Gallery Owner From New York Finds a Brighter Picture in the L.A. Market

Nobody has actually come right out and told Bess Cutler she is crazy to open a Los Angeles branch of her New York gallery at a time when contemporary art galleries everywhere--and in New York’s SoHo particularly--are either just hanging on, scaling back or even closing down entirely.

“People say it in a nicer way: They say, ‘Aren’t you brave to be making a move like this at a time like this,’ ” Cutler said from a comfortable chair in the loftlike Bess Cutler Gallery, which just opened in Santa Monica. “People in Los Angeles, that is--they put it that way because they’re nicer here. People in New York are too depressed to talk.”

Not long ago, the Bess Cutler Gallery in SoHo was itself riding high on the New York contemporary art boom, having moved from Boston to SoHo in 1983, then moving again within SoHo in 1989 to a huge 15,000-square-foot space on two floors. Cutler shows the work of young artists whose prices seldom exceed $5,000, so she has always had to show--and sell--more art than the New York dealers handling the five- and six-figure art stars.

When the bottom dropped out of the crowded New York art market about a year ago, Cutler said, she addressed herself to collectors in less saturated markets. She also brought her artists’ work to art fairs around the country--to the 1990 Art/L.A. show, among others.

“We just really did well at the L.A. fair--we were having work airfreighted in every night,” Cutler said. “We were one of the few galleries that weren’t complaining--and I’m a complainer.”

By then, Cutler had already arranged to lease a roomy warehouse in an alley across from the gallery strip on the 900 block of Colorado Avenue. Her plan, she said, was to move back to her small, original space in New York and open another in Santa Monica--offering artists and collectors on both coasts the best of both worlds.

“Our artists hadn’t been able to show out here, because if an artist’s work sells for $3,000, financially it doesn’t make sense for another gallery to pay for shipping and give us 10%,” Cutler said. The same holds true for Los Angeles artists who want to show in New York.

Now Cutler is showing her New York artists here, and she has already taken on five local artists: Russell Crotty, Steve Hurd, Carter Potter, Phyllis Eakins and Andrew Krim.

Like the other artists Cutler represents, their range of work is eclectic. Cutler said she likes it that way. She tends, however, to favor work with a content that is equally strong conceptually and visually. “I like artists who have their own program, who are really pushing themselves down whatever road they are trying to take,” she added.

Cutler--who will divide her time between Los Angeles and New York--said that instead of starting out here with solo shows, she plans to begin with revolving group shows of work by the artists she represents, as she gets to know Los Angeles art-goers and they get to meet her.

Already, however, her experience with Los Angeles seems to be a welcome one.

“When I went to the studios of young artists in New York, they could be such brats--some had already had five dealers there,” Cutler said. “When we came here, the artists were so hungry and so nice and so cooperative--and so good.”

Bess Cutler Gallery, 903 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, (213) 394-6673. Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday.

THE STONE’S THE THING: It’s no longer a given that an art exhibition with significant cross-cultural pedigrees and an ambitious international touring schedule must have originated with a museum.

Consider, for instance, “The Ibsen Series”--a show of limited-edition prints and folio volumes that has traveled from Paris throughout the Scandinavian countries and to London, Rome, Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, New York and Chicago. Until June 1 it is ensconced at the Christopher John Gallery in Santa Monica.

The Ibsen series is the product of a collaboration between Edouard Weiss, a French art publisher and gallery director, and a Norwegian businessman and arts patron named Oivind Johansen. Johansen dreamed of pairing great words, great art and classic craftsmanship: specifically of inviting five famous Norwegian artists--all of whom are primarily known as painters--to interpret five of Henrik Ibsen’s most famous plays in lithographic form for limited-edition folio volumes.

The artists spent four to six months working in Paris alongside such top craftsmen as Francois Da Ros, one of the last traditional printers in Europe, and the bookbinder Bernard Duval.

The resulting folios include full-color lithographs that are hand-pulled on Bavarian stone, not on machine--”which is the way Edvard Munch and Toulouse-Lautrec worked 100 years ago,” said Anne Spilling, assistant director of the Christopher John Gallery and curator of the Los Angeles show. A selection of the lithographs is sold separately.

Spilling first became aware of the series when she saw some artists’ proofs at a one-woman show portraying Ibsen’s heroines that was mounted by Norwegian actress Juni Dahr at the Westwood Playhouse last year.

“I saw those works and got very excited,” she said. With the help of the Norwegian Consulate, she was able to arrange for a representative selection of the folio volumes and accompanying prints to be shown here.

“Technically, they’re masterful,” said John Greco, owner of the Christopher John Gallery and himself a master printmaker. “They’re kind of ethereal: The tusche washes, the transparency of the medium and the overlaying of color is beautiful. They’re very tight--like little jewels.”

Meanwhile, Weiss and Johansen are collaborating again--on a folio series of Chekhov plays interpreted by Russian artists and on a round of Strindberg plays interpreted by Swedes.

“The Ibsen Series , “ through June 1 at the Christopher John Gallery, 2928 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica, (213) 453-4418. Open from 11 a.m to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.

WORLD NEWS II: Its organizers vowed to make it a revolving exhibition. And indeed, “World News”--an impromptu show of art addressing the Persian Gulf War that was assembled by a group of artists at the height of that conflict--is now in its second of at least three phases.

The show has a home through June 22 upstairs at Beyond Baroque in Venice. It has grown to include about 80 artists--quite a few of them from Iran and Iraq. “We’ve had to start turning people away,” said Kim Abeles, one of the organizers.

The selection of work shown changed completely April 7 and will change again May 19. By then, Abeles said, the organizers hope to be able to update the show by including pieces that address the plight of the Kurds in the war’s bloody aftermath.

One of the Kurdish artists involved with the show, Zuhdi Sardar--whose family remains in Iraq--is also working to raise funds for the Palo Alto-based organization Kurdish Relief Aid, Abeles said.

Although arrangements are still in the planning stages, Abeles said the exhibition may move to the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton this fall. She added that she and Deborah Lawrence, another of the show’s original organizers, are also hoping that a book documenting “World News” might come of the show.

Abeles said she imagined the book as a low-budget affair that could be widely and inexpensively distributed. “I just don’t see it as a coffee-table book,” she said.

“World News: Los Angeles Artists Respond to International Events,” through June 22 upstairs at Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd., Venice; (213) 822-3006. Open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday.