New York’s Pacific Rim Shot : Three New York art giants have announced plans for L.A. showcases, banking on the region as a powerhouse cultural center. All that potential Pacific Rim business doesn’t hurt either.

The New Yorkers are coming.

Look at their arrival as an alluring form of cultural imperialism--New York, the motherland of the art world, is invading its brassier aesthetic cousin, Hollywood. Two of New York’s most important galleries and a top auction house are making a play for some of the excess capital floating around town. And one bi-coastal view holds that their much-heralded arrival signals a new optimistic phase for Los Angeles’ beleaguered art market.

“There is a support base for a new resurgence of gallery activity in Los Angeles,” says Museum of Contemporary Art Director Richard Koshalek. “I see it in (the new Santa Monica gallery complex) Bergamot Station. I see it in the new interest from galleries outside of Los Angeles.

“This is an extremely good moment if you’re in the art world to be in Los Angeles, whether you’re a museum person, you’re a collector, you’re an artist or you’re a dealer, and I think that’s only going to improve in the next several years. We’re moving into the ‘90s, so there’s a greater caution, but there is a strong positive feeling about the arts in Southern California.”

Indeed, New York art powerhouses PaceWildenstein and Gagosian Gallery are banking on the prospect of Southern Californians and Pacific Rim visitors transcending their Armani shopping ways and behaving like the dedicated Manhattan art crowd. Both galleries have announced plans for grand Camden Drive spaces to be designed by two of the country’s preeminent architects--for Pace-Wildenstein, Charles Gwathmey, who designed a major addition to New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and for Gagosian, Richard Meier, the architect behind the new Getty Center in Brentwood.

The news of those openings next year--coupled with Sotheby’s announcement that the New York- and London-based auction house will open a 13,000-square-foot auction space at Wilshire Boulevard and Bedford Drive next spring--has observers trumpeting Beverly Hills as the next center for the city’s high-end art market. But the New York contingent says the implications for Los Angeles, which has suffered the slings and arrows of a sharp economic downtown, are far more dramatic.

“The feeling is that Los Angeles, more than any other city in America, is poised to benefit from the coming economic recovery due to its position on the Pacific Rim and its growing cultural institutions, and we want to be part of that,” says Marc Selwyn, PaceWildenstein’s newly appointed West Coast head and formerly Sotheby’s West Coast director of fine arts for four years. “We have a lot of confidence in Los Angeles as a city and as a cultural center.”

But some longtime Los Angeles art world denizens question the New Yorkers’ view of their universe, particularly the assumption that the entertainment industry will spend its big money on big-ticket art.

“The fact is that L.A. is a very difficult town,” says veteran gallery owner Margo Leavin, who shows artists based in and outside California. “It’s not a town of collectors. And there’s too much competition from the physical beauty of the city itself, and second cars and homes. There isn’t the same need for art as in major cities, like Chicago and New York, where you need it to survive.”

Sotheby’s is banking on Angelenos and tourists here surviving in style. The auction house put its finger to the wind, or rather the gale, of reaction to its print sale at the Regent Beverly Wilshire last March, the first since Sotheby’s closed its auction space on Beverly Boulevard a dozen years ago. The sale grossed $1.2 million.

“We were very encouraged,” says Andrea Van de Kamp, senior vice president and managing director of Sotheby’s West Coast operations. “Over 300 people showed up that night, and when we announced the first (print) sale in 12 years in Los Angeles, the audience applauded. It’s a nice sign for the art community of Los Angeles that we’re all interested in being here and being active and around.”

An October print sale was far from torrential, however. Only 197 of the 351 lots offered found buyers, a relatively meager showing. But Van de Kamp stripped the market of blame, pointing instead to inadequate pre-sale publicity.

“One sale that is mediocre is not going to determine (our course),” she said. “We’re committed to this for a minimum of three years.” Another print sale is planned for next October.

In turn, PaceWildenstein, New York’s premier gallery for blue- chip modern and contemporary artists and 19th-Century Impressionists and old masters, promises to do its part to stoke the city’s cultural fires.

“We are going to be developing an extraordinary exhibition schedule that’s unprecedented in Los Angeles,” Selwyn says. “There hasn’t been a major Rothko show in recent memory, if there ever was one. There hasn’t been a major Picasso or Calder show in recent memory. There have not been shows by many of these artists in Los Angeles, and that’s what’s so exciting about this. We intend to originate exhibitions in Los Angeles and not simply bring New York material here.”

