Contents
- 1. Transcript
- 1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE (JULY 12, 1976)
- 1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO (JULY 12, 1976)
- 1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE (JULY 19, 1976)
- 1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO (JULY 19, 1976)
- 1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE (JULY 29, 1976)
- 1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO (JULY 29, 1976)
- 1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE (AUGUST 2, 1976)
- 1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO (AUGUST 2, 1976)
1. Transcript
1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE (JULY 12, 1976)
- GOODWIN
- Well, in spite of your reluctance, I'd like you to tell me a bit about your family
background, Mr. Kantor.
- KANTOR
- My family background. I don't know what you mean, "family." My parents? I'm not
interested in that; I'm not interested in discussing it. I could tell you I was born in
New York in 1919 and went to school there, have a degree with a major in psychology and
a minor in education. I have a brother. My parents were just average bourgeois people,
first- generation Americans. I left New York City at the beginning of World War II. I
went back. I was in the U.S. Navy during the war, discharged, came back, came to
California, and have been here ever since.
- GOODWIN
- I'm going to try and back up a little. Where did you go to school?
- KANTOR
- Brooklyn College, got out in 1939.
- GOODWIN
- Did you take any art courses?
- KANTOR
- Yes. Just regular art courses. Around that time there was the Associated American
Artists, who were dealers in New York and still are dealers for graphic material. They
started a big program of publishing and selling graphics for the masses, I guess, five
dollars and ten dollars, matted. Artists like Hopper, the Soyer brothers, any of the
American artists who at that time were quite popular. They were black and white lithos
most of the time. And it kind of appealed to me, the whole idea at that time, but I
didn't have ten dollars to spend on a piece of paper. At the same time, 1936 I think,
the New York Post was giving out coupons for subscriptions,
coupons that you collected each day that you cut out of the paper; and with enough
coupons and fifty cents or a dollar, you got a big reproduction of a Van Gogh painting.
But those were very tough times, and I was a kid, and my parents had no money, and art
was . . .
- GOODWIN
- ... a luxury?
- KANTOR
- ... a luxury, in that sense, for me. Mr. Hitler that time, in 1938, was busy selling the
great paintings out of the German museums in Bern.
- GOODWIN
- Did you have any contact with New York museums? Did you visit any museums?
- KANTOR
- Sure.
- GOODWIN
- Where did you go?
- KANTOR
- Brooklyn Museum, Metropolitan Museum.
- GOODWIN
- What did you like to look at?
- KANTOR
- Didn't matter. As a kid I don't think it really matters what you look at: it's just a
matter of art is art, and the century really doesn't matter. It all appealed to me.
- GOODWIN
- What about galleries? Did you ever visit them?
- KANTOR
- At that time? No. No, because galleries were commercial enterprises, and it never
occurred to me. If I couldn't afford a five-dollar or ten-dollar lithograph, how am I
going to afford anything else? So I never went. I doubt if there were many galleries at
that time, anyhow. There were some, but not, you know . . .
- GOODWIN
- Did you have any friends or acquaintances who were artists?
- KANTOR
- No, not really. As kids, everyone draws and paints and stuff, but the school system soon
knocks it out of them, takes away all their initiative, tells them how to paint, makes
little stereotypes and so on.
- GOODWIN
- Did you yourself draw and paint as a child?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, all the time. But . . .
- GOODWIN
- . . . not anymore?
- KANTOR
- No, well, I realized, you know, as a child it's a very honest expression. As an adult
it's very complicated, and you spend the rest of your life trying to achieve that early
childhood innocence. So, you know, it's the difference between adult art and children's
art — which most people don't understand because children's art is beautiful, but
children can't repeat their art and an adult can. And that's the difference between
children's art and adult art. But it takes you the rest of your life to learn to be able
to repeat it so you know what you're saying, rather than a pure emotional expression,
when you have total control.
- GOODWIN
- Were you planning to become a psychologist?
- KANTOR
- No, I wasn't. I took it because it's the only thing that interested me at school which
was available, I wanted to be an archaeologist, but they didn't give any courses in
archaeology.
- GOODWIN
- Did you read about archaeology?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, sure. Still do, sometimes. But I have no interest in being an archaeologist. At
this point, you know, it's kind of fascinating as history, and history is all right for
itself; but archaeology is not aesthetics, and painting basically is, and most schools
teach it all wrong. And I'm sure the University of California teaches it all wrong as
well because what they call "art" is art history. And really a lot of the courses should
be taught in the philosophy department and not the art department, because the fact that
they put it in the art department shows they don't know what they're talking about.
- GOODWIN
- Have you ever done teaching in a formal context?
- KANTOR
- No, never. I have no interest.
- GOODWIN
- Never had the desire?
- KANTOR
- No interest. I'm not a teacher. I can only give so much. Having been a dealer and having
a gallery for a while, you do some, but it's a thankless task. And I'm not that much of
a humanitarian at this point in my life.
- GOODWIN
- Did you enter the navy immediately after you finished school?
- KANTOR
- No, a couple of years later.
- GOODWIN
- What did you do in the interim?
- KANTOR
- Nothing, wandered around.
- GOODWIN
- Stayed in New York?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, and then I went to New Mexico. I lived in New Mexico for a while, came back during
the early days of the war, and then got drafted.
- GOODWIN
- Why did you initially go to New Mexico?
- KANTOR
- Because I didn't like New York City. I wanted to get out of it. I had no interest in
living there. In fact, I moved back to New York City in 1968 for one year, and couldn't
take it, and moved back out here again. So New York may be the hub of New York, but
that's all. It doesn't interest me.
- GOODWIN
- Did you like New Mexico?
- KANTOR
- New Mexico? Oh, it was nice for the time, sure. It was a different experience: a kid who
grew up in the city, to live out in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains — in the Rocky
Mountains — high up in the Rockies. That was interesting for a while, but that's a bore,
too, because there's nothing going on. The same as Los Angeles a good deal of the time
is also a bore to me, but I live here for other reasons.
- GOODWIN
- Did you live in a town in New Mexico?
- KANTOR
- No, I lived in the third largest city. Las Vegas — Las Vegas, New Mexico. But there was
nothing there.
- GOODWIN
- Have you been back?
- KANTOR
- No. Oh, I've been back there; I drove through it once, fifteen years ago, that's all. I
have no interest in New Mexico. I have no interest just to go visit another town.
- GOODWIN
- Where were you sent in the navy?
- KANTOR
- The Pacific. I was on a ship. The last place we were in was Okinawa. I spent eight
months there, anchored off of Okinawa.
- GOODWIN
- Did you do anything in the armed forces related to art?
- KANTOR
- On a ship the only thing you do that's related to art is you paint it. [phone rings] No,
the only thing you do is you paint it.
- GOODWIN
- And you did that?
- KANTOR
- Sure. [laughter] I painted the bilges, painted the machinery, painted — anything that
doesn't move you paint. Yeah, it keeps you occupied. Art is for oddballs, you know. And
the army and the navy, well, they're very average, low- level people in it, even during
wartime, when everyone is kind of drafted. I mean for someone to sit and paint and make
pictures at that time was considered very strange. You were considered someone to look
at askance, you know. Today, of course, it's a lot different, but the artist is still
kind of a strange human being to most people. He spends his life making little pictures.
Well, I think most people who call themselves "artists" shouldn't be called artists to
begin with. Merely because they paint pictures doesn't mean shit. But if they want to be
called an "artist," fine, call yourself an "artist."
- GOODWIN
- Do you think there is a better term?
- KANTOR
- Artisan. [laughter] They sit there and they make pictures — well, so what? So you make
pictures? An "artist" has another connotation, or you would like to be an artist. It's
like if I write a letter, I don't call myself a "writer." Or merely because I try to do
something, I don't say I'm a writer. It's an excuse, I think. It's like every whore who
comes out here calls herself an "actress" or a "model" because it sounds more
legitimate. In the same way everyone who has nothing to do or doesn't do anything or is
totally unqualified for anything picks up a paint brush or says he's creating a TV
script and is a "writer" or an "artist," you know. And he has to be supported. And he
has to be given special recognition in our society because he says that's what I am.
Well, fine, but the recognition should come from the achievement, not from effort. A for
effort, fine, and F for achievement — something like that.
- GOODWIN
- Do you have any brothers or sisters?
- KANTOR
- One brother, a psychologist, who's in Northern California. No sisters.
- GOODWIN
- Does he have any art interests?
- KANTOR
- I think so. I know so. I used to discuss it with him; I don't too much anymore. It has
nothing to do with me.
- GOODWIN
- Where were you discharged from the navy?
- KANTOR
- New York. I came back. They discharge you closest to your home, I guess. Since I had no
other place, I guess I could have taken a discharge on the West Coast and picked up the
extra fare or something that they gave you at the time, but it didn't really matter. I
didn't know where I was. You know, civilian life was something entirely different.
- GOODWIN
- How old were you when you were finished with the navy?
- KANTOR
- Oh, I don't know, twenty- four, twenty-five, something like that. I couldn't stand it.
Middle age for servicemen.
- GOODWIN
- What was your next move?
- KANTOR
- I came out to California again, a few weeks after — I've been living here ever since,
since '46--and just wandered around here.
- GOODWIN
- Where did you go?
