About Ace Gallery Director, Douglas Chrismas
Douglas Chrismas started his career in Vancouver, Canada in 1961 where at the age of 17 he opened his first art gallery. During the following years the gallery grew mounting exhibitions of such important artists as Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, Nauman, and Serra who were considered the hot young artists at that time.
The gallery expanded to Los Angeles in 1967 and then further expanded to New York in 1994. The galleries were noted for doing museum-level exhibitions by up and coming and also world-renowned artists. The gallery’s presence in New York was amplified by its doing exhibitions with such important cultural institutions as the Guggenheim Museum and the Cartier Foundation (Paris), which, even though Mr. Chrismas’ gallery was a commercial gallery, had gained great respect from museums worldwide. Under his directorship, Ace Gallery has had either offices or galleries in such important art centers as Mexico City, Paris, Berlin and Beijing along with its strong position in Los Angeles.
Mr. Chrismas’ ability to create architectural spaces for contemporary art of our time became well known. He is credited with creating the first White Cube contemporary art space as we know it today. All Ace gallery spaces have been designed by Mr. Chrismas.
Some of the gallery’s exhibitions in New York drew 2,000 plus visitors a day, which was comparable to such institutions as the Whitney Museum. Ace Gallery was the largest privately owned gallery in New York at that time. While in New York, Mr. Chrismas had also continued the gallery’s program in Los Angeles. Mr. Chrismas departed New York and fully moved to Los Angeles after the tragic events of 9/11 as the New York gallery’s location was in close proximity to the Twin Towers.
Mr. Chrismas is well known and respected for his curatorial expertise and knowledge of contemporary art from 1940 to present and his ability to install exhibitions that enable the art to be seen and studied in a visually meaningful way. He is a highly consulted expert on establishing value of art works from 1940 to current. Ace Gallery has also been, for the last 25-years, the largest commercial exhibition space in western United States with over 30,000 sq. ft. of installation space.
Mr. Chrismas continues a focused program of exhibitions in Los Angeles. His gallery is considered to be the oldest contemporary gallery in the Western United States and he has curated and mounted over 600 exhibitions during his 54-year career as the gallery director.
Richard Serra. ACE GALLERY Venice
LA Talk Radio Presents
Studiovox: Get Famous Friday
Interview with Douglas Chrismas on 7/11/14
Hosted by Amanda Slingerland
AS: Hi, and thanks for tuning in. I’m so incredibly happy to be here today. I’m your host, Amanda Slingerland. So whether you’re joining us on your lunch hour here on the west coast or wrapping up your day on the east coast, welcome. My guest today is Douglas Chrismas. For four decades, Douglas has been a prominent figure in the contemporary art world. His galleries in Los Angeles and New York have repeatedly showcased some of the world’s – literally the world’s – most important contemporary artists including Rauschenberg, Robert Irwin, and Andy Warhol. He is known for mounting large-scale exhibitions of work that most people would consider pretty difficult to exhibit. His gallery is Ace Gallery here in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. As the director of Ace, he has provided a home for some of the world’s most demanding art, literally since the beginning of art here in Los Angeles in the 60s. That makes Ace the longest running gallery here in town. I’d also like to say that it’s probably the biggest gallery in town too. It’s gigantic. It’s something like 30,000 square feet or something. It’s incredible. Everybody really needs to see it. As we get to know Douglas today, we’re going to find out that Douglas goes for big and goes for challenging. He was really an early champion of the art of Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Richard Serra and Michael Heizer – I’m actually a huge fan of his work. Over the years his gallery has also exhibited work by Robert Mapplethorpe and Robert Irwin and just the most amazing big names in the art world that you could possible imagine. I’m incredibly honored that he is with us today. So hello, Douglas. How are you?
DC: Very good, thank you. A good Friday to you, Amanda.
AS: Happy Friday. That’s right. For some people that’s the end of the week and for other people that means the weekend is just sort of ramping up. I don’t know where that falls for you. Is it the beginning or the start of something new?
DC: We go seven days a week, so I’d say we’re ramping up for a more intense time, which happens on the weekends.
