Gallery Therapist Helps Free Artistic Minds

Here was this therapist urging her to bare her deepest, darkest artistic angst, and not a couch in sight.

No tissues, either.

But there were two bold metal chairs sculpted into womanly curves, slim and seductive and sly. There was a spooky canvas pulsing with memories of the Vietnam War. And a stark collage slamming out a black-power salute.

Artist Betty Decter took one look and pronounced the setting therapeutic.

Perfect, she said, for artists turned off by the cautious blandness of most therapists’ offices. Perfect for painters and sculptors looking to talk through problems in an environment where they feel most comfortable--surrounded by art.

“Artists are free-spirited,” Decter said. “Get them in too confined a space and they get a little uncomfortable. But there comes a moment when you have to say, ‘I need help.’ ”

In the Desmond Gallery on Sunset Boulevard, help is usually at hand.

Social worker Neal Goldberg has moved in as the resident therapist.

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Goldberg, 48, does have a small office--stocked with diagnostic manuals, a biography of Freud and two comfy chairs--in the gallery. But he hopes to do much of his work on the gallery floor, chatting with artists as they stroll from a pastel Elvis shrine to a dangling canvas bag to a lifelike mannequin contemplating a plate of red-tinted spaghetti.

“It’s all about helping artists be successful,” Goldberg said. “If they have emotional glitches, I’ll shepherd them along the way.”

Offering both individual and group therapy, he plans to work with artists stymied by creative blocks. He’ll also advise gallery superstars paralyzed by their own success. Heck, he’ll even help collectors wary of investing in unknown works.

In the process, he hopes to create a supportive community for struggling artists.

“Places like New York or Paris have networks of cafes and bars where artists hang out, but L.A. doesn’t have that,” Goldberg said. “There’s no place where they feel part of a subculture.”

The Desmond Gallery--a former supermarket tucked next to a swank coffee shop and an offbeat record store--aims to create that subculture. The 200 artists represented by the gallery will learn how to write press releases, how to protect their art in wills, how to chalk up tax deductions for home studios. And they will learn how to work through psychic distress.

“We want them to get all their nurturing here,” gallery co-owner Laurie L. Goldman said.

Coddling artists into psychological and financial comfort might seem strange. After all, the stereotypical creative soul roils with edgy inner turmoil.

“By processing these [issues] through therapy, is an artist somehow dissipating the emotion that goes into the work?” said Elizabeth Shepherd, senior curator at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art. “Gee. I don’t know. It’s an intriguing question.”

Goldberg, of course, firmly believes in therapy. So does gallery co-owner Mickey Kaplan, who recently completed two paint-splotched bedsheets seared with images of the Holocaust.

“You don’t have to be tormented to paint about torment, and you don’t have to be wacky to create wacky paintings,” Kaplan said.

As a case in point, artist Rick Schwartz offers his own experience.

A Vietnam veteran, Schwartz adhered to the tough-it-out-alone theory of artistic creation for two decades. He lived the typical starving artist lifestyle. He endured rejections in stubborn silence. He slogged through bad times with dogged determination.

“I just dusted myself off and kept going,” he recalled.

Looking back, Schwartz believes his suffering did not necessarily make his art better. It just made him miserable.

“I don’t want it to sound [pathetic], like violins playing and all, but I really could have used someone like [Goldberg] years ago,” he said. “It was a real struggle.”

A full-service gallery could reassure lone-wolf types like Schwartz that it’s OK to seek help--that a dash of practicality never compromises a creative soul, Shepherd said.

Of course, such counseling could take place in a typical therapist’s office as well. And psychologist Joan Laine, who counsels artists in a private practice in Beverly Hills, dismisses Goldberg’s gallery gig as mere gimmick.

“You could be in a black room with no windows, and if people are doing their work,” the counseling will help, she said. “I don’t think it really matters where the therapy couch is.”

But the therapist’s location does matter to Kaplan--for a purely selfish reason. He hopes woe-gripped artists might gravitate to Goldberg, instead of gabbing with gallery staff.

“A lot of my time, I’m not dealing with the gallery and the shows, I’m dealing with the personal lives of the artists,” Kaplan complained. “I’m not particularly interested in them, I’m not qualified to deal with them, and I’ve got my own set of problems to worry about. I don’t have time for it.”

So he brought in Goldberg.

The notion of a gallery therapist first struck Kaplan nearly a year ago, when he spotted one of Goldberg’s newspaper ads touting art therapy. He started selling the idea to the public recently, when Desmond Gallery held its official opening.

Goldberg, who holds a degree from the UCLA School of Social Welfare, speaks at times in a jargon-cluttered lingo. He talks of “strengthening the artistic ego” and giving his clients “the courage to invade their own privacy and expose themselves to the world.”

Despite his therapist-speak, Goldberg considers himself an artist. A playwright who pens family dramas and absurdist comedies, he has experienced the heady joy of critical acclaim--and the flattening realization that praise rarely translates into big bucks. He has also smashed headlong into writer’s block and suffered bouts of serious self-doubt.

Seeking to understand all artists, not just writers, Goldberg routinely attends performances by his acting, dancing and singing clients. Roxanne Rogers, an Echo Park theater director, believes Goldberg’s field trips to her plays have immeasurably strengthened her therapy. And she applauds his move into the Desmond Gallery as a boon for visual artists.

“The art world is so different from what people fantasize,” Rogers said. “When you’re living and breathing it all the time, it’s much more terrifying and exhilarating than you can ever imagine.”

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Plunging into the gallery milieu, Rogers said, “can only feed [Goldberg’s] work in a positive sense.”

For all his enthusiasm, Goldberg concedes that his new location carries some risks.

A stumbling painter suffering a crisis of confidence might plunge deeper into despair if, during a counseling session, he notes a rival’s work selling briskly while his withers on the walls. Conversely, a crowd-pleaser glimpsing his popularity in the gallery could experience a numbing fear of success, doubting his ability to live up to expectations.

“Emotions might be intensified in this kind of environment,” Goldberg acknowledged. “To me, that would be a challenge.”

Another challenge: convincing people that a therapist belongs in a room splashed with canvases of contorted nudes and garish demons.

Indeed, sculptor Robert L. Moore was a bit taken aback when he bumped into Goldberg at the gallery. A few minutes of reflection, however, and Moore declared himself a convert: “Sports teams have therapists, so why not artists?”