Art in the Eighties : A More Mature San Diego Art Scene Welcomes New Era

It was a decade of irony and extremes in the art world. Egos and dollar signs crowded out art’s more enduring values, while painting returned with a passion lost since the 1950s.

Julian Schnabel and his fellow enfants terribles graduated from art school to instant stardom while the long-suffering, long-dead Vincent Van Gogh must have returned in his humble grave as auction records fell, one after the other, with the sale of his paintings.

Neither big money nor big names jostled San Diego’s art community as they did New York’s, but both left a subtle imprint. The San Diego art scene passed the ‘80s with one eye on the mirror, assessing its every move for grace and credibility. Despite its self-consciousness and persistent need for reassurance, the scene grew, developed and matured these past 10 years.

Its course was freckled with ambition and, occasionally, excessive zeal. It was also scarred with setbacks, but when it made the cover of Art in America magazine last month, it grinned shamelessly and temporarily forgot its troubles.

What follows is a summary of the incidents and trends that defined San Diego art in the ‘80s.

ACTIVIST ART

The San Diego Arts Festival: Treasures of the Soviet Union was orchestrated by Mayor Maureen O’Connor to “put San Diego on the cultural map.” It did bring a temporary glamour to the city and did heighten the local public awareness of the arts, but artists here have been bringing another, more substantial, kind of national visibility to the area for years by addressing urgent political and social issues. Their art, entwined with social activism, has emerged as a major force in the local community and beyond.

The Border Art Workshop/ Taller de Arte Fronterizo (BAW/TAF) formed in 1984 as a fluid, interdisciplinary group focusing on the U.S. border with Mexico. Through exhibitions, performances and writings, its members have pushed beyond the obvious political and geographic definitions of the border to explore its social, psychological and aesthetic dimensions. They stage an annual “Border Realities” show at the Centro Cultural de la Raza, and this year have called national attention to facets of border culture through exhibitions in New York and San Francisco, and related articles in regional and national publications.

Other artists, working individually and collectively, have also elicited healthy dialogue through their work by asking challenging questions and exposing abrasive truths. David Avalos, a founding member of BAW/TAF, depicted the arrest of an undocumented worker in his 1986 “San Diego Donkey Cart,” which he installed in front of the city’s federal courthouse. Though the artist had received permission for the temporary display, a U.S. District Court judge ordered the removal of the work, claiming it was a security risk. Avalos sued, and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was dismissed this year.

Expressive freedom was tested here again in 1988, when Avalos and fellow artists Louis Hock and Elizabeth Sisco designed a poster focusing on the hypocrisy of San Diego’s reliance on undocumented labor. The poster, affixed to 100 city buses during Super Bowl week, greeted visitors with the proclamation, “Welcome to America’s Finest Tourist Plantation.” This year, the same group, with the addition of Deborah Small, created a billboard that, again, mocks the city’s self-aggrandizing slogan while pointing a finger at its persistent problems. Much controversy ensued from both projects, and in the case of the billboard, a stifling of artistic freedom resulted, mirroring the censorship debate in Congress. The nonprofit Installation Gallery was denied city funds for its visual art program as punishment for sponsoring the billboard, though the city’s recently established Commission for Arts and Culture recommended full funding.

PUBLIC ART

Art in the public domain has been one of the decade’s most volatile issues in San Diego--and nationwide--whether or not it addressed potent political themes. The San Diego Unified Port District, potentially the city’s biggest patron of public art, thwarted all three of the projects proposed by its art advisory committee. In 1984, the commission approved an Ellsworth Kelly sculpture but insisted on so many changes that the artist withdrew.

Last year, after a prolonged debate, the commissioners rejected proposals for harbor-side works by Vito Acconci and Roberto Salas. Their refusal to accept the recommendations of the prestigious committee of art professionals, whom they appointed (deferring instead to the amorphous authority of “public taste”), resulted in an embarrassing stumble in the city’s crawl toward cultural sophistication.

Despite a prevailing conservatism toward publicly sited works--edging toward hostility since the Port District fiasco--public and private groups have planted a broad and nourishing array of art across the San Diego landscape.

