With all its hang-ups, the L.A. gallery scene thrives

The art gallery season got off to a slow start this fall with two dozen openings scattered from Santa Monica to Chinatown. But that was only the first week of September. More than 50 additional galleries launched new shows during the following week. And by the end of the month, another two dozen commercial showcases had geared up and opened new attractions.

If the annual ritual sneaks up on the city and ultimately offers much more than meets any one set of eyes, it reflects the gallery scene at large. Sprinkled across a vast swath of territory and tucked into everything from tacky storefronts and defunct factories to gleaming white architectural jewel boxes, L.A.’s archipelago of galleries doesn’t look like a critical mass. And no, it’s not New York, which has four times as many galleries -- densely packed.

But despite its endemic sprawl and persistent inferiority complex, Los Angeles is the nation’s second city for the visual arts, and commercial galleries are a vital part of the scene. With nearly 100 that present public exhibition programs and keep their doors open during regular hours, Los Angeles is second only to Manhattan and well ahead of Chicago, its closest competitor, which has about 60 comparable galleries.

“We don’t see the growth because we live here, but it’s astounding,” says Douglas Chrismas, a high-end dealer who has operated Ace Galleries in Los Angeles for 36 years, maintains a cavernous second-floor space in the mid-Wilshire district and is about to expand in Beverly Hills.

Operating a gallery anywhere is much more likely to be a labor of love than a lucrative business. For every art dealer who makes a comfortable living at it, there’s one who holds down a day job or depends on a backer to pay the overhead. And many an exhibition of new, hard-to-sell art is financed by back-room sales of more conventional works. Particularly in Los Angeles -- where the fine arts are always overshadowed by the film industry {mdash} keeping an art gallery afloat isn’t a job for the weak or the practical.

“At times it feels like such an indulgence,” says veteran dealer Margo Leavin, who presents museum-like exhibitions of contemporary art at her pristine, light-filled gallery on Robertson Boulevard.

“We deal with the ultimate discretionary goods,” says Louis Stern, who offers Impressionist, modern and contemporary art at his cozily elegant showcase on Melrose Avenue. “Art is the last thing anybody needs.”

Still, art-impassioned visionaries and entrepreneurs have figured out ways to survive. Half a dozen notable galleries have been in business in Los Angeles for more than 30 years, and an additional two dozen have chalked up at least 15 years. And the pace is accelerating: More than 30 local galleries that currently attract critical interest have opened during the last five years.

The secret? It’s partly a matter of setting up shop in a major center of art production, where the art schools are arguably the best in the nation, the supply of new art is plentiful and affordable space is available.

After that, what separates most of the galleries that last from those that don’t are brand and reach. You need a distinctive niche or, in most cases, a niche within the niche of contemporary art that dominates L.A.’s scene: photography, Latin American art or international blue-chip work, say. And once you set yourself up to show locally, you need to sell globally and maybe even establish a related business.

British gentility by the beach

At L.A. Louver, now in its 27th year in Venice, the niche isn’t the look of the art. It’s an attitude of high purpose and British gentility, improbably ensconced at the beach. This is where dealer Peter Goulds and his associate, Kimberly Davis, show the work of Los Angeles artists in, as Goulds puts it, “an international context.”

On any given day, visitors may find an exhibition of David Hockney’s exuberant landscapes, Kenneth Price’s otherworldly ceramic sculptures or Gajin Fujita’s cheeky mergers of East L.A. graffiti and Japanese prints {mdash} all made in L.A. Or they may encounter British painter Leon Kossoff’s dour portraits or Argentine artist Guillermo Kuitca’s melancholy musings on the nature of loss. Disparate as their work may appear, the artists share “a deeply rooted sense of art history,” Goulds says.

A transplanted Englishman who moved to Los Angeles 30 years ago to teach graphic design at UCLA, Goulds became fascinated with the art being produced in Los Angeles. He decided to open a gallery and chose a beach-side spot on Venice Boulevard because many artists lived and worked nearby.

“I thought that if I could present a serious program, there would be a serious audience here,” he says. “Rents were low, and I had modest means. I thought I could compete with established galleries on La Cienega and Santa Monica boulevards on a low budget.”

As the business grew -- to as much as $12 million in annual gross sales -- he added an international flavor to his exhibition program, expanded into six buildings sprinkled around the neighborhood and briefly branched out in New York. In 1993, amid a sagging economy, he retrenched in Southern California and consolidated his operation. Two years later he opened the gallery’s current home, an elegant two-story building designed by L.A. architect Frederick Fisher.

About 10 miles northeast of L.A. Louver, Regen Projects has carved out its niche in a clunky little cement block structure behind a West Hollywood upholstery shop. It may look like an ad hoc operation, but it’s as hot as L.A.’s art scene gets. And it’s about to expand into an adjacent building on Almont Drive, more than tripling its exhibition space.

