Los Angeles Art Show thrives in new, larger venue

Art Business News, Jan, 2003 by Laura Meyers

LOS ANGELES -- The 2002 edition of the Los Angeles Art Show, held October 3 to 6 in Santa Monica's Barker Hanger and sponsored by the Fine Art Dealers Association, was deemed a smashing success by its organizers. Prompted by a two-page editorial feature spread in The Los Angeles Times, more than 2,000 art lovers paying $100 apiece crowded into a three-hour opening-night benefit reception. Over the following three days, the steady stream of visitors reached more than 8,000, according to Kim Martindale, show promoter.

"We were very pleased," said Martindale. "One of the goals of this show was to bring in first-time buyers, and we had emphasized this with the art dealers. There were some paintings priced at $3,000 to $4,000. And we think our efforts succeeded. In our surveys of attendees, 30 to 40 percent had never been to the L.A. Art Show before."

The 49 participating art dealers exhibited more than 3,000 paintings from old masters to cutting-edge contemporary art and, for the first time, photographs. The highest-priced piece, at $2.5 million, was Albert Bierstad's "Rocky Mountain Sheep" (1880) offered by Spanierman Gallery of New York. But whether they were high-end or affordable, all of the art works were vetted for provenance and authenticity, according to Martindale. With this year's change of venue to a 10,000-square-foot facility, he added, booth size increased from a typical 20 feet in recent years to 40, 50 or even 60 feet. "The more expansive booths gave the dealers more space to play with," said Martindale.

In the attempt to build a West Coast art fair of equal stature, if not identical focus, to the Armory Show in New York, the Los Angeles Art Show organizers brought in a group of hip contemporary galleries, including Paul Kopeikin Gallery, a fine art photography gallery in Los Angeles; Praxis Mexico of Mexico City; Latin American Contemporary Gallery of Tegucigalpa, Honduras and (soon) Los Angeles; Jonathan Novak Fine Art of Los Angeles; John Pence Gallery of San Francisco; and Grant Selwyn Fine Art of Beverly Hills, among others. However, the mix wasn't perfect, according to Marc Selwyn and some of the other contemporary dealers who said they had many visitors more interested in the traditional works. "On the positive side," Selwyn said, "they brought a lot of people out to the show--a very good turn-out of the general public, though there were not a lot of seasoned collectors" of contemporary work.

Conversely, first-time exhibitor Marsha Child, owner of Marsha Child Contemporary in Princeton, N.J., was very encouraged by her maiden voyage to the Los Angeles Art Show. "This was my first opportunity to exhibit on the West Coast," said Child, who has owned her gallery, which specializes in contemporary Eastern and Central European works with a figurative bent, for nine years. "It was really a pleasurable show, and it was packed all weekend long. I was very pleased, too, with our sales results. I covered all my costs, and I was very encouraged with all the questions about my works, which really were new to this audience."

Longtime FADA exhibitor Martha Mitchell of Mitchell-Brown Fine Art in Scottsdale, Ariz., noted that "we were apprehensive about moving to another new location, but the crowd is definitely here. And it is a very different crowd than in prior years. We don't depend on shows like this for our gallery income--it's an effort for us to come. But this show was successful. We sold three paintings," including works by Ramos-Martinez, Clyde Aspervig and Edgar Payne.

In fact, Payne's works were the hit of this year's show, along with works by Maynard Dixon. For instance, within the first hour of the opening reception a collector snapped up Payne's "Three Navajos," priced at $365,000 at The Redfern Gallery of Laguna Beach, Calif. Gallerist Rick Redfern was thrilled with his results. "I sold $500,000 on opening night with three paintings and two more works on Friday. It's the best opening we ever had," he reported.

Another FADA member and longtime exhibitor, Vincent Vallarino of The Greenwich Gallery in Greenwich, Conn., also had a successful show.

"This show has been reinvented on several levels. It has had good collectors, and it seems that everyone is selling. At least, we've sold several things," said Vallarino, whose gallery specializes in 19th- and early 20th-century American and European works. "We've met new collectors and also some important designers. This expanded show has worked for us."