Larry Gagosian, for his part, says: “I’m glad (PaceWildenstein) is going to be there because it creates a better situation. Competition makes the world go ‘round. It will create more interest in art, more people will be talking about galleries and shows, and that’s to everybody’s benefit.”

Some skeptics note that other New York galleries have tried and failed to establish Western outposts--including Pace itself (before joining up with Wildenstein). Pace owner Arne Glimcher showed California artists at Ferus Pace, a La Cienega gallery he operated with BlumHelman owner Irving Blum in the late ‘60s. But the gallery lasted only briefly.

BlumHelman, which is based in New York, also pulled out of the L.A. market in 1991 after five years trying to crack it. Blum couldn’t be reached for comment, but several observers said the L.A. branch failed because BlumHelman kept its best work in New York.

“He’s a responsible businessman who does well for his artists, but New Yorkers looked upon Los Angeles as an outlet, and Los Angeles doesn’t like that,” says Allan Schwartzman, a New York art critic and author of “Andy’s Curse,” about the rise and fall of the contemporary art market, which will be published next fall by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. “Los Angeles has significant collectors on par with New York collectors, and they don’t like being treated that way. They expect to be treated with utmost respect.”

Says TV producer Douglas S. Cramer, a major art collector and MOCA trustee: “I think as a contemporary collector, when you’re buying things hot off the easel, there’s always a general feeling, which was much stronger in the earlier ‘80s, there was too often a tendency that the West Coast shows were afterthoughts.

“Too often, (art for sale in L.A. was) work that didn’t sell in New York, or artists or dealers had a tendency to send out things that were less than the very best. I believe the challenge is basically for dealers to show that what they have available here is the equal of or surpasses what there is in New York.”

But the operative glass-half-full view of recent gallery failures is that it creates more opportunity for other important galleries. And Glimcher and Gagosian are considered likely to meet the challenge by many who credit both men with the business savvy--and personal stake--to see to it that their L.A. ventures succeed.

After all, Cramer says, “Arnold Glimcher and Larry Gagosian have a great many friends on the West Coast and spend time here. Glimcher has a second career in the movie business. Larry has a second career dating movie starlets. They’ll want to present their best.”

*

For the origins of this L.A. story, you have to look to New York. It begins with the fallout that occurred when the New York art market collapsed in 1990. Sales and prices dropped at all levels of the market, but something else was happening too--power and position were consolidating at the top. Some artists who were feeling the cut in sales and stipends ran to the top galleries, where they could rest on more solid footing. And as the top galleries reap the benefit of their clout, the art market has begun to take on the colors of the publishing world, where larger bookstore chains are chewing up bigger chunks of that market and elbowing out independents in the process.

“The top of the market is working hard to consolidate its position and power, and the top galleries have done a good job of that,” Schwartzman says. “Working in its favor are several factors--one is there are more artists of proven historical value at the top of the market. A certain number are recession-proof, and many that aren’t have a protected position, and they still will have a market, however reduced.”

Certainly the prime gallery boasting artists and estates with historical cachet is PaceWildenstein, whose roster of 31 includes such museum-quality superstars as Alexander Calder, Claes Oldenburg, Ad Reinhardt, Dan Flavin, Robert Irwin, Joseph Cornell and Robert Mangold. The gallery is planning to open in L.A. in September and has tentatively scheduled a show of new and existing work by Chuck Close.

Gagosian wouldn’t comment on his half-dozen, but they include David Salle and Francesco Clemente, among the cream of New York’s ‘80s art crop.

In the case of PaceWildenstein, the forces of consolidation were particularly dramatic--a new art entity that resulted from the merger a year ago in October of two of New York’s finest galleries: Pace, known for its contemporary and modern lineup, and the 120-year-old Wildenstein & Co., among the world’s largest private inventories of 19th-Century Impressionists and old masters.

For Wildenstein, the merger means potentially highly profitable access to a new list of wealthy clients.

“I think it’s more interesting for Wildenstein than it is for Pace,” says Peter Goulds, who owns the L.A. Louver Gallery. “If Wildenstein finds 2% new clients through its association with Pace Gallery, with their inventory that can be significant profit. You don’t have to sell too many Rubens paintings to make a profit.”