The cities of Carlsbad and Escondido have each commissioned challenging, yet accessible, works as part of ongoing programs. The county Public Arts Advisory Council got an earlier start, having initiated its acquisitions program in the 1970s with a percentage of public construction funds--but its largely uninspired purchases and commissions have lagged even the fledgling North County programs.

Sushi Performance and Visual Arts Gallery has sponsored an annual Street Series for the past five years, enabling artists to temporarily interrupt the numbing quotidian flow with provocative and often controversial statements. Avalos’ “San Diego Donkey Cart” was created as part of the Sushi program.

By far the most ambitious ongoing public art program of the last decade stems from the private initiative of the Stuart Foundation. Established in 1982, the Stuart Collection now contains eight commissioned, site-specific outdoor sculptures on the rambling campus of UC San Diego. A permanent and richly satisfying antidote to the vagaries of other public art programs, the Stuart Collection, “is not about cosmetics. It’s about real experience. We’re not trying to decorate the campus, but are presenting ways to deal with the world, to explore the world. The collection is there as a resource,” said Mary Beebe, collection director.

MUSEUMS

Expansion has been the watchword of American museums in the ‘80s, and local institutions have proved no exception. Moving beyond their image as elitist enclaves, San Diego museums have stepped up education efforts, community outreach programs and audience development campaigns, while enlarging their facilities, collections and budgets.

Steven Brezzo, San Diego Museum of Art director since 1980, characterizes the museum’s pre-’80s attitude as insular. Since his appointment, the museum has sought wider appeal through a major new education program linked to the city schools, and through exhibitions of such popular subjects as the Muppets, cowboys and Dr. Seuss.

Important collections of Indian art and work by Toulouse-Lautrec entered the collection in recent years, but, Brezzo said, “Of chief significance during the past ten years is not what the public would see--stabilization of the museum’s future through the development of a respectable endowment.” During Brezzo’s tenure the museum’s endowment has doubled, reaching $16 million. The most promising of numerous staff additions is the curator of modern and contemporary art, the first such position in the museum’s history.

The La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art assumed new leadership and, consequently, a shift in character during the past decade as well. Hugh Davies was appointed director in 1983 after a ten-year reign by Sebastian (Lefty) Adler--a director with “a good eye and a difficult personality,” Davies said. Adler’s tenure was one of consolidation, Davies said, during which the museum extended its local and regional reputation to gain national and international respect.

Davies said the museum has since been in an “expansionist phase,” best characterized by the opening of a downtown annex and the broadening of the permanent collection to reflect the pluralism of the current art world. The most concrete manifestation of the museum’s growth, however, is its plan to dramatically expand its La Jolla facility. Internationally acclaimed architect Robert Venturi has been contracted for the job, which is scheduled to be completed in late 1992, during the museum’s 50th anniversary year.

The newest member of the local museum community is the Museum of Photographic Arts, which opened in 1983. The museum was created when a group of photography patrons who had been presenting informal exhibitions since 1981 decided to seek a permanent facility.

After a space in Balboa Park’s Casa de Balboa was made available, the group conducted a search for a director and hired Arthur Ollman, a photographer who had been teaching at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art and exhibiting throughout the country.

The museum opened May 1, 1983, and in just 6 1/2 years has established a reputation for excellence. As one of only six institutions in the country devoted strictly to photography, the museum has conceived a number of critically acclaimed exhibitions, including retrospectives of works by Roy de Carava, William Klein and Ansel Adams.

Exhibits have traveled to such prestigious institutions as the Chicago Art Institute and the High Museum in Atlanta. Its current retrospective of Arnold Newman is in Barcelona, Spain, and will travel to Switzerland, Holland, Israel and Tokyo.

“We felt it was important to be exporting ideas as well as importing them,” Ollman said. “It’s very important for us to send out world-class exhibitions so people can see something from San Diego other than traditional tourist material.”

