Where rubberneckers meet rubber noses

They must have arrived in clown cars; art gallery owner Robert Berman believes that 2,000 visitors, give or take a few, attended the opening of “A Thousand Clowns, Give or Take a Few,” an exhibition of clown paintings -- yes, clown paintings -- at Berman’s two gallery spaces at Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station.

Both galleries, which stand across the parking lot from each other, were jammed with guests ogling hundreds of clowns, grinning, dancing, weeping, sleeping, playing accordions and sniffing daisies, plastered from floor to ceiling.

Almost lost in the crush of bodies was actress Diane Keaton, who shares Berman’s fascination for clown art -- and whose just-published book, “Clown Paintings,” from PowerHouse Books, inspired the exhibition, which runs through December.

In one gallery is a motley clan of clowns mostly by amateurs, including those featured in Keaton’s book.

The other contains what Berman calls a “clown-ological” retrospective of clown depictions from the early 1900s to the present, titled “From Picasso to Extremo,” including works by Oregon’s Extremo the Clown.

Keaton’s chosen attire -- a belted black leather jacket and skirt, black leather gloves, black fishnet hose rolled down around the ankle just above her black high-heeled pumps, glasses with violet lenses -- seemed conservative compared with some of the outfits selected by this crowd. Gallery-goers in typical Westside black mingled with visitors sporting pink evening gowns, transparent plastic raincoats, giant green sunglasses or big red noses.

But Keaton’s Annie Hall voice was unmistakable, ringing with glee as she greeted a new arrival: “Isn’t this insane?”

Munching Red Vines and boxes of Barnum’s Animals -- a weird complement to the requisite gallery-opening fare of plastic cups of wine -- visitors first craned their necks, then lowered their eyes to take in the red-nosed portraits. Most seemed awed by the total clown-surround.

That is, except for one woman standing outside the gallery, overheard confessing to her companion in a whisper: “I’m kind of scared of the clowns.”

Ten years ago, Santa Monica art gallery owner Berman began collecting clown paintings. He acquired both blue-chip clown portraits by famed artists, including Picasso, Georges Rouault and Man Ray, and the kind of amateur clown paintings you find at swap meets alongside armless Barbies, coonskin caps and toasters that had browned their last slice in 1959.

But then, about three years ago, Berman began encountering a peculiar phenomenon: Sellers of clown paintings were not as eager to deal as they once were. Paintings he could once acquire for $25 now had asking prices of $125 or more. When it came to clown paintings, Berman no longer had a corner on the flea market.

“They started saying: ‘If you don’t buy it, Diane Keaton will,’ ” Berman says. “That’s how I found out she was collecting clown paintings.”

It turned out that Keaton had been clown hunting for about three years, ever since she experienced “an epiphany” upon glimpsing an intriguing clown painting at a Rose Bowl swap meet.

This desperate-looking clown, with its tongue lolling out like an eager cocker spaniel’s, a floppy candy-striped bow tie and a potted cactus on its head changed Keaton’s life forever -- and is now featured on the cover of her book.

” I don’t see them as kitsch,” Keaton insisted in a recent telephone interview. “Some of them are remarkable portraits in my opinion, and I stand behind that.”

“Clown Paintings” pairs glossy reproductions of 66 selected clowns with commentary from well-known American comedians including Woody Allen, Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldberg, Goldie Hawn and Jerry Lewis. Keaton -- who has also edited four books of photography, including “Still Life,” a collection of movie stills from Hollywood’s golden era, and “Local News: Tabloid Pictures From the Los Angeles Herald Express 1936-1961” -- got a wide range of responses to her request for comments.

Some sing the praises of the clown; others, including Candice Bergen, are less enthusiastic: “How much do I have to pay to not have one of these paintings hanging in my house?” wrote Bergen in her essay, titled “Compendium of the Creepy.”

Berman collects both high- and low-end clown art; Keaton sticks mostly to the amateur stuff. But both have the same mission: to garner some respect for the clown painting, which seems to rank at least a few notches below the velvet Elvis on the art scale.

“We both do it out of a search for something true and good,” observes Berman. “Clowns are considered the most base form of art there is, like the flower. But a Georgia O’Keeffe flower is not bad, and a Picasso clown is not bad. It’s a matter of deciding what is good, bad and in between. “

Keaton’s identification with clowns is a bit more personal. “The way I dress -- well, we can just go ahead and rag on that -- I’m more sedate now, but I had a real strong clown period at one time in my life,” Keaton says. “I still have a leaning toward it; there’s something about hiding, about framing yourself in that way, that has a big appeal. Which, of course, stems from the fact that basically I feel -- it’s just classic stuff, nothing very interesting or unusual about it -- well, low self-esteem is, I guess, the best way to put it.

“When you are a performer, I think there is always this need to be somehow more than you actually are, more than normal -- and clowns take things very far. So as much as I sometimes say: ‘Oh, those are the ugliest things I’ve ever seen,’ there came a point that I thought: ‘My God, these are kind of extraordinary.’ ”

Though the mood at the opening was for the most part joyous, one visitor was distressed by what he saw. A man who said he was a member of that prankish performance art troupe the Los Angeles Cacophony Society, wandered lonely as a clown -- that is, wearing full clown suit, makeup and a red cotton-candy wig. He identified himself only by his “clown name,” Apostate. He, too, collects clown paintings.

“It’s been a project of mine to do a clown show, and she beat me to the punch,” he said wistfully, before walking away into the dark, his big shoes flopping against the pavement.