AS: So, I have to say that you’re really the father of contemporary art in Los Angeles. Do you know that about yourself? Is that a title that you wear with honor?
DC: I don’t think about that very much. My concentration is really just on what’s happening today and what can happen tomorrow and happen in a year. It’s a forward focus. And one of the biggest drawbacks to having that kind of focus is that you gather these years of archives. People knock on our door all the time to get access to them, which is the last thing that I want to do because I just really want to do the next exhibition, and not have to go delve up information from my past exhibitions. That’s becoming a curse for us because the phones ring more and more everyday to ask us what the Warhol exhibition was in 1972 or about the Heizer in the floor exhibition in ’70. But my concentration to make the gallery vital is to be thinking forward.
AS: I completely understand that.
DC: The history is there and I really don’t dwell on it that much. We’re moving our library right now and we have a younger staff working it. They constantly come to my desk with books wondering where they go. And I just kind of roll my eyes and think, ‘God, I really don’t want to have to do this.’ But our archives are something I have to face at a certain point. Just the moving of the library consumes my time that I would rather be spending on curating a new exhibition.
AS: I completely understand. Peter Plagens, who was an art critic for Newsweek and an artist himself, said that he is literally indebted to Ace Gallery because you provide museum quality shows that no one else can bring to a city. So I think keeping your eye focused on keeping that energy and keeping that newness in Los Angeles is such a gift. It’s really appreciated. So while you have to spend some time dealing with the past – and we will talk a little bit about that today, because it is so amazing – I can completely understand that where you need to put your energy is the future. So let me ask you, I just want to get a few logistics out of the way. I know that you have Ace Gallery. It’s in two locations in Los Angeles, right? There’s one in Beverly Hills and then one in LA. And they’re both on Wilshire?
DC: One is on the Miracle Mile by the LA County Museum of Art, and we’ve been there for about 25 years, and I would say that’s our headquarters. There is also the gallery in Beverly Hills – it wasn’t an issue being in Beverly Hills, it’s just I was faced with an exhibition that had been offered to me by the Sam Francis estate when Sam passed away. There was a balcony in Sam’s studio, right above the area that he painted, and on that balcony they [Sam’s estate] found these very large rolled paintings. When they got them down and unrolled them they discovered these extraordinary works that he created in the late 60s and early 70s. They were his Open paintings, which I had considered to be without question his most inventive series. Sam used to say that to me, “These are my breakthrough paintings.” Sam’s estate phoned me up and said, “You’ve got to come see these paintings.” When I went to look at them I literally froze on the spot because I realized what I was looking at. Sam was the best judge of his art and he had really, in a sense, tucked away in this upper balcony the extraordinary paintings from the series. I needed a place to show them, and our gallery in the Miracle Mile only had 15-foot high ceilings.
AS: Which should be plenty for most.
DC: But the paintings were 17 feet high. And I thought, “My God, I can’t show these.” So I went to the executor of the estate and said, “I’m begging you. Just hold these paintings and I’ll find a place to exhibit them.” Now I’ve been driving by this old building that had been deserted on the edge of Beverly Hills for years. It had been struck by the earthquake in ’88 and all the trusses where broken. It was an old bank building from 1938, and at that time they used to have those glorious lobbies in banks. I went and took a look at the space and thought, “My God, this is incredible.” It was for lease or for sale and it had that same sign [out front] for ten years so I went and found out who owned it and I said to them, “I’ll fix your building up. I’ll fix the beams. I’ll get the occupancy permit and I want it for one year because I want to do this exhibition.” And we actually went and restored the building, got it approved through the building department and did this extraordinary exhibition. Then I was ready to leave Beverly Hills, but there was a very enlightened mayor at that time who came to me and said, “I hear you’re leaving.” And I said, “Yes, we’ve had the exhibition, it’s been wonderful.” And she said, “But you fixed this space up and the space is beautiful.” And I said, “Yes, but I just don’t feel comfortable being in Beverly Hills. It’s more of a tourist attraction with a lot of tourist level galleries. And I don’t have any allies here.” And she said, “You’ve got to stay” and I said, “Listen, you won’t even let me put a banner outside in Beverly Hills. All galleries, everywhere in the world, you hang your banner, it’s the classical thing you do. You don’t even allow that. You’re not pro art.’ [laughter] She said, “Nobody, not even Armani, can hang a banner in Beverly Hills because we simply don’t allow banners in Beverly Hills.” And I said, “That’s the reason I’m leaving.”
