Affordable art? Right this way

SOMEWHERE between a dorm-room poster of Monet’s waterlilies and the Robert Rauschenberg painting owned by Eli Broad is another level -- the beginnings of an art collection that can be built by anyone with a few grand to spend.

In part due to the huge number of artists pouring out of Southland art schools, and the number who stay because of lower rents, Los Angeles boasts a landscape of interesting artists in virtually every medium -- and the work is generally more affordable than what is available in New York.

In L.A. and elsewhere, there are a lot of ways to buy art these days: The Internet, hair salons, coffee bars and framing shops often peddle original pieces. Student shows, art fairs, art walks, art parties and auctions abound.

But how to start? And what approach to use?

The Times asked four aesthetically minded sources to take us shopping and discuss the process of evaluating and purchasing. Each of the “buyers” -- a major collector of “lowbrow” art, a university-based curator, a veteran art consultant and an actress who only recently began buying art -- was given an imaginary four-tiered budget. What could be had for $500 or less? For $1,000? For $5,000? And for $10,000?

The shopping spree:

Greg Escalante

ESCALANTE, 50, is a legend among aficionados of lowbrow art -- work that comes out of underground comics, hot rod and tiki culture, and the overpowering imagery of Mexican Catholicism. He’s the “curator” of Robert Williams’ Juxtapoz magazine, the movement’s bible, and co-owns the Copro-Nason Gallery, which recently moved to Bergamot Station.

“I don’t really fancy myself this big art collector,” he said. “I just like the art and the artists. I don’t really have this big possession thing. I just wanted to be part of the art scene.”

Escalante, a former art student and now an Orange County bond trader, owns almost 300 original works. His most expensive piece is a $16,000, sex-and-violence-driven Robert Williams painting.

Still, his first stop was the Art Annex, off Melrose Avenue. It’s both a place to buy funky T-shirts and baseball caps, and a sort-of gallery that mounts shows of painting or pop art every month. (It’s part of a larger project called Cannibal Flower that throws elaborate nightclub-like openings -- with bands, DJs and performance art -- in downtown L.A.)

Co-owner “L.C.” (Leonard Croskey) used to manage the store at La Luz de Jesus, the Los Feliz gallery that helped put lowbrow on the map. Escalante was immediately drawn to an untitled painting (for $500) by the artist Asylum -- a Virgin Mary painted on driftwood with a spray can. “It looks folky, but it’s also street,” Escalante said. “This guy really has something to say.”

Maybe not as much to say as Kii Arens, owner of the La-La Land gallery. Arens, dressed in pink Hawaiian shorts and a “Wham-O” T-shirt, offered an extended, almost hyperactive tour and sales pitch that should earn him a small part in a Quentin Tarantino movie. (Escalante later called Arens, who makes his living primarily as a graphic artist, the best entertainment he’d ever had in an art gallery.)

La-La Land is dedicated to pop culture, kitsch and neglected mediums such as 3-D, thrift-store paintings and paint-by-numbers. Its current exhibition, “You Lightbox My Life,” is devoted to Arens’ own work. Escalante’s favorite was a painting called “Highway None,” depicting aliens landing on a series of freeways. “And it got even better when he pointed out the details, like the Maserati limo,” he said. Escalante, a native Californian, is fascinated with the way artists render freeways, and this was his pick for $1,000 or less.

Next stop: New Image Art near Fairfax Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. Escalante called it “the blue chip of the Beautiful Losers” school.” (The name comes from a recent touring show at the Orange County Museum of Art.) “The Beautiful Losers art movement is a second generation, more realistic Juxtapoz style,” he says. “More skateboard, graffiti, hip-hop.” Like hip-hoppers, many of these artists go by handles instead of their given names.

What Escalante found for less than $5,000 was a door by the rising star Neck Face, an artist whose work Escalante knew and enjoyed. The door showed an inferno scene with demons and torture.

His favorite discoveries, though, were two young desert-based artists who call themselves the Date Farmers. Escalante liked the post-industrial look of their work -- painting on corrugated metal, with a combination of folk-art roughness and fine-art composition. He especially liked the paintings called “Super Loco” and “Cholo.” For $10,000, he would be able to buy several paintings by the duo, as well as a robot made of Mexican coffee cans and beer bottle caps.

