2
Interview
Patricia Faure
MM: So you see it as possible to challenge institutions such as the Guggenheim?
I think that if they want to stay alive and stay contemporary, they have to be constantly challenged, which is not to say that what they did before was wrong. But the art has changed. I think that's the problem, the change. It's a problem that's bigger than economics, bigger than anything. The thing that people who might be collectors are asked to do today is maybe more than they can do. They are asked to accept things in such a different way and I think that maybe the collectors haven't been educated enough. I don't know how you do that. In the art magazines, for example, I think that the art speak got so dense and so difficult for people, that they couldn't understand what was being said. And if it's not being understood, how do you advocate and actually sell this art?
MS: When you were talking about the relationship of fun and the absence of money, it brought two things to mind. One is, does the absence of money necessarily make for an egalitarian scene?
No. I don't think that that comes into it. I think this scene is based on individual talent. That's why I kind of object to the political art that would foster something that was less good because a person was a minority, or a woman, or something like that.
MS: Which brings me to my next question. What do you think about the issue of government funding for the arts?
I think it is absolutely essential. I think that's a major, major problem in America, the only civilized country that really doesn't have a
federally backed fund to aid the arts. That help must be there, not only for the plastic arts, but for the theater and for dance and for music. A friend of mine was involved with MOCA in the early, early days before it was even opened at the TC, and then afterwards for awhile. And when he looked into the government help that could be achieved for such an undertaking, he discovered a certain percentage that went to painting, sculpture, that sort of thing, or that went to dance or theater. And dance and music got so much more, it was unbelievable. What was reduced to go to the plastic arts was just minuscule by comparison. And I suppose that's because singing and dancing and that sort of thing are an easier sell to senators and congressmen who might vote on it.
MM: Thinking back on the 50s and 60s in Los Angeles, I think of people like Nicholas Wilder, Walter Hopps and Irving Blum, who seem to symbolize and embody so much of that time and place. Can you think of anybody like that in contemporary terms?
No, I can't.
MM: Is it just not of this time that the art world today can produce such luminaries?
Maybe they produce themselves. I really don't know how it comes about.
MM: Is it just a force of personality? Or is it something more specific...
Well, Irving was so loud. It was really wonderful, a voice that could be heard from the East to the West Coast. He was just that loud. And Walter was so extraordinary...that's a good question. It's hard to imagine. And there's no female dealer who embodies that, that I can think of, in Los Angeles. Isn't that amazing? Rosamund had an awfully good run, and still does. But Rosamund is not Irving or Nick or Walter. Do you think that they were just such admirably great talkers?
MS: Well, there are a lot of people talking now.
Yes, but they were really good at it. All of them. Nick would hold people spellbound in the gallery, just amazed at the things he said. And he didn't
make them feel bad about themselves for not knowing anything. This is the hardest thing, I think, for dealers to do. I think we all have a tendency to get a little bit annoyed with people and let that show too much. Nick really embraced people and didn't have disdain for them, unless they really were bad, and then he was hideous to them. But addressing a group that Marsha Weisman brought in that only wanted to talk about money, he made them listen to other things. And made them feel good about themselves, and not embarrassed. That's amazing, isn't it?
And artists like Robert Irwin were fantastic speakers. Irwin used to speak on a soap box at Plummer Park about action painting to bums and people standing around listening who had probably never seen a framed work of art in their lives. But they were hearing this talk about action painting. So people did things like that, and people were listening. Today people are maybe a little more difficult to please and a little bit more hesitant to believe. They've got their own ideas nurtured in films and information they've received. I think that they are a little more difficult to influence
Somebody like Paul Kantor is awfully interesting because he has a history here. He had kept, one time, a De Kooning show up for a year, two years, because nobody would buy it. So he just kept it and kept it and kept it. I may exaggerate a little bit, but it was something like that.
MS: But that is hard for even someone of my age to imagine, a De Kooning show that did not sell. That is not a part of the mythology that I received.
Well, things didn't sell. They absolutely didn't. Or they sold so rarely. And then when it got really hot a lot of people decided to not buy from dealers here. They'd go to New York or to Europe to do it that way. That was a great disappointment, especially with people that one had nurtured and carried along and dealt with. And then suddenly here they were out of your hands and into Mary Boone's hands.
