First Look, Then Pull Up a Chair : Functional art combines the best of both creative worlds

You stare through the glass table top and see its metal legs spelling EAT. And you think, yes, this is the function of a dining room table.

But then you examine the price tag and discover that this self-conscious piece of furniture is titled “The Crisis in Gourmet Marxism.”

Fearing indigestion, you move to a more conventional coffee table, titled “Anthesis I.” Sleek, utilitarian, stoic--just the design for serious business. But what’s this drawer doing on its surface? Curious, you tug, and out slides a hidden compartment that’s warm and sensual. Now you see another compartment, and another, and another, all different shapes and sizes and colors. By the time each drawer has swung out, the table has “flowered” into a garden of delights.

But is it a table? Or is it art?

Such confusion is by design at Santa Monica’s Gallery of Functional Art, where director/owner Lois Lambert wages a one-woman crusade on behalf of work that’s both functional and aesthetic. The two tables are part of a show titled “Table as Art--Part II,” which closes Wednesday.

“There is a lot of resistance to the word ‘functional art,’ ” Lambert said. “Is it art furniture? Is it fine art? Is it craft? Is it design?

“There is a part of me that gets involved in underdogs. And functional art is the underdog of the art world. I’m trying to show people that this blend of fine art, craft and function is an authentic artistic expression.”

It’s no accident that Lambert selected a quote from Paul Klee as the gallery’s maxim: “There is bound to be some common ground between layman and artist, where a mutual approach is possible and whence the artist no longer appears as being totally apart.”

But Lambert’s crusade has not been an easy one. Since opening in August, 1988, at the Frank Gehry-renovated Edgemar Mall on Main Street, she has struggled--unsuccessfully for the most part--to interest fine-art critics in reviewing her shows.

“It’s been awful trying to get art reviews,” she said. “This town is very provincial and young as far as art is concerned. But here you can touch it and hold it and be part of it, and you can still have art. What more could you ask for?”

But while fine-art critics don’t flock to her gallery, the public seems to be interested. Functional Art’s first exhibition, “Table as Art--Part I,” opened to a crowd of more than 2,000. A year and five shows later--”Feast of Function,” “Architects Art,” “Environments,” “Chair as Art,” “Illuminations”--Lambert reprised the table theme for her gallery’s first birthday. More than 3,000 people clamored to get into “Table as Art--Part II” on opening day in September.

Her airy, high-windowed, sunny corner space is crowded with tables that vary from the bluntly utilitarian to the barely functional. David Gale’s “EAT” table ($3,900) clashes in design next to conceptual artist Phil Garner’s “Mechanics Table” ($350)--a droll appropriation of an auto mechanic’s “crawler,” complete with car jacks. Titles are evocative--consider Anne Kelly’s “A World Within a Cube,” Gales’ “Without Snails There Is No Theory,” John W. McNaughton’s “L. A. Transit System.”

Eugenia Butler’s “Moving Through Pancks Wall”--a steel, tar and hay conglomeration resembling a farm door after an earthquake--comes complete with a poetic description. “This piece is about magic and science and spiritual transformation,” she writes. “To me it takes on the form of a prehistoric battery or perhaps a prototype for a machine of primitive and unknown origin. . . . I like the fact that by virtue of its ‘artiness’ it assumes the fiction of being incorporated into usability--while maintaining its definite sculptural identity.”

Lambert’s uphill battle for wider respectability hasn’t hurt her sales. She admits that it’s become trendy to own functional art. She recently sold $100,000 worth of objects for the sets of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s next movie, “Total Recall.” In addition, Lambert said, corporate investors are realizing that the gallery’s one-of-a-kind or limited edition handmade furnishings are cheaper than Pacific Design Center manufactured lines.

“It was a hard sell at first,” Lambert said, “but it’s becoming a lot easier now.”

Lambert grew up in Chicago, surrounded by a family of fine-art collectors. After studies at the Chicago Institute of Art, she moved to Los Angeles in 1969. “There was one museum, no theater life and less music,” she recalled. “Now all that’s changed so dramatically.”

During the ‘70s, she worked on educational videos. In 1983, Lambert opened an academic lecture agency, but left four years ago. “Then I basically began looking for a business. If I wanted to be in the art world, that meant I wasn’t going to be rich. I wanted to do functional art because, as I investigated it, it seemed to me there was an awful lot of incredible work that wasn’t being represented.”

The only full-time functional art gallery in the country at that time was Art et Industrie in New York. Lambert knew that it had closed and opened three times during its 13-year existence, so a West Coast version would hardly be a safe business venture. For two years she investigated the field, interviewing artists, craftsmen and dealers. Finally, Lambert took a second mortgage on her home and searched for a space.

She became the first tenant after the Santa Monica Museum of Art to move into Edgemar.

“I was told that as I got more successful there would be clones,” she said. “And it’s starting to happen as stores are opening on (Main) street like Akropolis Now and Art Options. They’re not galleries because they don’t do shows. But it’s really an enormous task. There’s no funding in this country for art. There’s not a lot of empathy for dealers in this country because there’s been so much unscrupulous activity. It’s not an easy road to take.”

Now, if Lambert can just get the critics to take her seriously.

“Well, some critics argue that all art is furniture,” she said, sighing. “But that’s a whole other argument.”