“Sometimes I see an art piece that’s so outrageous, so good, I can’t understand how it even exists,” Escalante said. “And I can’t imagine the artist doing a better piece. When I see one, I always buy right away.”

Though he trades bonds for a living, Escalante doesn’t worry much about how his art will appreciate: “I did when I first started buying art. I bought some Ed Ruscha and Bruce Nauman prints because I thought they’d be a good investment. But I had them on my wall and they just didn’t do much for me. So I went the other way and just bought stuff I liked.”

Meg Linton

WHEN Linton ran galleries in Orange County and Venice Beach in the ‘90s, she worked exclusively with artists recently out of school and sold most pieces for $1,000 and less. Her aim: to develop a generation of collectors to come up alongside the artists.

These days, she’s director of the Ben Maltz Gallery & Public Programs at Otis College of Art and Design. Linton, 38, has a small collection of her own, and rarely spends more than $500 a year.

She looks for work that appeals to her at an emotional level and avoids pieces she calls one-liners. “And I also look for things that I don’t understand, because if you’re going to be living with it for a while you want to have some mystery,” Linton said. “I like something where I have no idea of what it’s about but I really love looking at it.”

Art walks, art fairs and MFA shows offer a selection of affordable work, so Linton headed to Supersonic, a show for graduates of eight Southland art schools. The show, which ended last month in three buildings at the L.A. Design Center, included almost 150 artists.

There was striking work by Ginny Cook -- a piece made from “photographic paper and three weeks of rain” -- as well as by Kia Neill, whose “Buffalo Stampede” was an assemblage of hand-carved buffaloes falling out of a wooden shelf.

Linton’s favorite (at $4,000), though, was Ann Diener’s “Field Segment 2,” a large, complicated drawing that combined a subtle grid with a series of curves over it. “I’ve been watching Ann’s work develop over the years,” she said. “It’s amazing the way she’s able to get the different layers. There’s a velocity to the work that’s really amazing.”

Equally arresting was the work at Domestic Setting, a commercial gallery inside Jeanne Patterson’s home with a white picket fence in Mar Vista. Patterson got the idea for the place when her then-husband moved out and she realized how pretty the rooms looked without any furniture. The gallery, she says, allows people to see how art will really look inside a house.

The theme of a recent show, ironically, is husband-and-wife collaboration. Linton’s favorite, for just under $1,000, was an ink-and-gouache on paper by Siobhan McClure and Greg Rose called “Strange Conversation,” which blended styles in what might be a comment on gender. “It feels like a conversation,” Linton said of the piece, which shows a telephone pole and wire and a mysterious shape looming. “It really does.”

After a stop at CherryDeLosReyes to peruse its exhibition “Paper Beats Rock,” it was on to L.A. Louver. The established blue-chip gallery -- it represents David Hockney, R.B. Kitaj and Ed Kienholz -- throws an emerging-artist show every few years called Rogue Wave.

Linton’s favorites in Rogue Wave ’05 were small volcanoes painted by Violet Hopkins, striking for their detail. But the piece that excited her the most wasn’t part of the show, but a bronze sculpture by Peter Shelton. “Half Chicken Head” (for under $10,000) seemed to be a face, organ and fist at the same time. “I’ve loved his work for a long time,” she said. “His sensibility is really his: You can pick out a Peter Shelton anywhere.”

A Joe Biel painting that Linton saw at a recent Acuna-Hansen show was her choice for under $500.

Linton says people are often intimidated in galleries. “Go up and ask,” she says. “Have the confidence. Just say, ‘Can you tell me a little something about this work? I’m not getting it here, is there something I need to know?’ And ask to see what’s in the back room: You might make some discoveries.”

She also recommends joining collectors groups, which typically arrange visits to artist’s studios. “People say, ‘You should be able to walk in and buy.’ But they’ll take classes on learning how to taste wine,” Linton said. “There’s a language. A certain level or knowledge is important to figure out what you want.

“It’s fun to seek out the pieces that will acquire a history and meaning for you,” she said. “When I talk to some collectors, each piece has a story behind it.”