MS: How would you characterize the relationship, in the past, between dealers and artists? The whole scene seems much more intimate and organic the way you've described it.
I don't know if it's ever been all that good. I think that there's always been a certain distrust, that's more like a certain blame. I think that if things don't go well it really is the dealer's fault, right? It usually is reduced to those terms. So I think there's always that problem lurking there.
MS: So you theorize that the gallerist-artist relationship is essentially the same?
I think so. I'm sure there are artists who really care for me, and others that don't, just like in life.
I know that it was that way with Nick. And I know that there were artists who would do anything for Nick to keep him in business. I have those people too, who are really essentially very generous, and wonderful, and really want me to stay in business, over and above the fact that they are with me and that they could go elsewhere. So I think that it is just a purely personal thing that happens with some people and doesn't with others. But a gallery is not a little day care center. It's not what a lot of artists think it should be, a place where they're just cared for.
MS: Was it ever that way?
I don't know. I think we all do the best we can. There is an enormous amount of work that goes into any artist that one represents. It goes way beyond sales. It's unimaginable. It's a curious business, sort of like being an agent, but it's much more than that. And I think that a lot of artists, especially young artists, think that they will get with a gallery that has a certain presence in the city and then, that's it. And it isn't necessarily it. You see, for a young artist being introduced, it could take two or three shows before anything happens. And that can run anywhere between six or nine years. That's a long wait for a return, for the artist and for the dealer.
MM: Thirty or forty years ago, for an artist to have his or her first show in their mid-forties wasn't unthought of.
No.
MM: It was actually more common. The idea was that you worked on your craft and your practice and then at some point you got good enough for a solo show at forty-five. Whereas now the mindset is...
You have a retrospective at forty-five. Or a second one. Isn't that funny. That is a big, big change. It really is. It's much too early. Did you see the film Basquiat? It's good. It's the 80s, that's what it is, it's just the 80s. It is something that could not exist today. With all the help in the world, it couldn't exist today. You couldn't take somebody, even with dreadlocks and being black and all of that, and push him into the position that he was pushed. There's no way to do it.
MS: If you were going to direct a film about an artist from the 60s, who would it be?
I'd be inclined to do John Altoon. Because he was an artist's artist from whom everybody stole. His palette,
his words, everything. I mean they didn't steal them in a bad way. No, they just all sat at his knee, even though he was crazy. But they were all there, the artists from here, that is. He had this amazing touch, this way of drawing that rivaled Picasso. Such ease...he would just hold this thing and go. He made art believable to everybody, just by looking at him. You didn't even have to look at what he painted or drew. You just looked at him and that was believable, that was an artist.
MS: How do you define that term, artist's artist?
Somebody who the artists care for a lot and emulate and want to be in their presence. And even take their work. Kienholz used to take the drawings that Altoon threw away and keep them. You couldn't tell the difference between Irwin and Altoon, there were some paintings that were so similar. The palette, that joyous, kind of weird palette that ended up in Billy Al Bengston's hands--it's straight out of Altoon and then embellished. But he gave him the courage to do pinks and greens. Because at that time there was a Bay area school of painting that was really very prominent here and it looked like "real" art. It was brown and muddy and had brushes stuck in it...it was really crappy. I always hated it, though people really responded to it in a very serious manner. And then along came these crazy guys from Southern California with pink and orange colors and looking really different. When that work came to Paris at the modern museum in the 60s, at a big show, it was the most amazing thing in the world to see. This strange palette, plus Sam Francis and his primary colors, little works like this all over the walls of this museum. It was really
beautiful. That largely came from Altoon. Also he was a personality. He just had so much going for him. He taught art at UCLA and at one time he took off all his clothes, right in class, and just ran out. They caught him running across the campus, naked, and then they put him away, locked him up in a state sanitarium.
MS: Is there a contemporary artist's artist?
I don't know. You would know that better than me.
MS: I don't know. My sense is that this period is just so diffuse that everything is thinned out, in a certain sense, so you don't have such singular personalities.
You don't have a sense of what's going on...and that's really calculated. I just have this sense of allowing all these other ideas to come in, like the music and the fashion and this and that, everything altogether, and let that be our art. All of it. I think that's nice.
back to C3I table of Contents