- KANTOR
- Nowheres, Los Angeles.
- GOODWIN
- Didn't go up north?
- KANTOR
- No. A week, two weeks, that's all. It's always been the Los Angeles area.
- GOODWIN
- Why? KA-NTOR: It appealed to me; the area appeals to me. I like the climate; it's kind
of fresh. Ideas are kind of interesting. People were able to try whatever they liked.
There was a lot less kind of Calvinist judgment about what was being done — unlike San
Francisco, which was a very uptight city, I think. That doesn't know where it is — it
lives in another time. It lives at the time of the earthquake and at the time of the
fire. And it's very pretty, and they have some snobbery about themselves up there that I
don't understand what they're talking about. Los Angeles was kind of free and open and
interesting and kind of alive and vital, I thought. And the climate was also great, so
why not move here?
- GOODWIN
- Did you have some friends out here?
- KANTOR
- Oh, I met friends. You meet people anyplace. And I met people here.
- GOODWIN
- What kinds of people?
- KANTOR
- All sorts of people. You meet all sorts of people. But in art, the one I really met at
the time was Dr. [William R. ] Valentiner, who then was — oh, I don't know what his
title was at the County Museum. The director was James Breasted. Valentiner was kind of
semi-retired from Detroit. He's one of the great art historians, the last of the great
German art historians of that generation. And even though he wrote about old masters,
his main interest was always contemporary painting. So he bought Klee, and he bought
Miro, and from the artists directly when he knew them in their lifetime. "Chief curator"
— I don't know what his title was — "associate director-consulting" something. He had
the prestigious job, and he had a young protégé, Jimmy Byrnes, who has gone the rounds
of all the museums and is now back here trying to be an art consultant. And there was
very little going on, and Valentiner was the one who kind of kindled my interest in art.
Jimmy Byrnes 's wife had a gallery on Hollywood Boulevard at the time, near Pickwick
Bookshop. That was 1947. And I had some money, so I wandered in there, and I bought a
picture or two. The first picture I ever bought was from Ynez Johnston's paintings. I
later represented her when I had a gallery.
- GOODWIN
- What else did you buy?
- KANTOR
- Some of the younger artists. Jules Engel was another artist here. There was a museum
that was formed at one time, the Institute of Modern Art in Beverly Hills — or something
like that, it was called. And [Walter] Arensberg, who had the major collection of cubist
paintings in the United States and probably in the world, was alive at that time. And
the County Museum and the University of California at Los Angeles — UCLA--both told him
that his collection of pre-Columbian and cubist paintings was a pile of garbage. Neither
one of them wanted them. UCLA in their great moment of triumph accepted — instead of the
Arensberg collection, which is now the pride of the Philadelphia Museum [of Art] , they
accepted the Willitts Hole collection of all fake old masters. Valentiner told them they
were all fakes. But it was a big tax deal. So this great collection of Arensberg's was
turned down. Also turned down by UCLA and the County Museum was the Galka Scheyer
collection, which is now in Pasadena. And the only reason Pasadena got the collection at
the time is because the trustees of the estate pushed it on them. They wanted to keep it
in California. Otherwise, the Galka Scheyer collection would have left also. So the
great erudition of the County Museum and our university leaves very serious questions in
my mind. But it was turned down, totally.
- GOODWIN
- Did you ever have any contact with Galka Scheyer?
- KANTOR
- No, she was dead when I got here. But I knew Arensberg, and he desperately tried to get
someone to do it. They had that Museum of Modern Art, which was right in Beverly Hills
here on Rodeo. And Sam Jaffe, the agent — not the actor, but the agent--got involved.
Vincent Price got involved. And Edward G. Robinson, through Sam Jaffe the actor, got
involved. But no one would do five dollars' worth of work, wouldn't put up five cents.
None of them really knew what the hell they were doing. And they all at the end
appointed that great painter, Howard Warshaw, to run it — who totally destroyed it.
Kenneth Ross, who is now the municipal art director, was around at that time, and was
director then, and he didn't know what the hell he was doing, either. And they lost the
Arensberg collection on that very basis of those four people. And they now hold these
respected positions around here. And Howard Warshaw is a university professor fucking
them up in Santa Barbara, doesn't know what painting is all about. Kenneth Ross for
twenty-five years has fucked up the municipal arts commission because he doesn't know
what is going on. Vincent Price is gone. And Sam Jaffe is sitting in London. And Edward
G. Robinson is dead. And we could have had the great collection of pre- Columbian and
cubist art in this country, and they threw it away because they were too goddamned cheap
to even put up any money. And Arensberg begged them, begged them, begged them. He put
out the money for the catalog and for everything else and for the research, and it
didn't please them. And it still goes on in this city — nothing pleases anyone. It's all
kind of a selfish, ego-motivated thing where no one wants to be upped, so in order not
to be upped they destroy everything under them — or what they think is under them or
over them. I don't know. There's very little going on. The County Museum is a perfect
example of nothing.
- GOODWIN
- You mean today?
- KANTOR
- Yes. It's a perfect example of nothing. They have a director who does nothing, knows
nothing, cares less. And I don't know if he's got full contact at all times with day-
to-day events. [phone rings; tape recorder turned off]
- GOODWIN
- Today and twenty- five years ago.
- KANTOR
- Well, even when they were building the new building here, you know, the design was an
absolute horror. And everyone said, "Well, why do you criticize it?" I said, "No, it has
nothing to do with the County Museum; it's just tasteless, bad architecture. And there's
no way you can make me say that I think it's beautiful." I think by now everyone agrees
it's a tasteless, kind of half-useless building with an enormous amount of wasted space,
carpets on the floor that take them six months to a year to redo so that the galleries
are closed for a year — I mean to put carpets on the floor is another insanity. Their
collection has not been improved to any extent. They sit and beg for paintings, and they
have lost all contact with what art is about. It's a little toy for the board, which
it's always been, and with virtually nothing originating out of there. It's a booking
museum, and they book shows occasionally, and have big parties for the trustees, and get
their cultural kudos without ....
- GOODWIN
- What about the modern art department?
- KANTOR
- With [Maurice] Tuchman? GOODMAN: Yes.
- KANTOR
- I don't know, what about it? They've bought a few things in fifteen years. The rest of
it has been gifts that they've been scrounging. I don't know what they have, really,
after fifteen years to show fifteen years of effort as being rewarding.
- GOODWIN
- So apparently even the trustees aren't happy with the situation?
- KANTOR
- I don't know what the trustees are happy with. They're trustees. I presume they're happy
with themselves and the fact that they have a title that they can use, where they are
the trustees of an institution of culture.
- GOODWIN
- But presumably if they had some art, they would give it.
- KANTOR
- That's not true. They do have art. I don't know if anyone has given anything.
- GOODWIN
- So apparently they don't care, either.
- KANTOR
- Well, they care, but they care for their own selfish grounds. One of the great
collectors of the world, Norton Simon, who was a trustee, is no longer on it because
they didn't see eye-to-eye about collecting paintings. And whatever you say, Norton
Simon has more paintings than all of the trustees on the board since the time that
museum was founded — and better ones. And that's the name of the game at the end, isn't
it? Not the ego that's involved, or the power play, or anything else. So as a result,
they have nothing.
- GOODWIN
- Do you know specifically where Norton Simon and the other trustees disagreed?
- KANTOR
- No, I don't. Only rumors, and I'd rather not repeat rumors because I don't know whether
it's true or not. I only know the fact, and the fact is that Norton Simon is not on that
board, and Norton Simon is one of the great collectors in the world today with one of
the great world collections — certainly a better collection than the entire damned
museum there has. So all I can say is that the same way they lost Arensberg and they
lost the Galka Scheyer collection, I'm sure they lost the Simon collection. Because
either, one, out of ignorance, or, two, out of personal needs that excluded Norton
Simon.
- GOODWIN
- So you don't think there's any chance that Simon will . . .
- KANTOR
- No, he has his own museum now. He has his own museum, his own institution, he runs it
himself, and it's far better than anything that the County Museum here is doing. The
County Museum is busy spending their money on guards, security systems, new rugs, and
parties. I don't know of anything about art, and if they buy art, they don't let anyone
in town know locally what they're looking for or might be interested in. They totally
discourage anyone going to local galleries. I've heard of all sorts of pictures that
they were either trying to sell or buy, running around New York begging, and wouldn't
tell anyone out here about it. So, in that same sense, why should they expect
cooperation from anyone here? Because they don't cooperate with anyone.
- GOODWIN
- What about the history of Pasadena Museum? Is it any better?
- KANTOR
- Sure, it was an honest attempt. There was never any money, unfortunately. See, the
Pasadena Museum was originally founded as a private art gallery and built as one. And
the old building in Pasadena, which looked like a Chinese pagoda, had great shows during
the Depression years sent out here by big New York firms — you know, a Goya show or
something like that. But after the acquisition of the Galka Scheyer paintings, the
museum took on kind of a new thing because they at least were willing to take seventy
Klees and a hundred Jawlenskys and stuff like this, which the County Museum and UCLA
both turned down as not worthy. They were willing to take it. So a lot of people who
thought about art and knew something about art kind of supported the Pasadena Museum.