For Pace, the merger boosted the financial resources and reach of a gallery that had already metamorphosed into something of an aesthetic beehive (Pace Gallery, Pace Primitive, Pace Prints, Pace Master Prints and Pace McGill, which handles photography). And the aggressive post-merger strategy has been to court promising new markets around the globe.

“There have always been a handful of very powerful galleries in every major city--Paris, London, Milan, New York--but what’s different is the globalization of the art market,” says Bonnie Barrett Stretch, editor of ARTnewsletter. “The fact that Pace is seeking to have not just offices but galleries--exhibition spaces--in key cities around the world, that hasn’t been done before or it hasn’t been done successfully. They usually don’t get past three (branches).”

*

Between PaceWildenstein and Wildenstein, which retains sole ownership of some spaces and the Wildenstein Institute in Paris, there will be galleries with their imprint in twice as many cities around the world by the end of next year. In Hong Kong, Pace-Wildenstein is collaborating with the Ho Gallery, expanding Ho’s downtown space to 5,000 square feet and heralding the union with a grand opening this month of works by Picasso, Rothko, Oldenburg, Julian Schnabel and others. The linkup followed a Ho Gallery sale of Pace artist Jim Dine’s prints that grossed $70,000, according to ARTnewsletter.

In India, PaceWildenstein hired a regional director for Southeast Asia last summer. In London, Wildenstein’s 75-year-old space will be converted to accommodate Pace collections.

And Los Angeles is key to PaceWildenstein’s expanded future.

“In the United States, it’s the other place besides New York with the largest appetite for really being involved in art,” says Marc Glimcher, director of PaceWildenstein and Arne Glimcher’s son.

Los Angeles has more PaceWildenstein clients than any other city outside New York, he says. That’s due in no small measure to Arne Glimcher’s extensive contacts in Hollywood, where he parlayed a stint 10 years ago as art tutor to director Ivan Reitman into a second career in film. Glimcher directed “The Mambo Kings” and produced “Gorillas in the Mist” and “The Good Mother,” continuing to cultivate client relationships and friendships with such Hollywood heavyweights as Creative Artists Agency head Michael Ovitz, who’s also his agent, producer David Wolper and Warner Bros. President Terry Semel.

The food chain of the Hollywood art world even shifted into reverse, with Glimcher mounting a gallery show of drawings by such directors as David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Sergei Eisenstein and Federico Fellini.

“Hollywood is one of the few communities that continues to produce a new pool of beginning or potential collectors because it’s one of the few industries that produces super-rich overnight,” Schwartzman says. “Art is often used as a social calling card, and the more powerful that somebody like Arne Glimcher gets in the Hollywood community, the more attractive it is to collect art.

“You hear stories of Robin Williams getting a Picasso as a bonus. The idea of art being used as valued and respected currency seems to be very new, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that has to do with Arne’s crossover between the art and film business.”

*

Gagosian, who is in his late 40s (he never gives his exact age) and is known as “Gogo,” also has strong personal ties to Los Angeles, where he was born and raised. He graduated from UCLA in 1969, worked for the William Morris Agency and moved into the art business in the mid-’70s by selling posters on the sidewalk near UCLA. By 1980, Gagosian had opened a gallery, where he showed Sol Lewitt, Jean Michel Basquiat, Eric Fischl and Salle. Such important collectors as Douglas Cramer and real-estate developer Eli Broad began buying art from Gagosian. But by the early ‘80s, he was having trouble paying his debts, partly because his assets were frozen when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized one lending bank.

Gagosian sorted out his money problems, and in 1985 he opened a space in New York’s Chelsea district in a building owned by artist Sandro Chia. His ascent was aggressive, and his New York operation now straddles Art World Central, with galleries in SoHo and on Madison Avenue. He shows works from estates and by living artists and is also known for museum-quality historical exhibitions that are not for sale.

Some say Gagosian is opening in L.A. to compete with PaceWildenstein, a charge he denies.

“The fact of the matter is I leased my building before I knew where they were going to be,” he says. “I had heard rumors, but I don’t want to react, because if you do, you make mistakes. I’m from Los Angeles, and for a lot of reasons, it was something I thought made perfect sense.”

