Exhibitors at Los Angeles FADA show come together in the face of tragedy

Art Business News, Nov, 2001 by Laura Meyers

LOS ANGELES--In the days after the atrocities at the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and on a field in rural Pennsylvania, a group of American art dealers pulled together and decided that "the show must go on"

The annual Fine Art Dealers Association (FADA) Los Angeles Art Show was scheduled to bow with a gala fundraiser on Sept. 13, two days after the terrorist attacks. Although the West Coast is 3,000 miles from the smoking epicenters of disaster, several of the opening night event's organizers were stranded elsewhere by the shutdown of the nation's air travel, as were nearly all of the show's participating East Coast and Midwest art dealers.

But FADA's president, New York art dealer Howard L. Rehs, urged fellow members and exhibitors to support each others' efforts and to continue with plans for the seven-year-old expo of traditional, period, modern and regional art. "It was touch and go as to whether to go ahead" explained Rehs, who was in New York City when the attack started. "But every e-mail I got urged us to go ahead, and people have been calling to say they were happy we did the show."

Though many dealers were stuck in the East, their paintings and other art works had already been trucked to Los Angeles. Rehs immediately faxed a letter to FADA members, asking them to pitch in to help with the hanging of the paintings and their eventual re-packing for exhibitors unable to attend the show. "Please lend any support you can to the individuals who are looking after [FADA members'] paintings" Rehs wrote. "I will ask all of our members, especially those who are more knowledgeable in the area of 19th-century European art, to lend their knowledge to people who would be substituting in at the exhibitors' booths.

Show organizer Kim Martindale arranged for his associates to man some of the booths, while other gallery owners called on Southern California art dealers to step in and watch over their exhibits. "Almost everyone who couldn't make it here had contacts in Los Angeles" explained Richard Triplett, who was selling works for New York's David Findlay Jr. Gallery. Triplett originally was going to help Findlay only at the opening night reception, but he filled in for the whole show. Robert Bijou of Bijou Fine Arts in Santa Barbara sat in for Robert Henry Adams Fine Art, Chicago.

Janet Mitchell, of Mitchell-Brown Fine Art Inc. of Scottsdale, Ariz., subbed at Boston-based Richardson-Clarke Gallery's berth, next door to Mitchell-Brown's own booth. "A number of us made a conscious decision to come to the show, to make a statement that this act of terror is not going to end our world" Mitchell said. Of course, Mitchell's expertise is in Western and Native American art, while Richardson-Clark specializes in American and European paintings from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. "I was in constant cell phone contact," she said.

Rehs' own booth was overseen by Victoria Roberts, who noted, "Howard is here in spirit--and on the phone constantly. He and his children were deeply affected by this. I think he, and all of us, now understand what the people in Oklahoma City went through. I've never felt so much sadness, and I wanted to be here today, to bring some beauty into my life." Rehs specializes in Academic Art, works by French, British and American artists who exhibited at the Paris Salon and London's Royal Academy from 1850 to 1920. To his surprise, even in his absence the Rehs booth did a brisk business at the FADA show. "I was amazed at the amount of people who attended and the volume of sales" he said.

The opening night event, a benefit for the Los Angeles Music Center's Fund for the Performing Arts, supporting arts education programs, had sold some 800 advance tickets. Although actual attendance was down, and only one of four co-chairwomen--Marcia Hobbs (former West Coast chairman for Christie's)--was on hand, enough funds were raised to distribute a portion to the American Red Cross disaster relief efforts. Among other attendees were well-known plein aire painter Peter Alexander and actress-art collector Diane Keaton.

The largest vetted art exposition in Southern California, the Los Angeles Art Show continued through Sept. 16 and featured 40-plus exhibitors who showcased works geared primarily to traditional tastes. The show offered paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures from many realism genres--including 19th- and 20th-century American Impressionism, Post-impressionism, California plein air landscape, Western Americana, Belle Epoque, WPA, Ashcan School, German Expressionism, maritime, Hudson River School, Taos Society, Barbizon, Academic, Pre-Raphaelites --well as American and Latin American Modernists and contemporary artists working in both realistic and abstract manners.

Among the canvases offered for sale were Granville Redmond's 1913 landscape, "Poppies and Lupine," offered by Trotter Galleries at $175,000; "Le Petit Bleau," a circa 1890 portrait by Pierre Carrier offered by Schiller & Bodo for $45,000; Charles M. Russell's watercolor and gouache, "Navajo Wild Horse Hunters," which had an asking price of $750,000 at Thomas Nygard Gallery of Bozeman, Mont.; and a companion pair of still-life paintings by 19th-century artist Severin Roesen, "Still Life with Fruit" and "Still Life with Flowers" offered for $700,000 by Greenwich Gallery, of Greenwich, Conn.