And it grew over the years, but it was always kind of an "in" little place at that time,
until they finally raised the money and built the new institution — which I thought was
kind of silly because I think they should have spent the millions of dollars on buying
art and just kind of putting a face-lift on the other institution so that it wouldn't
look like a Chinese pagoda. But the mentality of most board members is kind of corporate
megalomania. So the thing to do is to get a big fancy institution and with nothing to
put in it, but that doesn't matter — it's a pretty building, look at it.
- GOODWIN
- Apparently there wasn't much concern by the insiders there because that museum
collapsed.
- KANTOR
- Well, that was for another reason, because it became a pet for one man. And frankly, I
could have sold that museum to someone else for a lot more money than they sold it to
Simon for. Norton was very smart and did very well by it. But they never told anyone.
And Bob Rowan or his wife didn't want to put any more money into it, but didn't want
anyone else to put any more money into it. And as a result, they got rid of it. And
that's unfortunate. But Norton Simon has turned it into, I think, a first-class
institution — I think a much better institution than the County Museum, with a lot
better staff and with a more active acquisition program, even. Not with going around
begging little pictures whenever you can get it — an actual acquisition program. And
where the money comes from or anything else is of really no concern. The point is it
does come, and they do buy, and they do very good installations, and they maintain
everything and it's not . . .
- GOODWIN
- Except nobody knows how long it's going to be there.
- KANTOR
- It's going to be there. The Norton Simon Foundation is the foundation of a
billion-dollar corporation — it's going to be there.
- GOODWIN
- Are the paintings going to be there?
- KANTOR
- Sure.
- GOODWIN
- He's not going to loan them out?
- KANTOR
- No, they were loaned out before as parts of deals because, you know, federal foundation
laws require certain things, and he didn't have a building at that time. So loan deals
were made with the County Museum, with Princeton, with Kansas City, with Phoenix,
Arizona, but all with institutions, so at least the people would see the art instead of
it being put in a warehouse. But now that he has his own building, there's no reason for
it to go elsewhere. I mean, San Francisco had a whole batch of things that are probably
due back this month, but no one has ever seen that collection in its entirety. And at
least he tries to change the exhibitions, and vary them, and move them around, and he
does. If you've been there, there's no comparison in the installation. I mean to look at
the installation at the County Museum of those Rodins — there was that one room that was
so depressing you can't even walk into it-- just thrown in there in one room.
- GOODWIN
- How do you account for Simon's success?
- KANTOR
- He's interested in art. He's interested in putting money into art. He's interested in
paying for the thing, you know. [phone rings; tape recorder turned off]
- GOODWIN
- Norton Simon makes commitments.
- KANTOR
- He makes commitments; he spends several million dollars a year on art. And he buys. All
right, he doesn't buy all the way up to contemporary art, buy pop art or something like
this, except where they had matching funds, where the museum had matching funds from the
federal government. But he buys on all levels: from Indian art, first century, through
the 1940s, and French art, which is a big thing. They buy with a lot more awareness and
astute judgments than I've seen around here.
- GOODWIN
- Well, hasn't he capitalized on expert advice that was available here?
- KANTOR
- Well, that's fine. I'm all for it — not only here, all over. There is no expert advice —
very little in the way of expert advice here that I know of. Very little.
- GOODWIN
- What about Richard Brown, former director of the County Museum?
- KANTOR
- Well, all I can do was look at what Mr. Brown has bought for Texas in the last ten years
he has been there, and I'm not very impressed. I know some of the things he bought when
he was at the County Museum here, and I'm not very impressed. And when he bought a
Delacroix, he bought a Delacroix copy of Rubens. When he bought a Goya, he bought a
"maybe" Goya. No, was that a Goya?
- GOODWIN
- Yeah.
- KANTOR
- The Goya, a "maybe" Goya. At the same time he was buying that Goya, Dick Davis, who was
at Minneapolis, bought a great Poussin for the same money, a study for the Rape of the Sabine Women, an eight-foot Poussin. And he buys a
questionable Goya. So I don't know of any great paintings this County Museum has ever
bought. I don't know of any. They've been talking — twenty-five years that I know
they've been talking — and I don't know of one great picture they've bought, period.
- GOODWIN
- What are your thoughts about the Getty Museum?
- KANTOR
- I don't know, I haven't been there in recent times. Unfortunately, Getty, who was a very
rich man, didn't like to spend money — not commensurate with his wealth. And a lot of
his purchases were always based on price rather than quality, which always makes for a
kind of odd way of buying anything. So he's got kind of a conglomeration there. Maybe
now that he personally is out of the way, maybe they'll give the people in charge of the
museum or in control of the museum a freer hand and see if they can do anything — or
give them funds, I don't know. It's according to what the terms of the will are. But
with no funds except for maintenance, there's very little you can do at the museum
except watch it go downhill. If you had a great collection, okay, you keep it as a great
static collection, like the Frick, which is an incredible collection. But if you just
keep the static collection of the Getty Museum, you've got a pretty place in Malibu
where people can go look and wander around and look at the Roman villa that has nothing
to do with anything going on.
- GOODWIN
- Mr. Kantor, how did you get into becoming an art dealer?
- KANTOR
- I bought paintings after World War II. I had a little money, so I bought some paintings,
young artists, as I said before. There was a little gallery around who needed some
money, and I loaned them some money. I thought I was a silent partner in it. I was naive
about the legal aspects of it. So I was a silent partner in it, and I wound up being a
general partner for some technicalities. Not only did I try to get out of it, but not
only would I have been responsible for the fellow's debts personally as well as whatever
business debts he'd had, so I paid him off, figured I'd run the gallery till I got free
and clear, and then I'd close it.
- GOODWIN
- What was the name of the gallery?
- KANTOR
- Fraymart Gallery. So it turns out after I bought him out I changed it to the Paul Kantor
Gallery. And I liked it, so I gave up whatever else I was doing and stayed with the
gallery.
- GOODWIN
- Can you say what else you were doing?
- KANTOR
- I was a union official. I was the research director for the Seafarers' International
Union. I wrote papers and documents and printed its paper.
- GOODWIN
- But you were living in Los Angeles?
- KANTOR
- In Los Angeles, yes. Well, they have branches down in the harbor. In fact, at that time,
Norton Simon's father had a cannery in Wilmington. And Fred Weisman was working for Hunt
Foods, and I think they had control of the cannery. And so, unbeknownst to me, I was
buying pictures and they weren't. They didn't come in until ten years later at least —
ten, twelve years. We were negotiating contracts. I was sitting against them negotiating
contracts for cannery workers [laughter] at the same time that I had an art gallery,
which my then wife used to sit around in, and I've known Norton that long. Fred Weisman
started to buy pictures in, oh, 1961, something like that. And Norton started some years
before, '56. I sold him a painting at that time, Kirchner. I had a Kirchner show in '57,
which I borrowed back at that time.
- GOODWIN
- What year did you take over the Fraymart Gallery?
- KANTOR
- When I bought the partner out?
- GOODWIN
- Right.
- KANTOR
- So I was in it for some years before. I guess in '50 — I don't remember the years — '51,
'52, something like that.
- GOODWIN
- Who were your partners?
- KANTOR
- Oh, there was one fellow there, I don't even remember his name. He was a framer who
loved art. But like a lot of these little places, they couldn't exist selling paintings,
so you existed making frames, you know, and you had shows. Most galleries — Barbara
Byrnes 's gallery was that way. She tried to sell frames, you know. She didn't have a
frame shop, but she would job them out. But it was very difficult to sell any paintings
of any kind.
- GOODWIN
- Where was the gallery located?
- KANTOR
- Beverly Boulevard next to Chasen's. There's a light shop there or something now. And
then I later moved to Beverly Hills on Camden Drive.
- GOODWIN
- How many years was that later?
- KANTOR
- Oh, Camden — in '56 or so. Twenty years ago. Before that it was the other place. And he
had some places elsewhere that I never went into. I used to hang around and stuff, but I
was part of it. The only other dealers around at that time were, well--Frank Perls was
around, Felix Landau, Hatfield (but that's the Ambassador Hotel; it is a hotel gallery)
. And the artists who were very big and ruled supreme were Rico Lebrun and Howard
Warshaw. I always thought they were nothing, and everyone says, "You don't know," so . .
.
- GOODWIN
- Were you regarded as a maverick?
- KANTOR
- I still am! I don't talk to most people because I don't pay homage to them. Lester
Longman at UCLA — I don't know if he's still there or not--he thought Howard Warshaw was
brilliant, brilliant, you know. Well, Lester Longman, it turns out, is a total asshole
as far as I was concerned.
- GOODWIN
- Who or what excited you in those years?
- KANTOR
- Well, the abstract painting that was going on in the United States. Some of the first
shows I had were [Robert] Motherwell, [William] Baziotes, [Hans] Hofmann, [Adolph]
Gottlieb, [Willem] de Kooning. I gave Dick Diebenkorn his first show. They had an annual
in 1948 or so at the County Museum where Howard Warshaw won first prize for some stupid
picture of a wallaby — a wallaby, you know--done in a kind of fake old master,
chiaroscuro style or something. A total fake — a total nothing. He won first prize. And
Dick Diebenkorn, who had a great picture in there, they totally disregarded it. So I
bought the picture at that time. I subsequently donated it to the Pasadena Museum, and
they own it, but . . . [tape recorder turned off]
- GOODWIN
- You were mentioning how you showed the New York abstract painters.