AS: [laughter] I don’t know how they survive.
DC: She said, “Well, that would be terrible.” The following morning, she called me and said, “We just had an emergency session and we’ve voted to give you a banner, so what size banner do you want?” And so to this day we’re the only one with a banner in Beverly Hills, so I stayed and that’s the reason I’m in Beverly Hills. Then other galleries like Larry Gagosian moved in and the character of the city enriched itself.
Richard Serra ACE GALLERY Venice
ACE GALLERY Beverly HillsAS: [laughter] Trailblazer. I want to ask you – while we’re talking about the Beverly Hills space – about a fantastic exhibit you have coming up of Helen Pashgian’s work. I think it’s at the Beverly Hills location and I wanted you to have the opportunity to tell us about that.
DC: Thank you for bringing this subject up. Helen’s a senior artist here on our planet today and she happens to reside here in Los Angeles, actually in Pasadena. She has been, and still is, one of the original finders and developers of what we call the Light and Space movement, which has got James Turrell, DeWain Valentine, Peter Alexander, John McCracken, Mary Corse and a number of other artists who were here in Los Angeles. They kind of developed their own language that had to do with their environment, like the fact that we have a lot of sunshine in California. Colors are brighter and vision is different. And Helen – she started in the 60s working alongside people like Irwin – really has developed the most extraordinary language within her art making. She’s just completed an exhibition at the LA County Museum that was spearheaded by Michael Govan, who is the director of the museum. He worked with one of his chief curators, Carol Eliel, to put together a really astounding installation of Helen’s work, [which] Helen spent two years putting together. It had a fantastic response. I hear it paralleled in attendance, if not surpassed, their Calder exhibition which was installed by Frank Gehry and is one of the most beautiful installations of Calder I’ve ever seen. But Helen’s installation was so profound, when you walked in there, the experience would be in your mind forever. Great applause and points to the LA Country Museum for mounting such an extraordinary exhibition. And now that their exhibition has closed, we are opening a survey exhibition of Helen’s works from the ’60s up to present day in our space in Beverly Hills. That opens on Tuesday and it’s a knockout.
AS: That should be absolutely fantastic. For those of you who are listening who aren’t familiar with Helen’s work – I know on radio it’s a little bit difficult because we’re not a visual medium, I can’t show you a picture or anything. [laughter] But she really is one of the early pioneers of light and space and exploring that. Really her work focuses on perception under different circumstances. She has these incredible forms that, depending on how the light is or where you are in the room, change within the space that they’re in. So the work really is very alive with whoever the viewer is and how they’re looking at it. It makes it extraordinarily exciting for everyone. So please, please treat yourself and go to the exhibit at Ace Gallery in Beverly Hills. You will thank yourself. It’s going to be so, so amazing. So thank you for putting that together. I think her work is extraordinary.
DC: Yes, she’s a very, very special artist.