Patricia Hamilton

HAMILTON exudes a brassy confidence, developed over years running a New York gallery and, since moving to L.A. 15 years ago, buying art for millionaires. These days most of her clients are Hollywood types who like to remain anonymous -- mostly actors and comedians -- and she purchases pieces from $500 to $3 million for them.

“He wanted to buy trash,” she says of a musician she once worked for. “And he was going to be sick of it in six months. I asked him, ‘How do you feel about Yanni?’ And that stopped it.”

She buys the same way she used to put together shows: “My big thing is, ‘I’ve gotta call you tomorrow or the next day. If I dream about your work, you’re in.’ Staying power is what it’s all about.”

Hamilton, who is in her 50s, catches almost every show at about two-dozen galleries. When asked where she’d go to build her own collection, she chose two major art complexes: 6150 Wilshire (just west of Fairfax) and the galleries in and around Culver City.

She started on Wilshire at the gallery run by Daniel Weinberg. “He’s got such good taste you can’t believe he’s heterosexual,” Hamilton said. She liked work by Victoria Gitman, who does drawings based on Old Masters paintings, and Daniel Zeller’s fractal-like drawings, but not well enough to buy.

Nearby, at Roberts & Tilton, she was drawn to the large figurative paintings by the very hot Kehinde Wiley, but they were beyond her budget. Then there was Barry McGee, whose styles comes from the San Francisco graffiti scene: His most affordable pieces are bottles with faces painted on them. “He’s someone I’ve been watching for five years,” she said. “I think his pieces are whimsical and well-drawn.”

At the Mark Foxx Gallery, Hamilton saw a large, richly textured painting that stopped her in her tracks -- Brian Fahlstrom’s “Final Theme.” She says: “It’s got an interesting landscapey, surreal look, and he really knows how to paint.” It was her clear choice for the $5,000-and-under category.

ACME had a show called “Everything in Particular,” which involved German artists in L.A. and L.A. artists in Germany. Her favorite piece was a small wood sculpture by Jana Euler that she considered a steal for $500.

The last stop on Wilshire was a few blocks east, at Marc Selwyn Fine Art. Selwyn showed her a series of pieces by Lee Mullican, a member of a midcentury West Coast group called “the Dynaton” that bridged European Surrealism and New York Abstract Expressionism. Mullican’s work, which is dark and intricate, will be part of a retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art this fall.

“I like the line, the compositions, the intelligence,” Hamilton said of her favorite piece, “Enchanted Mesa,” adding, “I can’t think of too many artists about to have a retrospective you can get for $1,000. And I’ve always been interested in surrealism.”

At Western Project, one of an increasingly chic stretch of galleries in Culver City, Hamilton discovered a large, heavy-surfaced painting by Oliver Arms called “Slow Ride.” (It was in the back of a gallery mostly devoted to the work of Ellina Kevorkian, whose pre-Raphaelite-inspired paintings she called “the best show in town right now.”)

Arms’ paintings take three to six months to make, involving hundreds of layers of paint built up and sanded down. For $10,000, she said, “it’s a bargain. I love abstract work, and this is a killer abstract painting. It’s well thought out, it’s original. This guy obviously lives, eat, breathes painting -- and I’ve never met him.”

Jessica Whitney Gould

UNLIKE some art connoisseurs, who know what they like the minute they walk into a room, Gould tries to get a sense of the artist’s process and creative personality.

First exposed to culture by her grandmother, Shirley Bank Gould, the wife of composer Morton Gould, she was turned on to art mostly through artist friends back in New York. Since moving to Los Angeles in 2001, she’s been buying art as she makes a living as an actress, through a combination of TV, commercials and teaching.

“I like to be able to see the craft in a piece,” Gould said, “which I can’t in a lot of conceptual art. I’m just not sophisticated enough.”

She now owns about 15 works, which she says she doesn’t see as a collection but a series of “individual pieces that I want to live with.”

For her recent collecting excursion, Gould’s biggest success was at the Angles Gallery in Santa Monica, and its group show, “The Great Outdoors.” Amid impressive pieces by artists such as Russell Crotty, Tom Allen and Todd Hebert, Gould was taken by Lisa Mihm’s large, untitled painting of a man with a backpack in the snow.