- KANTOR
- Oh, at that time, yeah. Everyone kind of laughed at it. Some knew what it was about, and
a lot of them didn't. And they thought it was a big joke, like I'm putting them on. Like
the people today say, you know, Picasso is kidding them, you know. Everyone's kidding
them, you know. I mean, it's just the whole idea that if they don't understand it, then
it's derision, but this city is full of that. I had a de Kooning show in '61; I had a
great de Kooning show. At that time, an important de Kooning was $25,000 for an
important picture, and I begged the County Museum to buy them. "Oh, well, we'll get
plenty. People will give it to us. We have to buy other things." But that's the story of
the County Museum. They're not interested. I don't know what the hell they're interested
in. They're not interested in art. They're interested in social recognition, and their
collection shows it. They just accept what people give them. They don't buy; they have
no program for acquisition. It's kind of a hodgepodge. And they sit there and they
congratulate themselves on how astute they are in begging things.
- GOODWIN
- How did you get into the New York abstract painters?
- KANTOR
- They just appealed to me. I buy all kinds of things. I buy old master drawings; I buy
old master paintings; I'll buy anything. To me, art is art, I don't give a damn which
century it is. I know more about one than others, but I sold Harvard the only Rembrandt
painting they ever owned, the Head of Christ. And the
abstract paintings appealed to me. Like you see a lot of pop art around here today. It
appeals to me, I like it, so I buy it. This big [Franz] Kline here was owned by Sam
Hunter. Sam Hunter at that time was at the Museum of Modern Art and he just accepted a
job as the chief curator at Minneapolis. He needed $500 for a car, so he wanted to sell
this painting. That painting is what? 4 X 5 feet, roughly. So I said, "Okay, Sam, send
it out. I'll try to sell it for you." So he sent it out here, and I asked people $600:
$500 the cost to Sam, and $100 for the crating, shipping, insurance, and the other
expenses of the picture. And I begged everyone to buy the painting. Nobody would buy the
painting, nobody. They laughed at me — $600 for a big Kline painting, 1950. So finally
Sam was desperate. I said, "Okay, Sam, I'll buy the painting for the $500. So I bought
it. I paid him $500 for the painting, and I still have it now — it's twenty years later.
Now I can get $75,000 to $100,000 for this picture. Now everyone says, "Oh, you were so
smart, you were so smart"; I said, "Well, I tried to sell it to you for $600, and you
wouldn't buy it."
- GOODWIN
- "You were so so stupid."
- KANTOR
- "You were so stupid." Right. [laughter]
1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO (JULY 12, 1976)
- KANTOR
- I remember once I had a very beautiful Marsden Hartley painting called, I think, The Lost Felice — I think that's what it was called. And Ric
Brown came in one day and, oh, he went absolutely crazy over it. And he said, "I'll buy
the painting for the museum. " Just like that. And the whole painting was, I don't know,
between $8,000 and $8,500, for a big Marsden Hartley oil. And he bought it. And they
raised hell with him. "How dare you? You don't consult us; you don't tell us; you don't
do this; you don't do that." You know, they want the supreme authority for a miserable
$8-, $9,000 picture. And they made life nothing buy miserable for Ric, because he bought
this on his own. And that's what that museum has always done. And if you ask them, then
they have six board meetings or ten board meetings, and then they object, and then they
want this, and at the end it's ridiculous, totally ridiculous to even consider talking
to these people about anything. That's how they are.
- GOODWIN
- I wonder if you can explain in a little more depth what appealed to you when you first
showed the abstract expressionists.
- KANTOR
- Oh, that's very hard. It's like saying, "Why does this picture appeal to you now?" You
know, in art there's this very ugly word called "sensitivity." It's not only in art,
it's in all art forms — you know, the performing arts, the visual arts, or the creative
arts or whatever you want to call them. And at the end, you can't tell someone that you
have sensitivity and they don't have sensitivity. You know, it's a very complicated
thing. If you take the language we know today, we know the written word and the oral
word — that's our language of today. And you take a poem and you know the definition of
every single word on every single line: you know the syntax, you know the grammatical
construction, the punctuation, everything. You know it all, and you read those fifteen
lines or those twenty lines and you haven't the faintest idea of what the man is writing
or saying, and yet you know everything there. And that's in the language we use. So if
you put it in the language that we don't use, like in painting, where it's a different
language, I don't know how to explain it. I had a show around '51 — Motherwell,
Baziotes, Hofmann, and Gottlieb — watercolors and drawings and a few pastels. Kind of
intimate little pictures. At that time one collector who bought a few things came in one
day, and he looked at the show, and in the show were some Motherwell drawings of, oh,
the beginning of the Spanish Elegy pictures. And he looked
at the whole show. He said, "Paul, you're kidding me." I said, "What am I kidding you
about?" He said, "Well, I went to school with Bob Motherwell — we went to Harvard, and I
went here, and I know him." You know, Motherwell comes originally from San Francisco.
And he said, "You're just kidding me." I said, "Look, if you know him that well, here's
his address. Write him, tell him you saw these pictures, and ask him about them. All I
could tell you is, he's a very sincere artist, and he can express himself quite well
verbally, and write him and ask him about it." So he came back a few weeks later, and he
got an answer from Motherwell. And Motherwell said, "It's not a matter of being sincere
or insincere." He said, "It's only a matter of having something to say and finding a
language in which to say it." Now, if the creative guy has that trouble, then once he
does it, you've also got to come to the language that he's found, which makes it so much
more complicated. And I don't know, it just appealed to me, so I had that feeling for
it.
- GOODWIN
- Is that essentially the way you've functioned ever since? If something feels right with
you . . . ?
- KANTOR
- Yeah. It's not a cerebral thing because art at the end is not that cerebral. You know,
you can sit and say, why do you like one Mozart quartet over another? Why do you like
violin quartet number three or number five or vice versa? They're both a guy at his very
height, yet one appeals to you more than another appeals to you. And how the notes are
constructed or how this is done — that's bullshit. That's technicalities, and that's art
history, you know. It's like sitting down and someone telling you what Bonnard ate
Sunday morning, October 23, 1907. That's what he ate, and that's who he ate it with, and
that's his little frame shop where he went to bring his few little pictures to be
framed, or something like this. And then you show that same guy who knows all these
things, you show him three pictures of 1907 and he doesn't even know what he's looking
at. He's not concerned with the art, he's only concerned with facts and figures. There
are a lot of people in art who are concerned the same way. You show them a picture, "Oh,
it's too late." I say, "Well, why don't you look at the painting? What are you worried
about what date it is? Why don't you look at the picture of the man?" "Oh, no, it's no
good." Because they really have no feeling for anything, and they're only taught,
they're taught by rote, but they have no feeling for their pictures or what they're
looking at. I find it kind of sad. And when you get collections where it is put together
with some kind of knowledge, then you'll find great collections, and there are others
that are just kind of accumulations. They may call them "collections," but they're
accumulations — that's all they are. They don't know what they are doing, and they don't
trust anyone. And if they trust someone, they trust someone who doesn't know what he is
doing anyway. You don't see the Museum of Modern Art making those kinds of mistakes. You
don't see a lot of institutions making those mistakes. Maybe they don't acquire as much
or with such fanfare or they've got such an enormous collection, but there are
institutions and there are collectors that have their reputation, and it's a deserved
one.
- GOODWIN
- But are you saying that sensitivity is a gift? It either exists or doesn't exist?
- KANTOR
- At the end I think so, yeah, I think it's the same thing that makes one painter great
and another just an average painter. Yeah, I think at the end sensitivity is something
that can't be taught.
- GOODWIN
- It's some kind of mythical quality.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, I think so. It's not only art, it's in any of the creative thing. I mean, at the
end there's a point where genius is expressed, and either you understand it or you
don't. You can say you understand it, you can say this, but it's not true because you
know if you follow through the people don't know what they're talking about. And it's
very complicated. Why is it some people will always pick the right painting, even though
they have no knowledge? They have a feeling, you know, in an area, and they will always
go for a good picture. And others, with all their knowledge and everything else, always
pick the wrong picture. I could tell you many museum people like that — they will always
pick the wrong picture.
- GOODWIN
- Is there some way that you could explain how your sensitivity so quickly materialized?
- KANTOR
- No, it didn't quickly materialize. I think it's always there with an individual. You can
see it in little kids. I think it's always there. I don't know what it is. It's some
kind of an amorphic thing that was just there. And I think you can teach someone just so
much but that's all. You cannot give them that sensitivity, I just don't think you can.
That's what sometimes makes a great actor, what makes, you know, a great performer of
any kind. At the end there is something special that doesn't exist in the others. I
don't know what it is. And I think there are a lot of people who have an eye for that,
too, or they have a flair. And you can see it with them. It's the way if you know an
artist's work, you can always spot the fakes from the real ones. I mean, you don't need
a chemical analysis and everything else. That picture is either alive or it's not alive,
and if you know the artist and you know his work, you know it.