Helen Pashgian: Dark Blue (2014)
DC: What’s interesting is I’m still feeling and witnessing the effects of what happened in the ’60s. Actually I’ve been working on a curation, maybe for twelve, fourteen years now, putting together a little more each day because of the complexity of it. It’s called the Second Renaissance and it focuses on what happened in the ’60s. It’s as if somebody took a mister and gave a blast of some psychedelic, brain-enlarging, door-opening material, because what happened in science, in music, in the arts was explosive beyond any grasping of the imagination. Nobody’s really focused on it and asked, ‘okay, what happened?’ Let’s jump back to Berlin and what was happening there in 1900, before it moved to Paris in the 30s and 40s and the war happened and everybody moved to New York. As they say the melting pot was New York. You had these wonderful intellects who had been forced to leave Europe and the spot to go was New York City; you had this artistic intellectual energy that synergized there. Then that kicked off into what we’ll call the first real American art. You had pop art, color field painting, conceptual painting, earth art, minimalism; you have these extraordinary territories of art. Each of them full and rich – the Light and Space movement here in California, which we’ve just chatted about regarding Helen Pashgian. It all just erupted in this most extraordinary way in the 60s. Along with it science was expanding so quickly because of the whole issue of synergy within science. They would have a thought, whether it was to put somebody on the moon or what have you, and they figured that if they put together 500 computers and 500 scientists that they could go and achieve amazing things. And I think what happened in the art world is you had this accumulation in New York. You had all these artists that were coming together [at bars] at first at Cedar Tavern, then Max’s Kansas City, and later the Mudd Club. They weren’t just places to go and have a drink and eat some food, but artists went there in the evenings to dialogue and strategize and theorize about how art can move forward, the language of art. So you had an explosive situation happening within the arts, along with the science, and along with music. Young people like Philip Glass coming up out of the art world – actually, he was part of the art world, close friends with Richard Serra. It just all started this energy that continues today and I have artists in my gallery right now who are absolutely there, in their world, creating because of what happened in the ’60s. And, of course, art has an umbilical cord that shoots all the way back to the beginning of time. But what happened in the 60s was such a vital and enriched food, an amazing nourishment, that artists today are still feeding off of it in their own creative ways. So I would say I was very luckily. I was extremely fortunate that when I started there were galleries in New York that focused solely on one area of the art of that moment. Andre Emmerich, who was a wonderful man, you went to his gallery that focused only on color field painting. He was the expert on color field. Then you would go to Leo Castelli, and Leo was a little more ambitious, but basically he was the pop gallery, and Richard Bellamy was the beginning of minimalism in New York. And you had these particular people who would focus on different territories of art and they would champion them. Greenberg, the art critic, would absolutely attack everybody else except the color field painters and really tear them apart in the press. You had these kind of groups that were happening. And I came there, as a young, open mind, and I thought everybody was fantastic. I thought, “Wow, it’s all great art.” So I would show Helen Frankenthaler one month, and Bob Rauschenberg the next month, then Donald Judd the next month.
AS: [laughter] All in a day’s work.
DC: And at first the artists were really kind of pissed at me, I must say, for doing this. They said, “Figure out your camp.” And I remember being in Rauschenberg’s studio – he was actually such a wonderful friend and supporter of the gallery. He gave me a space when I would travel to New York, which was every single week. Fifty weeks a year I’d be in New York, even though I was based on the west coast. So I’d spend two or three days in New York and I’d stay at Rauschenberg’s and he’d say, “Who are you going to see today?” And I’d say, “I’m going to go to Barnett Newman’s, or I’m going to this or that.” And one day I said, “I’m going to go to Frank Stella’s.” And he said, “Frank Stella’s? You’re going to go to Frank Stella’s?” And I said, “Yes.” And he said, “Then take your bags with you.” And I said, “Really, Bob?” And he said, “Yes, take your bags with you. Don’t bother coming back here.” [laughter] And I thought, “Okay, well I won’t do that then.” But the first thing I did was go downstairs and find a payphone. I phoned Frank Stella and said that I’d like to come over immediately, because I thought if Bob felt so strongly about Frank then this was an artist that I would want to meet.
AS: There’s something there.
Robert Rauschenberg: Jammers (1976). ACE GALLERY Venice
AS: I know as the 70s sort of came in you had some really groundbreaking, very important shows – the Robert Irwin installation: Room Angle Light Volume, and you did Michael Heizer’s Displaced/Replaced Mass, and started doing these huge installations that really sort of took you in a direction – Richard Serra’s 1975 Delineator installation. So all of a sudden you have defined this scale of work that you’re sort of interested in. Were you drawn to that particular type of work because it had an architectural kind of space to it? Where the massive scale and creating a space for it became so interesting and challenging?
-> DC: Well, it was at that moment that all the histories of art were being challenged by these young, very creative people. They were all very smart and ambitious. They wanted to carve out their own territories. They basically took on the history of art and they took on the art of that moment in New York and Europe. In doing so, they were challenging even the concept of what art is and what are the perimeters of exploration. I would reach out to artists like Robert Smithson, and when I contacted Bob and said, “I want to do an exhibition of yours,” he said, “Well, we’re not going to do it in a gallery.”