While the astronomical prices paid for paintings at auction have earned a place for art on the front page, this “consumer feeding-frenzy,” as Davies calls it, has not benefited museums.

In fact, institutions nationwide have suffered from the lure of the auction block. Gifts of art have dropped precipitously as collectors’ potential profits have risen. The art market’s seductive glamour, together with a 1986 change in the tax laws affecting the deductibility of appreciated gifts of art have dealt a double blow to museums, prompting them to be even more resourceful with limited acquisition funds.

In the case of the Timken Art Gallery, this situation has necessitated a shift in emphasis, away from collecting and toward education. “We’re not able to collect as the early board did,” said Nancy Petersen, director of the gallery since 1980. “So how do you get attention? By reaching out, to schools and universities.” The gallery, which boasts a select collection from the Byzantine era through Impressionism, has also revised its policy in the last ten years to permit the borrowing and lending of works. And it has initiated “Focus” exhibitions that revolve around a single work in the gallery’s collection, supplemented by 15 to 20 other works.

Less affected by the market boom is the Mingei International Museum of World Folk Art, which, according to founding director Martha Longenecker, has demonstrated nothing but continuity since opening in 1978. Forty shows and 14 publications later, the museum is--what else?--looking to expand. It has recently been granted a larger space in Balboa Park by the city council. The move is at least several years away, Longenecker said, and the current La Jolla space will be retained until 1998.

By then, a promising new institution hopes to have established itself on San Diego’s cultural landscape. The African American Museum of Fine Arts originated this year as a museum without walls, organizing shows for other spaces, under the direction of Shirley Williams.

Currently, no venue exists for the ongoing exhibition of African American art, Williams said, except for the Educational Cultural Complex, which shows work by local artists. Other institutions have had spotty programs “but not without pressure being applied,” Williams said. The future museum, expected to be downtown, will address this void and satisfy the community’s “thirst” for such a space, she said.

GALLERIES

The community’s thirst for multicultural representation will be tested in the decade to come, in part by the response to the African American Museum. If the decade just passed has taught anything, it’s that San Diego has little appetite for galleries showing serious contemporary art. The viewing audience for such work is healthy enough, but the buying audience is less than robust.

Tourist-oriented galleries continue to thrive, while those devoted to innovative, meaningful expression have become endangered. In the last ten years, mora than a dozen galleries have opened, each more earnest and determined than the last. But all have dissolved after a year or two of scant sales.

Among the most disheartening casualties are the Dietrich Jenny, Anuska, Patty Aande, Wita Gardiner, Natalie Bush and Henry Vincent galleries. The current crop, including the Oneiros, PhotoWest and David Zapf galleries, offers fresh and challenging fare, but the prognosis for a vibrant, stable community of galleries looks dim. Only a few such enterprises evaded the revolving-door syndrome and survived the entire decade, but none can attribute its good fortune to local support.

The Thomas Babeor Gallery and the Tasende Gallery opened in La Jolla in 1980 and 1979, respectively, with their owners recognizing the frailty of the local art market and concentrating their efforts elsewhere. Babeor admits to having only one consistent client in San Diego; he now sells primarily to other dealers and out-of-state collectors. Though he said he will keep his gallery open through 1990 or 1991, he is scouting a new space in Paris.

“The entire contemporary scene since 1985 has started to go backward,” he said. “Look around--La Jolla has fast shifted from a community of four or five galleries trying to do serious things into another Laguna Beach or Carmel, with galleries just trying to turn the highest profit possible. It’s become a tourist art market, and it’s deeply saddened me.”

Jose Tasende resents placing the blame on San Diego itself, which he said is “no more or less cultured than any other city of its size.” Not even galleries in New York live off their local clients, he said. “I never thought from the beginning that the gallery could be supported by the local public. The artists I represent are international. I have to project nationally and internationally.”

Not relying on local collectors, the Tasende Gallery functions as “an international gallery and a local museum,” said dealer Mark Quint, who has been selling contemporary art in San Diego since 1981, first from a La Jolla gallery, then a downtown space, and now a private office. “I can make a living from the little niche I’ve made, but it’s taken a long time,” he said. He gets much better response to his artists in Los Angeles and New York than in San Diego, he said, but he does believe there are more people collecting art here now than when he opened.