- GOODWIN
- What about the artist on an off day?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, but it's still there; the handwriting of the man is always there. The big pictures
are nothing, it's just everything, you know. Years ago, someone brought me a little
Picasso drawing about two inches square, 2 X 2 inches, of a woman's head and a child —
unsigned, supposedly by Picasso (and this was around 1960) and supposedly given by
Picasso to the piano teacher of the Stein children in Paris. It was a little blue period
drawing, pre-blue period. Not blue period, around that time. So I sent it to a friend of
mine in Paris. And I told him the whole story, as I tell you here. It was a friend of
Picasso's, too — he was a dealer. And I said, "Next time you see Picasso, why don't you
show it to him, and if he thinks it's right let him sign it, you know. Here's a photo
for him, one for the books and one for me . . ." So he sends it back to me, "Oh," he
says, "I'm not going to bother him with that little piece of trivia." He says, "I'd look
silly." So I said, "Okay." So I sent it to Picasso's dealer instead, to Kahnweiler, with
the same thing. And sure enough, a month or two later I got an answer back: Picasso
okayed it. The exact story, he remembers now — this is sixty years later, almost — he
remembers giving that little drawing to the piano teacher of the Stein kids. He says
it's perfectly okay. So the artist always puts something of himself into those pictures,
whether it's a little thing like that or it's a big opus, a masterwork, you know. You
can always tell a right one from a wrong one. I've spoken to a guy like Dick Diebenkorn
here in town. You know, on some drawings I used to know him quite well. One little
drawing he gave me twenty-odd years ago, and I know exactly what he was talking about at
the time he gave it to me, and he knows. And I saw him the other night and it was the
same thing. They know every little stroke on their drawings or their paintings. So you
can always tell a real one from a bad one — most of the time, you know. If you have to
rely on a chemical analysis of the paint, that's all hocus-pocus for someone who doesn't
know what he's looking at. By the time you get to that, you're in trouble to begin with.
You may use the chemical analysis for verification of repaint and stuff like this; but
the real from the fake--if you can't tell it, chemical analysis or radiology or anything
else is not going to tell you what's real in art or isn't real. And at the end, that's
that very funny area of sensitivity because understanding is not enough. The art
historian, who does the catalogue raisonne, for instance, is just a bookkeeper. That's
all he has to do is collect all the material that's sent in. They don't make any value
judgments about unknown pictures. They're frightened to death; they're frightened to
death to put a picture out that someone can criticize them for. So they leave it out.
And they wait for the supplements when everyone agrees. Then they say, "Oh, yes, of
course that's real." So, you know, it takes them twenty years to do a catalogue raisonne
because they're afraid to make a mistake. And even the known pictures are one thing, but
the unknown pictures they're frightened to death about.
- GOODWIN
- Do you think you've made any mistakes?
- KANTOR
- Sure. [laughter]
- GOODWIN
- I mean, as far as missing artists when they're young and not recognizing them until ....
- KANTOR
- Well, I don't know if you call it a mistake. You know, I have other things in life
besides pictures. I have a family; I have kids; I have other outside interests. I don't
devote twenty-four hours a day to thinking and living art.
- GOODWIN
- Have you at another time?
- KANTOR
- Ah, you do and you don't. And then you're interested in other things. Sometimes I don't
even want to see anything else. I don't want to see it. I'm bored. I got other things
going on. I don't want to know about it. I don't care. I'll pick it up later for
whatever reason I have to pick it up, but I'm not interested at the time. Just because
it's going on doesn't mean I have to get involved in it — no more than I get involved
with anything else just because it's going on. I get involved with what I feel like
getting involved with at the time. Basically life is more than just looking at somebody
else's creation, as far as I'm concerned--especially the past ones, by egomaniacs.
- GOODWIN
- But you were strongly into contemporary art when you . . .
- KANTOR
- . . . when I started.
- GOODWIN
- Right.
- KANTOR
- Well, it was available, it was there, it was going on at the time, I was a lot younger,
I had a lot more enthusiasm, and I liked it.
- GOODWIN
- Were you traveling back and forth frequently between here and New York?
- KANTOR
- No, at that time they had propeller planes. A fast trip before the jets was still seven
and a half hours one way.
- GOODWIN
- So what kind of personal contact could you have with New York artists?
- KANTOR
- Well I'd go a couple of times a year. I ' d go there or write letters, you know. But
now, you know, the jet has changed things quite a bit because it's cut the time way
down. And the whole acceleration in our means of communication has kind of shortened the
world. So if you want to keep up, you have to do more of it. You get caught up in the
game.
- GOODWIN
- Your speciality, though, has always remained contemporary art.
- KANTOR
- No, nineteenth- and twentieth-century French painting is where I have done an enormous
amount of stuff. I had the first shows of Kirchner. I did a lot of the German painters.
Everyone used to laugh at me about German paintings, but Kirchner, Nolde, Kandinsky,
Klee — I did all kinds of stuff with them. And nineteenth- and twentieth- century
French. And contemporary art, I play with. I like contemporary art, but I like it all. I
like it all. It's according to what comes up. I'd just as soon buy one as another — it
doesn't matter.
- GOODWIN
- Who were some of your early customers? Who bought modern paintings?
- KANTOR
- Here? Stanley Barbee, who's dead now. He used to be the head of the Coca-Cola company
out here. He bought. He was one of the big buyers at that time. [tape recorder turned
off] Who else? I don't know, there were people around who started buying pictures at
that time. There wasn't much. Vincent Price bought a few pictures. Sam Jaffe bought
some. Norton Simon was starting to buy, but he bought in other areas. Giff Phillips — I
bought the first pictures he ever had; I bought and sold him a Motherwell and a
Baziotes. I don't remember. I could look it up; it's not important. Don Winston started
to buy some paintings at that time.
- GOODWIN
- Was it rough to sell?
- KANTOR
- It was very difficult to sell. Very difficult. I had a fabulous Klee oil, 14 X 18
inches, that was all of $1,300. Begged people to buy it — $1,300 for a Klee oil that
today is a $100,000 to start with. No one wanted it. I finally sold it in St. Louis to
Buster May, who came out here. He was one of my early clients. And Joe Pulitzer came out
and bought a Diebenkorn painting from me once — $300 for a big Diebenkorn oil. It was a
major sale, $300, because at the same time a big Diebenkorn oil was $300, a big Chagall
gouache was $200. And a Chagall gouache like that today, in today's depressed market, is
$55,000. So, you know, in a way the young artist at that time was very expensive
compared to big names. I used to buy beautiful Leger gouaches of the thirties, '38. I
used to buy them for $40. For a Leger gouache that today--the same gouache is today
$10,000. But I've also bought paintings of young artists at that time for $40 that are
today worth $10 — Jules Engel. So, you know, you can support young artists, but everyone
says you got to give them a break — you got to give them this, you've got to give them
that, but what's the break they're giving you, as the collector? You know, it's a
two-way street. There's a law now in the state — or they're trying to pass that insane
law — about artists participating in the resale of their pictures and the profit. That's
total insanity. Why don't they also participate in the losses? What is this one-way
deal? I mean, why should they participate only in winners and no losers? Participate in
both. Let the artist set up a fund, and get it out of the fund as well, every time a
picture hasn't sold at a loss. I've got a closetful of pictures I wouldn't know what to
do with at this point. The artist will ask $1,000. If you can get fifty dollars on the
open market, you're lucky. Let them participate in the loss, 5 percent of the losses,
just as well. I'll guarantee you at the end the artist will lose out.
- GOODWIN
- You never hear that argument.
- KANTOR
- Of course not. It's a one-way deal. Why should they participate in the future earnings
of something like that — it's not a commercial thing? They don't make it as a commercial
venture, their paintings. You know, it's not like a movie or a TV thing, which is done
for purely commercial reasons, which is presold to advertisers and everything else.
Merely because some people have bought it and sold the pictures and made some money,
what is their great resentment? You know, the French have a system of buying the
artist's output, and they buy it by points. That's why there are standard sizes of
French paintings. You know what that is?
- GOODWIN
- I'm not familiar with that.
- KANTOR
- Well, there are standard-size French paintings. There are charts on them. When dealers
talk about a size 10 or an artist orders a size 10, you have a figure, a paysage, and a
marine. Figure is the biggest, paysage is the next, and a marine is the narrow panel.
But it's the long size that counts. And they're generally always the same, the long
size. So a 10 is roughly 18 X 22 inches. A 12 is 18 X 24. Fifteen is roughly 20 X 26.
Then you have the 20, which is 20 X 28. You have a 30, you have a 40, you have a 50, a
60, an 80, a 100, a 120, 160, something like that. You have, you know, 2 or 3 foot.
Okay, the standard sizes, I mean there are charts on these, you can look them up. It
originated when the French dealers would take an artist under contract. And this is a
late nineteenth-century innovation, I guess, with the impressionists. They would take an
artist under contract, and they would say, "Okay, you're a new artist, we'll buy your
paintings. We'll buy 1,000 points for the season at $10 a point." Okay, so that's
$10,000. And the artist brings in, say, thirty paintings, so you buy it by the size. A
size 30 is 30 points. Ten dollars a point is $300, you see. If you brought in a little
size 4, it would be 4 points, $40. So you pick big ones, you pick little ones, you pick
what you like, but you're paying like kind of on the square inch is what you're doing.