AS: [laughter] How did you have –
DC: And I thought, right, “Well, where are you going to do it, Bob?” And he would give me his ideas.
AS: How did you know that a work by Robert Smithson, like the earthwork Spiral Jetty for example, how did you know that was going to be such an important, iconic piece of work that you needed to be a part of it? That you invested in that piece? How do you know that? I mean, to most people it just seems completely – you know, it’s out in the middle of the lake in Salt Lake City, but you knew that it was going to last forever in the minds of what was important culturally in art.
Robert Smithson: Great Salt Lake Spiral Jetty
AS: [laughter] He’ll do it. He’s crazy enough to take it on. Call Douglas.
DC: [laughter] Tony was telling me this story about two or three years ago and it reminded me when Serra phoned me up and presented the piece and I thought it was just a terrific sculpture. I said, “Yes, let’s do.” And it’s now permanently installed in MOMA in New York City. I would say that I am fortunate enough to have what we can call the facilities to be able to tune into what the artists are thinking about and respond to it in a very open way. Of course it terrifies my bankers. They had to watch our account go through all these upside-downers while funding this art. But it was an absolute reason to get up in the morning. I know it’s a weird way of answering your question, but it’s the only way I can answer it.
AS: I understand that. With these large-scale installations, I mean, there’s such an architectural component to making them experience the way that they do when you’re in the space with them. Do you consider yourself –
DC: These artists, by the way – I just want to say this, Amanda – that when you encounter them, these are giant minds. For me, it isn’t rocket science to realize that I’m engaging with someone who is very capable of doing something extremely special.
AS: And being able to recognize that and execute it without putting up boundaries of why it can’t happen or why it’s impossible or why it’s not going to fit inside of a building. Or the complications of how do I transport the damn thing. You didn’t put up any barriers, which is just so incredibly mesmerizing about the work that you’ve directed. There’s nothing but possibility in what you have brought to the public through art.
DC: Amanda, what other questions can you dream up that would be interesting for your audience today?
AS: You know, I was wondering, because of the space and that component – do you consider yourself an architect?
DC: Well, I have an absolute, wonderful respect for architecture. I think great architects are, without question, artists themselves. They might be wearing the architectural hat, but they are truly artists. I think Frank Gehry is an extraordinary creator. I’ve always enjoyed it and it’s always been very comfortable for me to think about architecture. I enjoy it very much. I was just recently asked to co-design a new Guggenheim Museum being proposed for Helsinki. One of the teams wanted to bring me on as a co-architect. And I’ve had chats with Frank Gehry in regards to the building of Bilbao. There are a number of institutions around the world where I’ve had the pleasure of engaging with the architects and was able to help guide them a little bit. I’ve been designing my own spaces from the beginning, only because it was just something I could very easily do. I’ve been doing that since I’ve been in my teens. My second gallery I built from the ground up. I found a space, tore the building down, and built up a full on art space. I’ve been doing those spaces ever since. Beyond New York we’ve also had galleries in Paris and in Berlin, Beijing, and Mexico City. I’ve always thought that Ace Gallery could be anywhere. It’s interesting for me now because people like Larry Gagosian have these galleries all over. He’s, I think, benefited from that in a wonderful way. I think that when I was doing it, like when I was in Paris and Mexico City, I was too early. The art market hadn’t taken off; there weren’t all the art fairs. I remember when the French franc changed against the US dollar, I had this beautiful space in Paris and we just had to decide it wasn’t the time. The French weren’t really aggressive collectors. It was difficult for them to buy art because of taxation. They were taxed on art purchases rather heavily. I think it still happens today. And Mexico was too early, and we had a space in Beijing that was going to open up publicly right across the street from Ai Weiwei. At that moment it was also too early, so we made it into an artist’s studio and sent artists over there to use it to create and it was that until about six months ago. So it lasted seven or eight years. I wanted to do Beijing because we did the first contemporary art exhibition with Rauschenberg in China. I was working really actively with Bob at that time. The first contemporary exhibition ever in Beijing was that Robert Rauschenberg exhibition. It was in government offices, I remember that. The only people who came to the opening were the local workers in their blue outfits. And I remember Bob and I standing off to the corner and we observed their wonderful curiosity. I must say, they really engaged with the artworks. That was in the early 80s that we did that. So I had this fascination with China for some time.
