3

Interview

Patricia Faure

<

MS: I have another movie that doesn't exist. If you were going to go back and do that same project in the 50s, how would you do it?

In the 50s? Pollock. In fact I might do Pollock in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and the 90s. Yes, there are wonderful, wonderful artists that one loves. I love Ad Reinhardt, for example, but there is not the personality cult about them. It would have to be Pollock.

MM: Yes, it's hard to think of a more dynamic personality. How much of that was myth, though?

I don't think it's myth. I mean, I saw him break down doors at the Cedar Bar. That wasn't myth. He was really annoyed and angry, unhappy. He was already the premiere artist in America, in contemporary terms. And then De Kooning started creeping up a little bit, though I don't know that he ever overtook him in his lifetime. That's an important artist, Pollock. Those people were interesting. You're too young to know about it, how interesting they were.

MM: Well, that's the problem.

I'm not an authority in any way on it, I just knew them a little bit. There was a unity in New York with writers and artists. There was a closeness in the art world and a willingness for the artists to share things with people that they knew. In the 50s, for instance, Motherwell took a group of five people, including myself, up to visit Joseph Cornell. We all journeyed up to this little house in Queens and talked to him as he sat in the dining room and cut out all these things and put them together on the table. And Motherwell took us to Jasper Johns' and Rauschenberg's studio, which they shared. It was absolutely amazing. I was just one in a little group, but there probably were other groups as well. There are not a lot of artists that do that today, are there, who would take around a group of people? Maybe that's what we have to do, in a way. Don't some people do that, museum groups and that sort of thing?

MS: Not in that kind of informal way. It seems pretty structured to me, to the extent that anything remotely like that goes on. It seems official. It seems institutions are the only ones doing that kind of thing. That brings me then to what the real question is: How can you make it work when it's not official?

I wish I knew. I think that you just have to stay there. Stay open and keep on doing it. You have to go out and circulate, you have to be nice to people and that sort of thing. But mostly, you just have to stay there, not move around too much, not keep changing your place. I think that the person who has done an admirable job in lieu of what's happened to the market, and he absolutely knew about it, he warned me when he gave up his big space, was Stuart Regen. He took that little space which cut his expenses to about a quarter of what they were. I thought I was so brilliant, cutting expenses in half. I think he was that much smarter by doing it that way. And he's been able to do really good shows. Granted, its a smaller space, but it doesn't matter. You still have the presence of art that you are looking at. Maybe that was a kind of answer. I think that moving to Bergamot Station was an answer too. It certainly seems to be working, though it's still a very, very big struggle.

MS: You spoke about the sprouting of art schools and the glut of artists that was produced. Is there some kind of corollary expansion in the ranks of dealers? I mean, even to imagine that you could fill a place like Bergamot with art galleries. Even I can remember back when I first got out of school, what little there was in West Hollywood, with Cirrus downtown. Could I have filled both hands with names of galleries?

Yes, but there are different kinds of galleries, too. And those galleries, some of which have helped to fill up Bergamot Station, are galleries that would have existed previously. But maybe you might not count those on two hands because they are different, more specialized, not exactly totally contemporary and...I don't know how to explain it.

The cutting edge is the hard part today, when the stakes are higher, and enthusiasm for it has waned. I think that is what has suffered, that edge thing.

MS: Isn't that edge thing a kind of imaginary outcome of the university system?

Yes, it is. Because the people who taught those students were not able to sell sufficient work in the 80s, so they had to remain teachers. Nobody else had to, for everybody else sold everything. This is the one thing that is so difficult and certainly inspired a population of students.

MS: Not to name names, but is Michael Asher one of those people?

Oh yes. He's one of my favorite artists.

MS: Yet, he is, to whatever extent people who teach are responsible for the people whom they teach, pretty antithetical to the people who passed through the Michael Asher hallway. So many of those people became a part of the economic process of the art scene in the 80s.

They didn't take him seriously, I guess.

MS: I don't know about that. It's pretty hard not to take him seriously.

Perhaps they took him seriously, just didn't want to emulate him. But Michael has gotten somewhere. He's an extraordinary artist. And, he continues to work within his self imposed boundaries of conceptualism. He doesn't fudge it. He offers no "product". Recently in "1965-75: Reconsidering the Object of Art" at MOCA his "wind" piece spoke volumes about art. It was something less than minimal. You couldn't see it, and at the same time the wind brushed over one in a decidedly gestural, abstract way. Michael is a veritable repository of art. Not forgetful. Not destined to forget the past.