All right, so if an artist brings in one big masterpiece, you say, okay, I'll take that,
keep all the others, you know. Then they have the option to buy more at the same price,
but that's the minimum that they guarantee the artist, so at least the artist knows he
can live. Okay, that's fair enough. All right, so if the artist makes it, the dealer's
got some cheap pictures. But the next time around, when the contract comes up in a year
or two, you renegotiate the cost of the pictures. So the artist would always resent it
because "Look at all the money the dealers made on me." But how many dealers have
carried an artist for five to ten years, and they're sitting with a warehouse full of
pictures that you can't sell? And each year they renew the contract and they buy new
pictures. Twenty years later maybe it works out, and the artist says, "Look at the way I
was cheated." Well, you know, it's kind of an infantile game where they think it's only
one-way. And basically, this bill here where they want to participate only in the
winners is also kind of an infantile thing. What is this one-way? Participate both ways.
But the bookkeeping and the accounting that we're going through, the resentment — what
is this big resentment for 5 percent of the profits? I mean what is the resentment? I
don't see them paying 5 percent of the losses. I don't see collectors complaining that
the artists did them dirty — they didn't become famous. It's strange. American artists,
for instance, are all very strange, anyhow.
- GOODWIN
- Why?
- KANTOR
- Well, because they have the resentment of the dealer system, a lot of them. The dealer
system is basically a European idea. They all seem to resent the dealer system. But I
think the dealers are very important because they know a lot more than museum people.
It's the dealers who put their money into it — they'd better know what they're doing.
- GOODWIN
- Over the years do you tend to have represented a small number of, say, contemporary
artists? Or do you have a continual turnover?
- KANTOR
- Represent? I don't represent anyone, I just buy and sell the paintings. When I had a
gallery, I had a few artists whom I showed but not really of any stature.
- GOODWIN
- Have you stuck with certain artists over the years?
- KANTOR
- No, I buy whatever. I buy all kinds of paintings. There's some I like more than others,
you know, so you get locked into them. But then at the end, I'll buy anything, you know.
I'll buy Warhol, and I'll buy Metzinger. I'll buy Dali, Picasso, I don't care. What I
like to buy is something that I think is of some quality rather than just to buy a name.
Well, when the market was running crazy and, you know, the Japanese and the Italian
buyers were very heavily into the market about three years ago, then you could sell
anything at any price. So you'd buy anything, you couldn't care less — just bought it
and sold it. And it didn't matter; it didn't matter. It was just junk merchandise being
turned over. Today, when it's very tough and very hard to sell paintings, I'm very
careful. I buy only what I think are high quality paintings. Otherwise I won't buy them.
And that's, you know, what a lot of dealers don't know because they have no taste. But
of course a lot of collectors have no taste either, so that accounts for, you know, the
popularity of the Utrillos and the Vlamincks. Today, in today's tough market, those are
the easiest painters to sell, Utrillo and Vlaminck, still. I could sell them all day
long, all I could find. So the new buyers that come into the market are the same
uneducated, unequipped buyers, and that's the first thing they go for. They have an
enormous appeal, those painters — Utrillo and Vlaminck have an enormous appeal at all
times. You can always sell them.
- GOODWIN
- But then the more mature collectors . . .
- KANTOR
- All right, so you refine it. You only go for the Fauve Vlamincks. These are the only
important ones. Or you go for the early white period and prewhite period Utrillos, which
are the only really important ones. And you hope that more mature collectors would get
into that. But of course it's according to their money too, because those pictures cost
ten times what the others cost. So a Fauve Vlaminck is $150,000 to $200,000, where the
average one is $15,000. So you're talking about big differences. Even if your taste is
refined, your pocketbook may not be there, you know. So then if you have that need to
buy paintings and stuff, then you look for lesser artists, younger artists, different
schools that cost less. That's why I buy in all areas, because I buy what I like, but I
also realize I have to sell it. You know, if I have a roomful of Picassos and someone
says, "I don't like Picasso," I'm out of business. So you have to have kind of a broad
selection of paintings that you think other people might be interested in, in direction
or in price. So I may personally prefer Picasso, say, to Bonnard, but Bonnard is such a
sweeter painter that maybe other people say, "I like Bonnard better." So if I have a
choice, I would buy one Bonnard and one Picasso, rather than two Picassos. Get all other
factors equal, just so you have a spread. And if you have unlimited capital, then it
doesn't matter: you buy it all. Same as collectors who have enough money will buy, you
know, in much heavier quantity and much more importantly. But that's only the commercial
aspects of collecting.
- GOODWIN
- What is an ideal collector?
- KANTOR
- An ideal collector, one, must have money. Otherwise he's not a collector. Otherwise he '
s a voyeur. [laughter] One, he has to have money for his taste. And, two, he has to have
the taste.
- GOODWIN
- Does that mean the dealer's taste?
- KANTOR
- No, no. See, my taste may be something entirely different than what I sell, but what I
sell, I think, is of high quality. I may hate the picture, but that doesn't mean it's
not a high-quality painting. So that's not my taste, but I think it's a high-quality
picture. I think I would know in most instances, or maybe it's my ego trip, but I would
know in most instances whether it's a good painting or not a good painting, even though
it's not my particular thing.
- GOODWIN
- What's an example of a good painting that you don't particularly enjoy for yourself?
- KANTOR
- Oh, you mean of a famous painting or just a picture? Well, nothing that I have hanging
here, because if I didn't like them I wouldn't keep them up. So I only keep up what
appeals to me. And the others which I think are good paintings but don't appeal to me, I
keep those, you know, in storage. Well, for instance, I don't like [Kenneth] Noland as a
painter, but I know many Nolands that I have bought and sold because I think they're
good paintings. And then for instance, I like de Kooning as a painter, so I know I've
bought some de Koonings which are not as good as they should be because I like him as a
painter.
- GOODWIN
- Do you try and cultivate collectors, work with them over many years?
- KANTOR
- Oh, you try; it's not easy. A lot of them respect your opinion. I know a lot of
collectors who ask me all kinds of questions, and I've never sold them anything. Because
I've tried at times, and the minute I offer them something they become suspicious 'cause
I'm going to make money off of them. I don't understand that suspicion, but it exists.
Obviously if I'm selling something, I'm going to make a profit on it. Their concern
shouldn't be with my profit, but only the picture, the quality of the painting, and what
it's worth. So if it's worth what I'm charging them and it's a high-quality picture,
then it's a cheap picture. See, many people say, "Well, I didn't want to spend much
money so I bought a cheap picture," you know. To me, I'd say, "You didn't buy a cheap
picture, you bought the most expensive picture painted because it's a bad-quality
picture. That's always the most expensive." I said, "To me, the cheapest picture you can
buy is a high-quality painting because in the end, anything you want to do you can do
with that picture. If you want to sell it, it's easier to sell. If they go up in value,
that will go way, way up in value, compared to a mediocre picture. And if you're looking
for buyers, there would be many more buyers for a high- quality painting than for a junk
painting." So I said, "The cheapest picture you can buy is always a high-quality
picture, and the most expensive picture you can buy is always a junk picture." And they
say, "You're right, you're right," but then they don't do it. They look at it strictly
as money. I bought it cheap. I say, "No, you didn't, you paid a lot of money for it. For
that quality." But they don't want to hear that.
- GOODWIN
- Do you have some loyal customers, people who . . .
- KANTOR
- Yeah, I had one. [laughter] One or two. That's about all. [laughter] And one of them is
too old — he doesn't buy anymore — and the other I think went broke or something. Some
of the big firms like Wildenstein are so big and so powerful. I mean if you want to buy
a picture, they're the only ones that have them at times. But I mean that's enormous
wealth, you know.
- GOODWIN
- At what point did you decide that you were an art dealer for keeps, and you weren't
going to return to your union work?
- KANTOR
- Oh, when I decided not to close the gallery, after I worked off the debts, which was
twenty-odd years ago. Soon after, you know. Twenty-five years ago or something.
- GOODWIN
- Shortly after you . . .
- KANTOR
- . . . took over the thing alone. I like it. It's kind of fun, it's pleasant, and
involved with something that I liked to be involved in. You know, whether you're a
dealer or historian or just a painter.
- GOODWIN
- What kind of yearly schedule would you have in your gallery?
- KANTOR
- Oh, in the beginning you would try to schedule a show every month. But you have to be
young and ambitious for that. As the time went on, I found it wasn't very rewarding.
First of all some of the artists were very nice and cooperative; others were just
terrible.
- GOODWIN
- Who were the cooperative ones?
- KANTOR
- Oh, I don't want to get into personalities there — it doesn't really matter. Artists as
a group are a little difficult. Some of them are kind of very cooperative, but you're
dealing with their ego, you know. And I got to the point where I didn't want to deal
with someone else's ego. You know, if you have a child, that's something else: there's
the love of a parent for a child. But I had no love for them. They had no love for me.
And why should I put all that work and effort and everything into it and then have to
cater to their ego on top of it and make no money to begin with? All right, if you made
some money on it, you say, okay, so all right, I'm making money on it. But when you made
no money on it, what's the sense to all of it? And that's when I started to question
having these exhibitions. Before I closed the gallery, I had an exhibition of Rouault
prints, all framed. I think the most expensive one was $200. And I had a gallery in
Beverly Hills, and I had parking in the back. And the show was up seven months; I left
it up there. And one day some client of mine came in, just to park in the back, for free
parking, and walked through. But they say hello to you, like they came to see me,
really. So, the woman, a big collector here in town, a very beautiful collection of
paintings today, said, "Paul, I've seen this exhibition. It's been on and on and on.