Michael Heizer. ACE GALLERY New York
DC: Well absolutely, but you have to couple it to politics. You can’t just have artists, you have to have artists and you have to have collectors. And the collectors are the people that nourish the artists through their process of art making. I mean, somebody has to be there to help pay for the rent or pay for the materials. And then you have to have, hopefully, fingers crossed, a museum structure to also add to the machine to make something happen. It takes a political engine to create a strong economic environment to fuel the arts. That happened, of course, I already mentioned it, in Berlin in 1900. You had, I think, 347 daily newspapers and you had a population of maybe six million people in Berlin at that time. It had a vigorous environment for artists to create.
AS: What’s the environment like for artists now? What kind of cycle are we in now?
DC: In Berlin you have some wonderful young artists, but now you don’t have a collecting base, which is very hurtful, so a lot of those artist have left. And guess where they are right now. Here in Los Angeles.
AS: Right. So what does that do for Los Angeles’ art scene?
DC: Well, I think right now you can go anywhere in the world, any major city in the world, and you can ask, “Where is it cooking right now? Where’s the hot spot culturally?” And 95% percent of the time, without hesitation, it’s Los Angeles.
AS: Wow.
DC: Los Angeles, right now, is the most extraordinary place to be for creativity. There’s no place else in the world like it. An artist can come here and he or she can go and get an old storefront. They don’t have to pay for heating; just a small electrical bill to run their power tools. You can live in the back; food’s not expensive. And you’ve got this very nourishing environment – an easy to live in environment. So we, right now, have artists here from everywhere – from China, from London, from Paris, from South America. The city is rich with wonderful artistic energy. Somebody told me 70 or 80 percent of all the living Nobel Prize winners, whether it’s literature or science, are living in southern California right now. It is our melting pot. Right now, it’s all happening. And we all know about Silicon Valley. I’d say the major percentage of what happens in the exploration of outer space all happens just over in Pasadena. Right now, this is where it is. So it’s interesting if you map the movement from Berlin in 1900 into Paris in the later part of the century and then all of a sudden, because of the war it, jumps to New York and now it’s in Los Angeles. I would say, I could be wrong, but the next major center will be Beijing. That’s maybe 20 years away. It just keeps moving west.
AS: Well, we’ll have to see. I’m thrilled that it’s in Los Angeles.
DC: So am I.
AS: It makes it a wonderful place to be. It makes part of LA, LA. So I love it right now. I think that’s terrific. We’re going to thank you so much Douglas for your time today. I appreciate your being on the show. It was absolutely wonderful. I’d like to tell everybody to please, please be sure to check out the Helen Pashgian exhibition at Ace Gallery in Beverly Hills which is beginning July 15th and running through the end of August, right Douglas?
DC: That’s correct.
AS: Okay, terrific. And you can – Oh, did you want to say something else?
DC: Yes, I want to thank you, Amanda, for what you do to help enlighten people. You’re an educator and it’s all part of the team that it takes to make an art scene happen. So I thank you.
AS: Thank you very much. That is so generous of you to say. Thank you very, very much. You can visit Ace Gallery online at acegallery.net for more information on his upcoming exhibits. And also special thanks to Studiovox: The Creative Network, for sponsoring the show. Remember to check them out at studiovox.com. Be sure to follow me on twitter @Amandasling. I’ve had a blast and hope you did too. Enjoy the day and make the most of it. Keep your dreams for success at the top of your To Do list. I leave you with the inspired words of earthwork artist Michael Heizer: “A strong work of art really leaves people speechless. They feel a little angry because they don’t understand it. Seek the pure, simple, and profound.” I’m Amanda Slingerland and you’ve been listening to Get Famous Friday. Douglas, thank you so much for joining us today and everybody have a great day.