Indeed, many believe that Gagosian, who left L.A. trailing a cloud of gossip about his finances, is plotting his return to town as the art world’s prodigal son.

“Some say it’s simply to compete with Pace, but it’s erroneous competition because Pace is too far established for that competition to really be a sensible one,” says longtime L.A. art dealer Goulds. “I can only think he wants to pick up the challenge of where he came from, to make good on unrequited promises. I can only imagine that’s the reason because other than that, I think he has had enough experience to know it’s not a place you can treat in a casual fashion.”

Gagosian’s plans for L.A. don’t appear to be casual. Meier’s design for the 456 N. Camden Drive space formerly occupied by Salander-O’Reilly and Fred Hoffman Fine Arts calls for a new facade and a skylight shaped like a pyramid. Gagosian says the timing for the branch’s spring opening was initially determined by market forces and the availability of the 5,000-square-foot space. He leased the space after Hoffman’s rent concessions were about to expire, and the dealers are still talking about Hoffman’s possible involvement in the new gallery, Hoffman says.

“In my career as an art dealer, a lot of my moves and decisions have actually been motivated by the opportunity to create what I think is a great space for art, an exciting space with unique architectural possibilities,” Gagosian says. “This space to my mind offered all of that because it’s very, very large in terms of volume, if not square footage. It’s 22 feet high and 50 by 100 feet. We can do major sculpture installations.”

Gagosian wouldn’t discuss his stable or comment on any overlap with local galleries that have been handling work by his artists. PaceWildenstein said its overlap was minimal, and where it existed, the artist would choose representation. Kiki Smith, for example, will continue with the Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica. The gallery’s conflicts with local dealers could mount, however, if it pursues a plan to show more locally based artists, who would presumably be already established.

Leavin, who has handled such PaceWildenstein artists as Donald Judd, John Chamberlain and Oldenburg, says she expects to be shut out of having exhibitions of their work.

“These are not new artists to California,” says Wendy Brandow, Margo Leavin Gallery director.

And in the face of all that East Coast clout, some question whether taking the New York art mountain to Mohammed will make any difference to the shopping habits of major L.A. collectors who shop back east anyway.

“My habits are dictated by the picture,” says Gagosian client David Geffen. “If the picture is in Timbuktu, I’d go to Timbuktu to see it. I’m in New York, so it doesn’t make any difference to me. I think it makes a difference to people who travel far less than I do. A lot of people buy art on the spur of the moment.”

Conversely, the New York contingent wants Los Angeles to evolve into Art Headquarters West for important collectors from Southern California to the Pacific Rim, just as New York attracts collectors from beyond Manhattan.

“There’s a large number of people being transferred from Asian countries here,” says Sotheby’s Van de Kamp. “There has been in many of these Asian cultures a long tradition of collecting which has continued with people who have come from these countries and who live in Los Angeles. The interest in collecting and scholarship, I believe, must be prevalent in Los Angeles as well as the countries of the Pacific Rim.”

W hat’s more, all three New York operations say they’ll be courting not just the Hollywood high-rollers but the mid-level and beginning collector, the younger strata of agents and managers as well as professionals outside the entertainment industry.

That holds particularly true for Sotheby’s, which plans to hold two print and two jewelry sales a year. Some observers say Sotheby’s is focusing on prints and jewelry because of the California Resale Royalty Act, which sets aside 5% of art sales in secondary markets for the artist; prints are exempt.

Van de Kamp denied that Sotheby’s wanted to avoid sharing the profits. Rather, she said, the auction house wanted to tap the keen local interest in prints and jewelry and develop the ranks of beginning collectors. (Painting auctions are centered in New York and London because they fetch higher prices there.)

“Prints are a great way to attract new audiences,” she says. “You don’t need $100,000 to come to a Sotheby’s auction. You can spend $500, and everyone has a wall in their house.”

In the end, New Yorkers are mindful of the fact that the art world above all is a world of relationships, and a collector is born when he or she is wooed in the flesh, not by fax.

Says Marc Glimcher: “When they’re real collectors, they’re in here a hundred times not buying anything. They’re here one time in a hundred buying something. That’s the real soul of collecting. You can’t deal with transparencies over the telephone. And you can’t do it in 15 minutes between meetings with writers in New York. This isn’t caviar. This is real passion. That means real involvement, so hence the gallery.”

Warner Bros.