When are you going to change it?" I said, "You know when I'm going to change it? When
someone buys one of these fucking things — $200. And until they do, I'm not going to
change it." Eight months, and I closed the gallery after that, I refused to keep that
gallery open any more.
- GOODWIN
- That was on Camden?
- KANTOR
- On Camden. 348 North Camden Drive. Right next door to where Michael Chow's is now. I
refused to change it, and I closed the gallery. Enough was enough. Eight months, didn't
sell one Rouault print. They were framed! Two hundred dollars. So, you know, there's a
kind of a futility that's involved. I don't blame Nick Wilder when he says he's
available by appointment only. Otherwise you're just a shopkeeper sitting there. Why
should you be a shopkeeper, if someone has twenty minutes and nothing to do after lunch?
"Oh, well, let's go talk art, you know. Kantor is there, or Wilder is there, let's go
talk art to them, you know, shoot up this time." And you're supposed to be there because
they resent it if you're not there. You walk into an attorney's office, you know, three
in the afternoon because you've got nothing to do. You're feeling good and you'd like to
talk a little law with him, get a little information. I have one attorney, I'm waiting
for him to call me about some art. I get to send him a bill, you know; I've been waiting
for it. But there are a lot of people, doctors used to do the same. You don't just go
into his office and ask for a consultation. They think that the dealer is supposed to be
there for their convenience and just sit there and give them information and knowledge
and express all these things free for them because they love it. Well, so you love it,
who cares? What's that got to do with me?
- GOODWIN
- What aspect of being a dealer did you enjoy most?
- KANTOR
- Oh, I like it all.
- GOODWIN
- In spite of some complaints?
- KANTOR
- Well, all businesses have complaints. All businesses have complaints. Anything you do in
life, there's a complaint. God, if everything went smooth all the time it would be kind
of miraculous.
- GOODWIN
- I mean in a sense you're complaining, and in another sense you're not complaining.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, I do and I don't. I enjoy it, otherwise I wouldn't do it. And it's easy. I know
how to do it at this time. I'm rather adept at it. I make enough money to maintain
whatever lifestyle I like. And it's kind of fun and pleasurable. I like it. I don't
know, maybe some of the unpleasant aspects are necessary in order to keep you going, you
know. And it's not that unpleasant. It's just annoying at the time, or it's a bore, or
something like that, but everything we do has that aspect to it, you know. Unless you're
totally hardened, you know, where nothing affects you, you know, like a machine, and
that's the deal. But that's something else. Even then I'm sure you have your moments, no
matter what job, no matter what you're doing. But I like being a dealer, I think it's a
lot of fun, because you get involved in many more things. And I like buying paintings
much more than selling them. Most dealers at the end are basically collectors, you know.
There used to be a very famous collector in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, G. David Thompson.
He died and his collection was sold off about ten years ago. He had an apartment in New
York. There were some great paintings that he had. He used to come around to the dealers
in New York at the time, and he would say, "Show me the paintings that you're stuck
with, that you can't sell." And he would always make you deals on those paintings. And
he knows because the dealers always bought the better paintings and the tougher
paintings, but they're not commercial, they're hard to sell, the tough pictures. But
also the dealers bought them because they thought they were really high- quality
paintings, and that was basically Thompson's taste, also. He always went for the tough
picture, which is much more the artist's expression rather than, you know .... That's
why a lot of people find Picasso very difficult: because he's not a French painter —
he's a Spaniard — and he doesn't paint pretty, simple pictures. And Thompson used to buy
only the tough pictures. And he'd make great deals because the dealers bought them, and
then they'd say, "Oh, shit, I'm sitting with this picture. I can't sell it. I might just
as well have my money out of it and buy something else." And that's what he would buy,
and he would make fabulous deals all the time on the tough pictures. He was the one that
sold sixty Klees to the North Rhine- Westphalian government, to the museum in
Düsseldorf, as a collection. Then he had the great collection of Giacomettis that I had
bought for this city and through some financial quirk lost it because one of the people
I was in with kind of messed up the deal. But at that time I had bought — I think there
were seventy Giacometti sculptures, thirty-eight of which were unique, a hundred
drawings, and a batch of paintings. And the minute I lost it — you couldn't get anyone
to come in on this thing, I finally did, and then the whole thing fell apart, and at the
time I didn't have the money for all of it. A Swiss dealer bought it the next day and
sold it to the Canton of Zurich three months later. The entire collection, and if you go
to Zurich and the museum there, their entire Giacometti collection, which I had — I
bought it for this city, and they all fell on their face — and the Canton of Zurich
bought it three months later for an enormous profit to the dealer. But that isn't the
point: it was the great collection of Giacomettis in the world, which they could have
had here, too. Everyone was too smart; they knew everything. But it's kind of fun, you
know. I didn't like losing it or anything, but it's kind of fun. You deal in it, and
it's a big concept, you know, this enormous amount of stuff, And sometimes you win,
sometimes you lose.
- GOODWIN
- Do you like the term "art dealer"? KANTON: Sure, what's wrong with that?
- GOODWIN
- It just has different connotations.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, it's like "painter" — that has connotations, too, you know. The word doesn't
bother me, "art dealer," or what do you call yourself? What do you call yourself? The
Germans have Kunsthandler . I don't know, it's all the same, the name doesn't mean
anything to me. You're an art dealer.
1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE (JULY 19, 1976)
- KANTOR
- Where were we last time?
- GOODWIN
- Well, we covered many different topics last time, but at the very end I asked if you'd
like to simply describe yourself as an art dealer, and you seemed quite satisfied with
that.
- KANTOR
- With the terminology that I'm a dealer. Yeah, I think so. The fellow sitting in the
other room there has a gallery in London, Brookstreet Gallery, and I was just talking to
him about all of these things, you know. And there's nothing wrong with being called a
dealer. It's always been that way, you know. I would guess that there are people that
call themselves "art consultants," "art advisors. "
- GOODWIN
- "Brokers."
- KANTOR
- "Brokers," "investors," whatever they call themselves, but most of them are just full of
shit. They don't know anything, and they're tangential characters who'd like to put what
they think is a fancy handle. But when I hear those words, "I'm a broker, I'm an
advisor, I'm a consultant, I'm this," I know that they are really people without
knowledge and without commitment who just kind of try to get involved in the art world
and think that the word "dealer" is kind of too commercial. Well, a dealer is a dealer.
It's a very commercial aspect. Being commercial has nothing to do with aesthetics; it
has nothing to do with knowledge; it has nothing to do with taste or anything else. And
I think some of the most knowledgeable people around in the art world are the dealers.
- GOODWIN
- Who are some of the other knowledgeable people?
- KANTOR
- Well, in all fields there are some museum people who are very brilliant. There are some
— I don't know what you call them; do you call them writers?--a guy like John Rewald.
He's an art historian, basically is what he is. Now John Rewald has an incredible amount
of knowledge and information in art history, but he has no eye for paintings. And when
John Rewald authenticates a painting, it's because he has specific knowledge about that
painting, from the literature or from the past. I remember showing him a small Pissarro
gouache once that was bought in Paris in the twenties by an American, brought back here
to California, totally lost. It wasn't in the catalogue raisonne; it wasn't anywhere.
There was nothing wrong with the picture. It was obviously a Pissarro. But before I
could sell it, and I sold the picture to Norton Simon, he wanted John Rewald 's okay on
the picture — which is understandable, okay. The picture was in the original frame that
the man bought it in in Paris, which was a three-dollar frame at the time because the
picture was worth maybe ten dollars. So Rewald saw the picture; we sent him the whole
picture. He knew there was a framer's label on the back, you know, a little inch by two
inch label. That was the framer he knew that Pissarro used at that time when he was
painting pictures in Paris. So he says it has to be right [laughter] because he's got
the right framer — no one would have that information. Right? So, in a way, he has that
kind of knowledge, and a lot of art historians have. Well, he is particularly unusual in
that sense because most of them don't have that kind of knowledge. But he has that kind
of knowledge, which makes him the great scholar of impressionist painting. But he has no
real eye for paintings.
- GOODWIN
- Do you think he knows that?
- KANTOR
- Oh, I don't think so. That's kind of a big challenge to a man's ego, and, no, I don't
think he knows that. If he does, he's not admitting it. But most of the dealers around
feel that. He's good, but you can't trust him on his judgment alone on a painting.
- GOODWIN
- Have you worked frequently with him over the years?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, I've had contact with him off and on over the years.
- GOODWIN
- How does that usually work?
- KANTOR
- Well, John Rewald used to also be an advisor to several collectors, and he still is an
advisor to Wildenstein and Company. He was the advisor to Paul Mellon, to one of the
Whitney women who lives out in Long Island — what's her name?
- GOODWIN
- We can look that up. [Joan Payson?]
