Lesser-Known Artists Get a Big Boost, Thanks to Grant and La Jolla Art Museum

A series of 12 panels in vibrant colors portray traditional images of Mexico in “Oaxaca, Oaxaca,” by San Diego artist Raul Guerrero.

“Hubcap Milagro 6,” by National City’s David Avalos, uses red lipstick and a bleeding heart of lead on a stainless steel hubcap to suggest a connection between cars and sex, heartache and the miracle of life.

“Knife Table,” a grouping of small, black, steel sculptures, some resembling animal trophies, by El Paso artist James Drake, protests the abuse of animals.

The three pieces are among 14 works by emerging and “under-recognized” artists purchased over the last 1 1/2 years by the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art. The acquisitions, currently on display and part of the museum’s permanent collection, were made possible by a Los Angeles foundation through an innovative pilot program.

“We’ve wanted to support our best local talent as well as to take the opportunity to explore the best in regional, national and international talent,” said Madeleine Grynsztejn, associate curator at the museum. “We feel very fortunate to have been selected to participate in this pilot program. It was not a program you could apply for.”

The La Jolla museum is one of three in the country that were chosen in 1987 by the Lannan Foundation in Los Angeles. The other institutions, which each received a $50,000 grant, are Atlanta’s High Museum and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington.

“A number of museums were reviewed,” said Lisa Lyons, director of art programs for the Lannan Foundation. “In the final analysis, the three selected had demonstrated . . . the ability to uncover interesting emerging and under-recognized artists.”

Named for the late Chicago financier J. Patrick Lannan, who was a self-educated scholar, the foundation focuses its resources on visual and literary arts. With the exception of book publishing, all of the foundation’s previous arts grants have supported exhibitions rather than acquisitions.

“Museums are having a great deal of difficulty raising acquisition money,” Lyons said. “It is less difficult to raise money for a single, well-known artist than for a group of works by lesser-known artists.”

The grant guidelines prevented museums from spending more than $10,000 on any single artwork, to encourage the purchase of works by artists who are not well-known.

The La Jolla museum has built an exhibit around the 14 pieces it purchased. By borrowing additional pieces from the artists or galleries, the museum has created an exhibit that fills six of its gallery spaces. The public gets a better sense of an artist’s style and interests by viewing several works, Grynsztejn said.

The acquisitions range from paintings and sculpture to multimedia assemblages, photography and video.

The museum’s acrylic painting of lawn chairs by Los Angeles artist William Leavitt is paired with a borrowed painting of file cabinets.

In the absence of humans, the lawn chairs and the setting of a typical suburban Los Angeles yard produce a sense of mystery and drama that is heightened by a Hollywood-like purple sky, Grynsztejn said. “You don’t know who was there,” she said. “It reminds me of a Raymond Chandler view of L.A. in 1989.”

Photographer Tina Barney uses her own family as subjects, portraying a stereotypical “upper-crust East Coast family,” Grynsztejn said. “Jill and Polly in the Bathroom,” the large print purchased by the museum, shows two women in pink bathrobes in a pink-walled bathroom. Through the upstairs window, a doghouse is viewed in the yard below.

“She shows the interpersonal familial tensions such as those between a mother and daughter,” Grynsztejn said. Indeed, the two women seem to be avoiding each other in the confined space. In another Barney photograph, a kitchen is filled with family members, including adolescents, an adult and preteens. None maintains eye contact with any other.

“These pictures are filled with still-life objects that tell a story,” Grynsztejn said. “Her work reminds me of the 17th-Century Dutch paintings. (The people) are even cut off at the waist, as in Dutch paintings.”

Grynsztejn said the museum’s commitment to the emerging artists has resulted in solo exhibits for at least three of them: Eric Snell, from Britain’s Channel Islands, Drake from El Paso and Leavitt from Los Angeles.

Among the other artworks purchased are a video from Tony Oursler, a wall assemblage by Maurizio Pellegrin from Florence, Italy, a collaborative piece by San Diegans Louis Hock and Elizabeth Sisco and a steel sculpture by Carlsbad artist Kenneth Capps.

Grynsztejn bemoaned the fact that “for every artist we have, there are that many more we would like to incorporate in the collection.”

“They (the acquisitions) are proof-positive that we continue to devote ourselves to the discovery and encouragement of emerging art and artists,” she said. “We are committed to purchasing historical works. But we are just as committed to purchasing work that will become the treasures of the 21st Century. And we’re confident that these pieces will become that.”