The 13-year-old gallery was founded by Stuart Regen, who died in 1998 of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, at 39. His mother, Barbara Gladstone, is a leading contemporary art dealer in New York, and Regen had extensive experience in the field before he opened his own gallery in Los Angeles. He and his wife, Shaun Caley Regen, built a critically acclaimed exhibition program, and she has maintained the gallery’s reputation for being first with the most talked-about contemporary art.

It’s all meant to feel “very essential,” Caley Regen says. “It’s art that appeals to the intelligence, nourishes society and transforms our vision.”

That philosophy has produced an edgy mix that encompasses Catherine Opie’s photographs, Lari Pittman’s paintings and Charles Ray’s sculpture. In perhaps its greatest coup, in 1991, the gallery presented the debut solo show for Matthew Barney, a then-unknown 24-year-old New Yorker who soon catapulted to international acclaim and created an art-world sensation with his “Cremaster” films.

There are more easily defined niches as well. With about a dozen galleries, photography is a major L.A. specialty. And at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, the Frank Lloyd Gallery occupies another distinctive slot: top-of-the-line contemporary ceramics.

Because his gallery is “the only ongoing ceramics exhibition space in Southern California,” Lloyd says he has “an obligation to present museum-quality exhibitions and operate as an educational facility” as well to pay the bills by selling art. His pristine space offers ceramics publications and examples of works by many artists as well as a program of solo shows.

Lloyd got his start with Garth Clark, a leading ceramics dealer and scholar who ran a gallery in Los Angeles from 1981 to 1995, along with the gallery he continues to operate in New York. When Lloyd opened his own gallery, in 1996, he decided to focus on major California figures -- Peter Voulkos, John Mason and Paul Soldner, whose work revolutionized the field in the 1950s and ‘60s -- and their successors. That remains his primary mission, but he has expanded the exhibition program to include ceramics from elsewhere in the United States and from Europe, Asia and Mexico.

Always on the go

Once they have established their identity at home, most Los Angeles dealers get out of town regularly.

“Galleries do not thrive in any city if they rely exclusively on a local audience,” Goulds says. Like many of his Los Angeles colleagues, he makes about half of his sales to out-of-state clients, but that was also the case when he operated a gallery in New York.

Caley Regen makes roughly 80% of her sales to Southern California collectors -- an unusually high percentage -- but travels frequently to attend openings of her artists’ out-of-town exhibitions and to show their work at fairs. “I feel like I spend 50% of my time in airplanes,” she says.

She is among 14 L.A. dealers who are gearing up to show their wares at the Dec. 5-8 debut of Art Basel Miami Beach, a U.S. offshoot of the venerable Swiss fair Art Basel.

“Art fairs are crucial to expanding your audience, especially if you are on the West Coast,” says Kristin Rey, who operates Sandroni Rey, a contemporary art gallery in Venice, with Tara Sandroni.

Other Los Angeles dealers expand their gallery business through related enterprises that require travel. Stephen Cohen organizes photography fairs in Los Angeles; Santa Fe, N.M.; and San Francisco. Robert Berman operates an art auction firm. Cirrus Gallery is affiliated with Cirrus Editions, a leading publisher of artists’ prints. Remba Gallery is an offshoot of Mixografia, which produces limited-edition works on handmade paper.

Photography dealer David Fahey, who operates the Fahey/Klein Gallery on La Brea Avenue with partner Ken Devlin, organizes traveling photography exhibitions accompanied by gallery-produced books. “If I just send a show to London, I have a 1-in-10 chance of getting significant press,” Fahey says. “If I do a book and send the artist, I have a good chance of getting coverage in the London Sunday Times. I sell the books, and the books help to sell the prints.”

High art amid pop culture

None of this is easy, but many dealers are committed.

“It might seem obvious to move to New York, but for me it’s not worth it,” says Christopher Grimes, who shows works by an international mix of artists at his gallery in Santa Monica. “If you choose to have a gallery here, you lose the power structure and competitive sense of New York and its proximity to Europe, but you gain a quality of life and great artists.”

Having an art gallery is “a subscription to a way of life,” Goulds says. “If you just want to make money, you’ll get nowhere fast.”

And labors of love bring rewards.

“This business is a trap,” says Patricia Faure, whose personal charm and stellar track record have made her the beloved grande dame of Bergamot Station. “If one show doesn’t work, you always think the next one will,” she says. “But next to having a child, this is the best thing I’ve ever done.”

As for plying high art in a pop culture town, it isn’t all bad. Stars don’t line up at their doors, but many dealers do a big chunk of their local business with collectors who work behind the scenes in the entertainment industry. And there’s something to be said for operating out of the limelight.

“We’re eclipsed by the Hollywood glare, but I think that’s a healthy thing,” Caley Regen says. “We can all just do our work.”