or literature--it pushes into the psyche of people. It is not like a table or chair that you’re going to replace in a couple of years.”

Goldstein, who collects contemporary art with her husband, Sam, believes TLK was “totally correct” in its approach. “I thought their standards were high, and I loved what they had there. They were certainly educating people. . . . They would call us occasionally, but they weren’t pushy.”

Yet, she added, “people still went off to Los Angeles or New York to do their art buying.”

Part of the problem, observers say, was the gallery’s location--it was tucked away in the Avenue of the Arts in Costa Mesa--but a bigger problem was that Orange County simply isn’t Los Angeles. Clients are more knowledgeable there and accustomed to buying art, and many galleries are clustered into districts that draw people for an afternoon of browsing.

The fact that buyers find Los Angeles more attractive means that artists do as well. If an Orange County dealer goes back East or to Europe and finds an artist with no regional representation here, says Schimmel, “the next thing you know, an L.A. dealer in a better position to market them will pick them up.”

Betty Turnbull “picked real interesting artists and developed them,” he said, “but as soon as things started going well, they were snatched up by other galleries. I introduced her to (artist)Donald Lipski. Then he agreed to have a show with Margo (Leavin, owner of a leading Los Angeles gallery), and that was the end of that.”

Schimmel does believe that there are enough collectors in Orange County to sustain a first-rate gallery, but that the gallery would have to focus on the so-called “secondary market.”

“Collectors here are buying first-rate work in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles,” he said. “If there were an Orange County dealer who could put (collectors)in touch with those works, there might be a living in it.”

Also important, he believes, is having “significant pieces on a secondary level” (that would be, for instance, prints by a Frank Stella or a Richard Diebenkorn)for the collector who has less than $5,000 to spend. No one has “really zeroed in on this market,” he said.

Some galleries have decided that getting customers is just a matter of making the extra effort. Several Orange County collectors mentioned the Works in Long Beach as a model gallery--the kind that works hard to find people interested in buying art.

“They put out a little newsletter,” said David Steinmetz of Corona del Mar, whose collection includes work by Hans Hofmann, Eli Nadelman and Jasper Johns. “Some months ago they sent me color slides of works of (prominent Corona del Mar artist)Tony DeLap. I didn’t have any wall space available or any money burning a hole in my pocket, but Tony is someone I have known for years. (The gallery is) smart to target potentially interested persons with the works of the right artists. . . . If they were here in Newport Beach, I’m sure I would go in frequently and buy something.”

At the John Thomas Gallery in Fullerton, however, owner Jack Buick reports that some of his extra efforts don’t seem to be paying off.

He has tried, for instance, he said, to connect clients with particular artists, but to no avail. “It seems that the majority of our clients aren’t really interested in that,” he said. “My experience is that clients will express interest in an artist I don’t carry and I’ll offer to put them in touch with the artist or with the gallery that represents them or get (work for the client to examine), and they seem suspicious of that.”

Clients seem--out of ignorance--to have ethical reservations about this perfectly above-board gallery practice, Buick said, or they may be “just making small talk” and have no real interest in collecting the artist’s work. Buick said his gallery also distributes a quarterly newsletter “at great expense”--about $2,000 for each bulk rate mailing--to a rotating group of 6,000 people from a mailing list of 10,000.

“I keep doing it because I believe in it,” he said. “If some accountant said, ‘OK, demonstrate the pay-back here,’ I’d be dead in the water. . . . There probably is a response to it, but I’m not aware of it.”

Frustration with the lack of response to his Fullerton gallery, Buick said, prompted him to open one in Santa Monica earlier this year. His Fullerton gallery is currently showing paintings by Michael Brangoccio, a Texas artist now based in Los Angeles. “In Los Angeles the work would have sold in a week,” Buick said. “In Orange County, it’s hanging on the wall. I wish I knew why.”

The John Thomas is one of the very few Orange County galleries that aims to be head-and-shoulders above the rest. Another is Diane Nelson Gallery in Laguna Beach. Associate director Stephen Gillette used to do odd jobs for Jack Glenn’s gallery and feels “we have inherited some of (his)mantle passed down through the years.”

Still, the gallery tends to feature whimsical, easy-on-the-eye work and latter-day Impressionist painting, which gets a universal thumbs-down from the art crowd--the thought being that the 19th-Century style no longer conveys a freshness of a personal vision and does not address the “issues” that preoccupy art circles today.

But Gillette counters that showing “pieces that are a little safer” is just being realistic about the market. (Half of the gallery’s sales are to Orange County buyers. La Jolla and Los Angeles residents account for another 20%to 30%, and visitors from other “large metropolitan areas” make up the remainder.)