MS: What is the basis for establishing the relationship between a gallerist and an artist, for you?

I think you have to first make a relationship with the work. It really has to be something that intrigues you so much even though you don't quite understand it. You have to find out more about it by being with it on those terms. In the old days you'd think, "Well, yes I know someone who'd be interested. I know something that could happen." Today you're flying blind. You really don't know. Maybe some other people do, but I don't. That's a huge difference.

MM: Meaning a different kind of relation in terms of intuition about the work?

Intuition to me means that you have an idea that it's going to go, that it's going to catch on in some way. In other words that usually relates to certain people, maybe half a dozen collectors. You think that one of them, or maybe two of them, might be interested in this work. I don't have that today. I have some young collectors who are interesting, the kind of Hollywood set of agents and people like that, who were brought into it with visions of Ovitz in their head. They would like to buy everything at Pace because there's security in that. But they don't have that much money, so they have to come to me, or people like me, to try to find something that looks like what Pace shows but is less money. I think that I've pretty much told them how that doesn't work. If it looks like it and is less money, than it is not as good, and they wouldn't want that. What they have to have is something that Pace doesn't have yet, that has a life of its own, supposedly or hopefully. And within that group, I can't say "Well, I will call Joe and he'll want to come and look at this particular piece." I really don't know. So I'm flying blind.

MS: A couple of weeks ago you spoke with Michael about the loss or disappearance of the middle...

Oh yes, the middle in the art world...What people see existing and what is generally thought to stay with us are the big kind of galleries like Pace, with the $200 million dollars behind them constantly. These great, big corporate entities are indestructible. Then there are the young galleries. I'm really interested in what they are doing because it seems to be working. And those people are always there, there are always new young dealers. You don't even have to know their names, you just know that as a group they will always be there. What has lost ground, lost direction and lost customers is the middle. What it hasn't lost is artists. It's burgeoned with artists. But the middle is either going or gone, and that's where the problem happens, with the Paula Coopers, and people like that. Brilliant gallerists. It's kind of a problem.

I think those of us who are in the middle are on very shaky ground. The whole lot of us. Because we are not dealing in a way that you deal if you are a brand new twenty-year-old gallerist. I always repeat this: Nicholas Wilder said that a twenty year old artist should have a twenty year old dealer. And I do believe that totally. And that is what I think will endure forever. But they operate differently. They could be operating out of their bathtub. And it's interesting and definitely nothing to negate. And it in no way takes away from the middle. It should enhance the middle.

MM: Well then what is happening to the middle?

Those people are gone. There is no contemporary art market today. There isn't any, so forget it. I mean, you can do a little business here and there, but there is no market as there once was, and it's the middle that made the market. It wasn't all just high end. There was this great burgeoning middle, that included people like Robert Miller Gallery that have works for a million dollars or more. And also for twenty-five thousand dollars. What I call the new art galleries, the young ones, are like under two thousand dollars usually for a painting. So it's that group between five thousand dollars and goes up to, say, five hundred thousand dollars, they are the ones that are being hurt. You have to be more serious to spend more money, and that audience has gone away, for the most part. At the very least it's greatly, greatly diminished, and as yet nothing really precise and tangible has taken its place.

MM: Do you see anything happening to build up that middle?

Yes. I think it's going to have to do with the art. I wish there was something that could be happening that was as engaging as Pop Art seemed to be. Wouldn't that be nice?

MM: Something that would come along that would just capture the imagination?

I think that it is going to be in this multimedia thing. That's my impression. I may not be around long enough to partake in it, but I think ultimately that is going to be it. It's going to be singing, dancing, dressing up and decorating, and conceptualizing... all of it, all thrown into one. Recently, I found myself on a Saturday night on the Sunset Strip, which is a definite no-no. There I was stuck in this terrible traffic. I couldn't believe what was happening. I looked ahead of me and in front of this new club Billboard, which was having its opening night, they were running a movie. Maybe it was a music video or maybe it was what was going on inside the club. I don't know what it was. But the imagery was so captivating that you just couldn't move--nobody was moving their cars. And I thought how could you go home and look at some little picture on a wall after this. What's the use of it? It was all so open...it was a beautiful night, there were cars everywhere and lights flashing and thousands of people on the street. It was amazing. It was like Fellini. Maybe he did have the message for the future.

back to C3I table of Contents