Who Needs Oscar? They Had Kelly

The Oscar nominations could have taken place on another planet. This crowd, heavy with leading entertainment industry figures, had basically gone ga-ga over artist Ellsworth Kelly.

“I couldn’t believe I was sitting with the big cheese,” director James Burrows said about his fortuitous table assignment at a dinner in Kelly’s honor Tuesday night.

Neither could Vidal Sassoon and his wife, Ronnie. “I have no idea why we’re sitting at this table,” he said. “But it’s an absolute pleasure. When we bought our Kelly last year, there was almost a spiritual excitement. I’m a shape man. I cut shapes.”

It didn’t matter that it wasn’t an intimate affair--how could 290 people packed in a tented tennis court ever be? The party for the Museum of Contemporary Art’s top individual donors to kick off the blockbuster Kelly retrospective (opening at MOCA on Sunday) didn’t need to be.

And no one seemed to mind that the interior of Greenacres, the former Harold Lloyd estate now owned by MOCA trustee Ron Burkle, was completely off limits.

“We had a great chat,” said Carroll O’Connor of his Kelly encounter. “He talked about enjoying Archie Bunker on TV. He said, ‘I’ve been waiting to meet you.’ You never know who’s watching you,” the actor, clearly dazzled, added.

Though Kelly lives and works in the foothills of the Berkshires in New York, this was something of a homecoming for the artist, snappily dressed in a double breasted gray suit and Kelly-like gray and white minimalist necktie from Hugo Boss, sponsor of the show that originated at the Guggenheim Museum. His shirt, however, was strictly his own signature, the color of jacaranda blossoms. “It’s his L.A. shirt,” said Kelly’s friend Jack Shear.

In addition to being a painter, Kelly is a noted printmaker and sculptor. He has been making prints at Gemini in West Hollywood for 27 years, said co-owner Sidney Felson. “I make sculptures in the Valley,” Kelly said of his association with sculpture fabricator Peter Carlson.

Kelly, considered one of the country’s most important figures in contemporary art, thinks the largest concentration of his work is in West Coast collections.

“I’m trying to figure it out,” he said. “I think it’s the climate and the color and the space. My pictures need great space.”

Many of Kelly’s top collectors were present, including Phil and Bea Gersh (who added a large new painting to their collection last month), Edythe Broad and producer Doug Cramer, who owns the largest Kelly collection in the West--about 50 pieces “including postcards,” he said.

What attracts him to Kelly’s work? “It’s about essentials,” said Cramer. “He somehow strips everything apart and shows you in color or form what truth and beauty are.” Then Cramer glanced around the tent and quipped, “I haven’t heard one person discuss the Academy Awards or hear the least concern over the shocking lack of Madonna nominations.”