NEWS ANALYSIS : ART/LA92: Upbeat in a Down Year

ART/LA92 swept into town on a tide of international pessimism and rolled out on a wave of local optimism. The seventh annual contemporary art fair was expected to have its worst year yet when it opened Wednesday night at the Convention Center. In terms of quality and size, it did. But as the fair reached its peak on Saturday and wound down on Sunday, Los Angeles participants gave the recession-plagued event a strong vote of approval.

“There’s a much more upbeat atmosphere this year,” dealer Neil Ovsey said. “The crowd is more enthusiastic and there’s more interaction. All my sales have been to new people, including a collector from San Francisco,” said Ovsey, who has taken a booth at the fair in six of its seven years of existence.

“I’m very pleased to be here, first because I’ve done fairly good business and second because I’ve seen people who haven’t come into the gallery for two or three years,” said gallery owner Daniel Saxon, who returned to the fair after a three-year absence. “Money can’t buy this kind of exposure and public relations. If there’s another fair, I’ll be back.”

Their opinions were echoed by other local exhibitors--from first-timer Alitash Kebede, who joined ART/LA92 to put a public face on her private dealership, to Tobey C. Moss, a familiar participant who drew high praise for her display of paintings by such major Southern California historical figures as Lorser Feitelson, Helen Lundeberg and John McLaughlin.

Foreign dealers were far more critical, but the positive mood of local participants was surprising in light of the fair’s problems:

* The number of exhibitors plummeted from a peak of 170 in 1987 to about 100 this year.

* Quality control, always a thorny issue, appeared to be nonexistent this year. Struggling to fill the Convention Center’s cavernous space, fair organizers apparently felt that they couldn’t be choosy, resulting in a higher percentage of decorative baubles and amateurism than ever before.

* The prestige quotient, which has slipped over the years, all but disappeared at ART/LA92 where there were no big-name participants from New York and only a couple of heavy hitters from Europe.

* Expenses, running to tens of thousands of dollars for dealers who must travel long distances and pay stiff shipping and insurance costs in addition to the $28-per-square-foot booth rental fee, have always deterred East Coast and foreign participation. As the recession has forced many galleries to close or trim their operations, the cost of the fair has become prohibitive for many potential participants.

* Competition from better established fairs in cities that are perceived as having stronger art markets has become increasingly stiff in a sagging economy.

Dealers are acutely aware of the fair’s chronic woes. “It was bad two years ago and it’s worse this year,” Erich Gabriel of Vienna’s Galerie Gabriel said. The only reason he returned is that ART/LA92 features Austrian art and the government subsidized his participation. “But that only paid about one-fourth of my costs,” Gabriel said. “I would have to sell $25,000 worth of art to cover expenses and that’s impossible because I represent young artists whose works sell for $2,000 or $3,000.”

London’s Connaught Brown Gallery, which represents internationally recognized artists, did a brisk business at the fair in works by Lucian Freud, Sam Francis and Suzy Willy. But dealer Anthony Brown expressed strong reservations about returning next year. “I don’t think the fair serves Los Angeles very well or Los Angeles serves the fair very well,” Brown said. “Many people I’ve telephoned here didn’t seem to know about it or hadn’t planned to attend. In Paris and Basel, if you are interested in art, you go to the fair. You put it on your calendar and cancel your weekend in the country. Here, I’m not sure that people would even cancel a dinner engagement to go to the fair.”

Many of Los Angeles’ major dealers have dropped out of the fair with similar complaints, but attendance actually held up surprising well this year for a recessionary period. About 1,800 attended the Wednesday night preview--more than in the past two years. Total attendance for Thursday-Sunday was 20,114, compared to 24,300 last year when the fair lasted five days.

Local participants in ART/LA92 appeared to have come to terms with the fair--or to have figured out how to make the most of it during the recession. Moss, whose prime pieces are priced at up to $60,000, hadn’t made any sales by Saturday afternoon. “I didn’t expect to. This is advertising,” she said. “My paintings aren’t the kind of thing you tuck under your arm and take home. But I’ve made good contacts. I’m going to find Feitelsons going into collections of museums and that pleases me no end.”

While exhibitors often expressed disappointment about the overall quality of artworks in the fair, few regretted this year’s dearth of blue-chip material. “When there’s a lot of high-end art at fair, it gets all the attention and detracts from mid-career artists,” photography dealer G. Ray Hawkins said.

“Big galleries with giant overheads and high expectations feel sad when their expectations aren’t fulfilled,” he said--without a trace of sadness. Meanwhile, galleries that have streamlined expenses and “don’t have to make a killing” have proven they can be successful, he said. “This fair has been the best of the last three years for me,” Hawkins said. “I hope there’s a fair next year; I will definitely be there.” So will Paul Kopeikin, who used his first fair to make crucial contacts for his year-old photography gallery on La Brea Avenue. “The bottom line for me (as a new dealer) is that I wouldn’t have been allowed in previously because the fair was too crowded, or I wouldn’t have been able to afford it, or I would have been stuck out on the edge,” he said. With his booth strategically placed near that of longtime dealer Hawkins, Kopeikin not only made sales at ART/LA92 but added 50 names of photography collectors to his mailing list.

All this optimism might seem to be misplaced at an art fair that exhibited such obvious--if welcome--signs of distress as plentiful parking, extra-wide aisles, inviting lounge areas and other space-fillers. Several dealers and collectors attributed the positive mood to Bill Clinton’s recent election to the presidency. “Business picked up right after the election,” Ovsey said. “There’s finally a sense of hope out there.”

Whether or not the economy improves, ART/LA93 is scheduled to take place next December at the Convention Center.