“The more I look at this piece the more interesting it is. They say you’re not supposed to, but I love getting up close,” Gould said, standing with her nose a few inches from the piece’s surface. At that vantage, the paint’s texture and the artist’s bold brushstrokes were evident.

The Mihm painting, at $4,200, became her choice for the $5,000 and under category.

The piece that most excited her in the gallery was a triptych by Kelly McLane. The artist takes scenes from the Southern California landscape and builds a vaguely allegorical narrative around them, typically using a combination of graphite and oils.

One of McLane’s pieces, “The Wild Mustang Ranch of Trona” -- although beyond her budget -- crept into Gould’s thoughts and conversation the rest of the day.

In Chinatown, she looked at a few shows that didn’t seem to her to put enough emphasis on skill or beauty: “I feel like the artist is saying, ‘Ha ha ha ha ha.’ It seemed trendy.”

But she also dropped in at the David Kordansky Gallery, where a Mark Flores work she’d been talking about -- an enamel-on-metal diptych called “Flower and Snake” -- was available for $900. “He makes the snake this gorgeous thing, not slithery and evil.”

Gould ended the day at the LMAN Gallery, where a show called “Asian Aesthetic” looks at non-Asian artists who bear some kinship with the East’s art tradition. A tiny canvas by Mark Masyga, in which he placed broken rectangles against a plain background, struck her as “like an interesting puzzle to look at,” one that made fresh use of color and was a good value at $500.

Gould’s art shopping ended without finding a piece for around $10,000. She decided she’d use the money, if she had it, to get onto a waiting list for a painting by Kelly McLane, whose work she’d seen at Angles.

A few days later, Gould was still thinking about the McLane piece and wondering if she might try to save up and purchase one for real.

“If you’re constantly attracted to an artist’s work,” she said, “it’s something worth waiting for.”

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Galleries that were visited

Some galleries are currently closed for summer vacation. Call for hours and openings.

ACME, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., (323) 857-5942

Angles Gallery, 2230 Main St., Santa Monica, (310) 396-5019

Art Annex: Cannibal Flower Gallery Store, 657 Spaulding Ave., L.A., (323) 653-2520

Blum & Poe, 2754 S. La Cienega Blvd., L.A., (310) 836-2062

CherryDeLosReyes, 12611 Venice Blvd., L.A., (310) 398-7404

Domestic Setting, 3774 Stewart Ave., L.A., (310) 391-8023

Marc Foxx, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., (323) 857-5571

Hunsaker/Schlesinger Fine Art, 2525 Michigan Ave. (Bergamot Station), Santa Monica, (310) 828-1133

David Kordansky Gallery, 510 Bernard St., L.A., (323) 222-1482

La-La Land, 6450 Santa Monica Blvd., L.A., (323) 464-9964

L.A. Louver, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955

LMAN Gallery, 949 Chung King Road, L.A., (213) 628-3883

New Image Art, 7908 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 654-2192

Roberts & Tilton, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., (323) 549-0223

Sandroni Rey, 2762 S. La Cienega Blvd., L.A., (310) 280-0111

Marc Selwyn Fine Art, 6222 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., (323) 933-9911

Western Project, 3830 Main St., Culver City, (310) 838-0609

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The shoppers

JESSICA WHITNEY GOULD: Gould, who is about 30, is an actress. “I like to be able to see the craft in a piece,” she says, “which I can’t in a lot of conceptual art.”

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GREG ESCALANTE: Escalante, 50, a bond trader, says the art market is so complicated and intangible that he doesn’t use it for investment purposes. “It’s not like the stock market, where you call up a broker and say, ‘What’s the bid on that? I’ll sell!’”

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PATRICIA HAMILTON: Hamilton is an art consultant, and former art dealer, now in her 50s. “My big thing is, ‘I’ve gotta call you tomorrow or the next day. If I dream about your work, you’re in.’”

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MEG LINTON: Linton, 38, is director of the Ben Maltz Gallery & Public Programs at Otis College of Art + Design. “Setting a price range is important,” she says of her collecting, “because it becomes like any other addiction.”