Traditional embraces contemporary at LA Art Fairs

Art Business News, Jan, 2004 by Laura Meyers

LOS ANGELES -- Visit any Southern California collector's home these days, and you're likely to encounter a cheery hodgepodge of fine and decorative arts. Arts and Crafts furnishings are paired with contemporary Asian prints and ceramics, stylish Deco-era Biedemeier pieces are coupled with Old Masters, and today's leading edge sculptures often find a home in traditional settings.

And so it was, too, at Los Angeles' fall art fairs. Organizers of three notable art shows attempted to broaden their shows' attendance bases by showcasing contemporary art alongside traditional and period works.

For the first time, contemporary dealers joined the mix at the annual Arts of Asia & Oceania Show, held in October and organized by Caskey & Lees. A month later, another Caskey & Lees show, the L.A. Decorative Arts Fair, also featured a mix of contemporary and historical works.

"We always like to try new things" producer Elizabeth Lees said. "We wanted to make the [Asian art] show more modern with more of a fusion look, so this year there were contemporary ceramics, prints and paintings."

Kim Martindale, organizer of the Los Angeles Art Show, also held in October, echoed Lees. "We are making an effort to make it a diverse show, with equal doses of historical-traditional and contemporary-modern, to really give people a broad spectrum of choice."

The two-year-old Decorative Arts Fair brought together an array of antique and contemporary art and furnishings from a variety of cultures and time periods. "We ourselves have a real eclectic collection at home," said Lees, who owns the show with her husband, Bill Caskey. "We thought, why shouldn't this material be shown together at a fair? Collectors are beginning to do the same thing in their own homes."

"I think bringing contemporary Asian art to this antiques-oriented show is a nice bridge" said Randi Rosenberg, an Oakland, Calif., art dealer and curator who works with contemporary artists in, primarily, East Asia. Another dealer of contemporary Asian art, Ren Brown of Bodega Bay, Calif., observed, "A lot of these artists combine techniques using, say, traditional woodblock, and then they add a contemporary twist, like metallic finishes. There is a surprising amount of interest for these [contemporary] works at this show."

A year ago, the Fine Art Dealers Association's (FADA) annual Los Angeles Art Show was significantly reinvented to add a contemporary component to what some L.A. collectors had considered a hidebound art fair. The new initiative was a bit ironic: The first FADA Art Fair, held in 1995, was designed to provided an alternative venue for the FADA members' traditional, classical and historical works. The FADA Show became known as the West Coast source for 19th- and 20th-century works of European and American artwork.

The 2002 (now-renamed) L.A. Art Show, the first outing with contemporary work, was well attended by two sets of collectors: one group was curious, drawn in by the pre-publicity about adventuresome, contemporary galleries; the other group consisted of steadfast supporters of FADA's primary thrust, scholarly traditional, period and regional art.

This year, however, the two divergent focal points converged more seamlessly. Contemporary galleries such as COFA/Claire Oliver Fine Art of New York, Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art of Los Angeles and Stockholm's Wetterling Gallery exhibited side-by-side to FADA stalwarts such as New York's Rehs Galleries, which specializes in British and American Academic art, and William A. Karges Fine Art, of Carmel and Los Angeles, which focuses on early California and American paintings.

FADA president Howard Rehs touted the fair as having "achieved the perfect balance of traditional and contemporary exhibitors," with exhibition space divided 50-50, giving visitors "a chance to study and explore the changes in art over the last 150 years. The feedback I've been getting is that everyone loves the diversity of the exhibitors." Or, as art critic Peter Frank, who usually writes about contemporary art for L.A. Weekly, said, wearing a grin from ear to ear, "This show is a great surprise. I'm just loving the Old Masters."

Indeed, longtime FADA exhibitor Spanierman Gallery, a New York dealer specializing in historical 19th- and 20th-century American art, used the art fair to launch Spanierman Contemporary, showcasing "edgy" paintings and digital prints on vinyl by Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein and abstract paintings by Jill Grimes. But Spanierman also exhibited traditional paintings by artists such as Thomas Moran, Childe Hassam and Thomas Hart Benton in an adjacent booth.

Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery of Tucson, Ariz., and Santa Fe, N.M., presented works by Maynard Dixon and artists of the early 20th-century Taos Society, but it also exhibited very well-received contemporary horse sculptures by artist Star Liana York.

Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Mitchell Brown Fine Art, whose primary focus is art of the American West from 1880 to 1950, also successfully showcased traditional-style works by living artists. "They have a tie-in to the historical works," said gallery owner Jeff Mitchell. "It is really attractive for collectors to have a contemporary piece for a fraction of the cost of the period works."