Gillette has not seen a market in Orange County for, say, minimalist pieces or work unconcerned with “finish” (i.e., slick surfaces). “That could simply be because the area is so blessed with natural beauty and sunlight that the input of the Neo-Impressionists is very hard to shake off,” he said.

“Whether there is enough support for a gallery that would be adventurous in the best sense of the word . . . is a question I suspect may be answered in the negative, even in 1989,” Gillette said carefully. “I’ve been waiting for this wave to break for 20 years. . . . I think we’ve all overestimated the speed at which (such)changes take place.”

Gillette pointed out that when Glenn organized an unusual exhibit for the gallery last summer featuring some of the leading lights of the contemporary art world, the image reproduced on the poster for the show was chosen with Orange County taste in mind.

It was a Roy Lichtenstein print called “Night Seascape.” Never mind that this nocturnal image was intended to be tongue-in-cheek. The sight of waves in the moonlight was deemed likely to strike an appreciative chord in the beach-bound passer-by.

James Lodge has carved a niche for himself in the world of private and corporate collecting in Orange County without opening a gallery. An art consultant, he works from an office in Irvine, acquiring specific works requested by his clients.

His typical “low-end” purchaser, he said, wants a painting for $4,000 to $5,000. (“That takes a lot of shopping!”) Middle-range clients will pay $30,000 to $65,000. Once in a blue moon, someone will be interested in, say, four Jasper Johns prints at $12,000 a throw, or a painting by American Impressionist Childe Hassam for $375,000.

About 50%or 60%of Lodge’s Orange County sales are of art dating from before 1900. The key to doing business in the county, he believes, is to deal mainly in “more traditional material--more realist-style material.”

If he was running a gallery, Lodge said, he would not structure it along the lines of TLK. “You’re not going to make it with young emerging artists (whose work sells)for $3,000 to $5,000. The three basic areas are historical, contemporary and ethnic. . . . I would have shows of earlier material, group shows of American artists from the turn of the century to about 1930. I might have a few pieces of ethnic art in the back room.

“While you’re doing the earlier stuff that appeals to serious people who can afford $25,000, $35,000 canvases for their homes, you keep a finger on what’s going on with emerging artists in Southern California. One of the six or seven shows you’d have (annually)would be new talent, artists that you personally felt confident selling.”

In Lodge’s view, the main problem in starting a gallery here is choosing the location. “Orange County doesn’t have a focus on an area yet. Until that locus is established, that makes it difficult.”

Susan Spiritus, however, believes she has the “locus” figured out. After 6 years at a distinctive building on Old Newport Road in Newport Beach, her respected photography gallery moved in late 1988 to the Crystal Court at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.

“People would say, ‘You have a great building, but it’s really out of the way,’ ” she recalled. “It was not in an area where people were shopping in Newport Beach. I decided I needed more exposure. The name of the gallery was well known in Orange County. I wanted it to be more accessible to the public. My husband and I brainstormed:Where do the people go?People go to malls.”

After the move to Crystal Court, sales doubled, Spiritus said. And sales to Orange County residents account for about 80%of the total now, whereas years ago the figure was only about 35%.

“People feel threatened by a free-standing art gallery,” she said, quoting some of the outlandish remarks people frequently made to her:’Oh, I never went in; it looked so nice!’ ‘Do I have to pay?’ ‘What do I do (inside)?’ ‘Am I supposed to like (this photograph)?’ ”

At the mall, on the other hand, your door is always open, she said. People “know what a shopping mall is. Everything is for sale.”

At her previous place, in accordance with accepted gallery practice, photographs were hung at widely spaced intervals and there was a price sheet at the desk. In her new gallery, the works are bunched together on the walls with their prices alongside them, and she has postcards and posters for sale. Space is at a premium in the mall, Spiritus explained. The postcards “make people feel, yes, they can afford something.” She still offers the same mix of household names (Edward Weston, Ansel Adams)and emerging artists, with the emphasis firmly on accessible, easy-to-appreciate work.

“That seems to be what sells,” Spiritus said, but she added that the selection “really reflects my own personal taste.”

Her gallery is designed to demystify the purchase of art. Sometimes, that can mean that buying art is no different from buying any other retail item. “One day a woman dashed in, explaining that friends who owned art photographs were coming to dinner and that she and her husband had not purchased any yet.” Style didn’t matter. The name of the artist was unimportant. Anyone would do.

“She was intent on buying a photograph,” Spiritus said. “And she did.”