“They really need the imprint of respectability from what other collectors have bought, or to buy from big galleries,” he said. “And the art market lately has really fed that notion of buying blue-chip, because it’s hard to make a mistake. Prices have really gone up.”

Deep sighs and silent shrugs greet the question of why San Diego suffers such a dearth of art collectors. “I really don’t know,” Babeor said. “I used to say it was the climate. This is a region where people like to do things outdoors. But it has to do with value systems, educational systems. San Diego and Southern California have a very different set of priorities than the old European cities, such as Cologne, which, with a population of only 300,000, has 40 top-rate galleries. This is a young area. It may happen, but probably not in my lifetime.” La Jolla Museum director Davies refuses to be discouraged by galleries’ failure to thrive. “It’s not a fair test of the artistic vitality of the city to use a commercial yardstick when we’re two hours from Los Angeles,” he said. “If you’re going to shop for a luxury item, which art is, it makes sense to drive two hours to go to the nearest center to buy it.”

Though the climate here for commercial galleries is unforgiving, university and community college galleries and alternative spaces have picked up the slack, offering an opportunity to view work by contemporary artists, local and international, emerging and established. San Diego State University and UC San Diego perennially boast ambitious exhibition schedules and the programs at Palomar, Mesa, Grossmont, Southwestern and MiraCosta colleges have become increasingly refined.

Unfortunately, Installation Gallery’s status is tenuous. After nearly a decade of showcasing aggressive work in a variety of mediums, the organization is without a permanent space or a director, and is trying to raise funds for its programs. Its sponsorship of Artwalk, the annual downtown street fair, is expected to continue through 1990.

Sushi celebrates its tenth season this year, and though its focus has been primarily on performance, visual arts have been a part of the program since its opening. Director Lynn Schuette stresses the value of providing a venue for “emerging, non-commercial artists,” a place where they can experiment and take risks. Its stimulating Street Series gives equally adventurous artists the option of a wider public forum.

THE COMMUNITY

“The San Diego art scene still has a John Wayne, Wild West approach--it’s still very much about the individual endeavor,” said Doug Simay, a physician and active collector of contemporary art. As the owner of ABC--Art+Architecture/Books/Catalogues, the city’s only independent arts bookstore, and Java, the coffeehouse and informal gallery next door, Simay has rallied others in the downtown area to build a sense of community. The galleries, studios and specialty shops neighboring ABC and Java make up what is called the “G Street Arts Corridor.”

The concentration of art-related activity downtown is almost as old as the decade, but its growth has been erratic and painful, as some galleries have devolved into frame shops and others have quietly disappeared. Hopes for San Diego’s emergence as a viable, nourishing art center have centered on this area, but many observers have become discouraged.

“Downtown has regressed,” gallery owner Babeor said. “The air has gone out of the tire.”

Simay drowns such skepticism with unyielding enthusiasm for the area. What others see as backsliding, Simay regards as “an inevitable ebb and flow.

“All of the things that legitimize other arts districts are in force in San Diego. There is no dearth of young interest, passion and creativity. There is no shortage of art being made.”

Though the city’s structure for promoting and supporting its art is skeletal and flimsy in areas, a community of artists rich in ideas has taken root here. The Visual Arts Department at UCSD has embraced many of the most provocative, creative minds in the country, such as Allan Kaprow, Helen and Newton Harrison, David and Eleanor Antin, Italo Scanga, Manny Farber and Faith Ringgold. Their presence enriches the community and lends it the viability it so desperately seeks.

Two San Diegans published a book last year profiling 50 local artists against a historical backdrop. The city, according to its historical essay, has been wrestling with its provincial image since it had an image to wrestle with. In the 1980s, the campaign for maturity and sophistication became more refined, and, in the case of the recent arts festival, more costly. But the story of art in San Diego begins and ends with the artists themselves, and during the last ten years that foundation has only grown and solidified.