- KANTOR
- Right. But he's been an advisor to a guy like [B.E.] Bensinger in Chicago. And when
they're looking for a kind of painting, they tell him so he goes around to some of the
dealers, "Have you got this, or have you got that?" Or if you offer one of them a
painting directly, they will show it to Rewald and ask him what he thinks of it, about
the quality of the picture and everything else. So you normally have to also talk to
Rewald when you offer the picture, because you'll talk to him about various aspects. So
you always have contact with the guy.
- GOODWIN
- What kind of financial arrangement does he have?
- KANTOR
- They pay him a fee. I think they pay him an annual fee as consultant. I don't know what
they pay him, but Mellon, I know, gave him an annual fee. I don't know what it was, but
he'd call him up, ask him this, ask him that, you know. I think Wildenstein does the
same. Which is okay; there's nothing wrong with it. You know, some people think that
that's terrible because he's an art historian, that he's not supposed to make any money.
I don't understand that at all. I'm perfectly willing also to give him a commission if
he sells a picture for me the way I give a commission to anyone else who sells a picture
for me. I think it's perfectly legitimate. Because Rewald is not going to prostitute his
taste, and he's not going to recommend a picture just for the money. So I see no reason
against it, in offering anyone a commission for recommending a painting. Everyone says,
you know, "Art historians should be beyond this, or critics should be beyond this." I
don't understand that.
- GOODWIN
- What kind of commission would he receive?
- KANTOR
- Well, the normal commission in the art business for anyone who recommends a picture and
you sell it or something else or sells the picture, unless you make a different
arrangement, is normally 10 percent of the profit. Which to me is perfectly fair and
perfectly legitimate. I see nothing wrong with it. You know, it's only in the United
States that everything gets kind of confused. It does. Because in Europe, for instance
there is nothing wrong with most of the definitive catalogs being written by dealers.
It's perfectly acceptable that a dealer writes the definitive catalogs on that stuff. So
no one questions Durand-Ruel if they say something. You get a guy like Robert Schmit,
who did the definitive catalog on Boudin, and it's perfectly okay. A friend of mine,
Heinz Berggruen, who is now financing the catalogue raisonne on Juan Gris, which Douglas
Cooper has been working on, no one questions it. It is only in this country that there
seems to be some stigma attached to the commercial aspects of art. I don't know what it
is, except the only thing I can think of is that the people who buy it are such
frightened people and so insecure that the only way to protect themselves is they say,
"Well, he's making money on it so he doesn't know anything. Or he will prostitute his
taste or his knowledge or whatever it is because he wants to sell you the picture." I
know many people here in town who ask me to look at painting for them in auctions, buy
the picture, "What do you think of it? Is it good? Examine it. Is there anything wrong
with it?" You go through the whole thing with them. They give you a commission for
buying the picture, if they buy it. But if I offer them a picture which I say is better
than that picture, but since I'm selling it to them they figure that I'm making more
than just a minor commission on it, they refuse to look at the picture because they
think I'm making some money on it. And I just don't understand the concept, I don't
understand it.
- GOODWIN
- Who are some other art historians with whom you've had some contact in this regard?
- KANTOR
- Contact in what way?
- GOODWIN
- Consulting.
- KANTOR
- Whom people pay?
- GOODWIN
- Yeah.
- KANTOR
- Or whom I talk to? I talk to all of them. I know them all. A friend of mine, Philippe
Brame is doing the revised Lemoisne catalog on Degas. He was out here about two months
ago. We sat around for a day at the pool and stuff. So he's doing the Degas catalog. I
know Petrides, who's done the Utrillo catalog, is now doing Vlaminck and Marie
Laurencin. Douglas Cooper is doing the Gris catalog. I don't know what's being done;
these are the ones which come to my mind which are being done. I know the one who was
doing the Jongkind definitive catalog, a guy called Adolph Stein, but I think he's
dropped it and someone else is doing it up now.
- GOODWIN
- You said last week that there was no one in the eleven western states who was
knowledgeable about French painting.
- KANTOR
- In the museum field.
- GOODWIN
- Yeah. So there wouldn't be anybody, say, in California who is useful in authenticating
paintings?
- KANTOR
- No one I know, no. They may think they are, but I don't know anyone whom you can go to.
There's one fellow up in Santa Barbara, Henri Dorra. Is he still around?
- GOODWIN
- Yes, I think so.
- KANTOR
- He did some work at one time on Seurat with John Rewald. And he at one time also was at
the university down here [UCLA]. Well, he knows something about Seurat, but Rewald is
the man if you're going to consult about Seurat, not Henri Dorra. I don't know what else
he's ever done — nobody seems to know who he is. And with a lot of them, they may
pretend to have a vast knowledge, and maybe academically they can — you know, they have
enough credits to convince the hiring boards of an institution that they're worthy of
their institution. But I can't rely on them, and most dealers can't rely on them.
Because you just can't rely on what they say. They don't know enough.
- GOODWIN
- What about experts outside the academic world?
- KANTOR
- Well, John Rewald is outside the academic world in that sense.
- GOODWIN
- He's also a professor.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, but that doesn't mean anything. He may need some income, but he's basically
outside it. But what has Henri Dorra ever written, what have any of them ever written?
Jim Elliott, who was at the County Museum here for twelve years, finally did a Bonnard
show, which was supposedly his PhD thesis that he'd been working on for twelve years,
and he couldn't write the goddamned book. At the end, Monroe Wheeler bailed him out on
one section, and Clem Greenberg wrote his section. And that's a fact. So now he's
rewarded. He went to the Wadsworth Atheneum based on that, and after ten years or
something at the Wadsworth Atheneum, he's rewarded with the University of California at
Berkeley. And this guy doesn't know what it's all about.
- GOODWIN
- The Bonnard show was one of the opening shows at the new County Museum.
- KANTOR
- Right, right. And Jim Elliott had worked on it for twelve years, and he couldn't do it.
He just couldn't do it. But he has this great kind of pompous attitude. He said, "Paul,
I've studied him all my life. I know all about Bonnard." Fine, what am I supposed to
say? You just can't take a man and tell him, "You've spent your life wasting your time
because you don't know what it's all about." I think earlier when we were talking, [we
mentioned] this ugly word "sensitivity" that nobody likes to know about. But you have it
or you don't have it, and most of them don't have it. And they don't even have
knowledge. They only have partial knowledge. You show them a picture, they couldn't even
tell you roughly when that picture was painted. You show him a Bonnard 1925, he won't
know it's a 1925 picture.
- GOODWIN
- On the other hand, you seem appreciative of good scholarship.
- KANTOR
- Well, sure. But I'm appreciative of anything good in that sense, you know.
- GOODWIN
- But I mean you see a need for catalogues raisonnes and ...
- KANTOR
- Yeah, catalogues raisonnes are important. It sets all the facts down. It doesn't take an
art scholar or anything. All it takes is a bookkeeper to make a catalogue raisonne. You
advertise for the photos and everything else, and you get them all together. It's all
just plain, tedious work. There's someone around who has to know the real ones from the
not-real ones. And today it's very easy, because with photography everything is
recorded. It's only the older ones that have it more complicated, where there was no
photography. When they did the original Delacroix catalog that Robaut did, Robaut was an
artist, and so they didn't have photography perfected too much at that time. That was in
the late, oh, around 1870 or so. They had no photography, so Robaut drew little pictures
of all the stuff. And if you look at the original catalog, they're all drawings. Well,
people can easily fake paintings from the drawings. So right now there's an Englishman,
Lee Johnson, who for fifteen years has been working on the revised Delacroix catalogue
raisonne. But he works from the photos and the paintings and everything else. So it's
important. You get it all put down. And if you're not sure, what most of them do is,
they leave the picture out, and they wait for the supplement. And then they consult
everyone else to see if everyone else will accept it because they are not going to stick
their neck out. When Wildenstein did the catalogue raisonne, the first volume, on
Gauguin, they included like fifteen fakes and a Vuillard, all of them having been sold
by Wildenstein and Company, because Jacques Salomon, who is doing the catalogue raisonne
on Vuillard, has a photo of that painting with the signature on it. When Wildenstein put
that picture in the Gauguin catalogue, there is no more signature on the picture. So
they took the signature off, and they made it kind of an esoteric island picture. And
there it is; it's a Vuillard. And the whole art world was up in arms about that thing
because Georges Wildenstein, who died, at the end must have gone off his head to put all
those fakes in there. It's easy enough to make a mistake on one or two — I mean everyone
can make a mistake. And it's easy to pick up on it and pick it. But when you got seven
or eight or fifteen, and then you've got a Vuillard in there, then it's no longer a
mistake. It's done purposely for a reason.
- GOODWIN
- What kind of writing have you done?
- KANTOR
- None. I don't write.
- GOODWIN
- Have you tried it?
- KANTOR
- No. Oh, when I was younger and more ambitious, I would write releases for the various
shows I had, but that's all.
- GOODWIN
- What about catalogs?
- KANTOR
- I'd have other people. I've done some. There's a Miro drawing show I had about fifteen
years ago, where I wrote kind of an introduction to it. Dick Diebenkorn showed me a
mimeographed sheet I put out for his first show I had with him in '52, twenty-four years
ago. But normally if I did a catalog, I got someone else to do the writing. I had a
couple of de Kooning shows: one, Clifford Odets wrote an introduction to; one, Bill Inge
wrote an introduction to. I had a Kirchner show, Gerry Nordland wrote an introduction
to. I had Peter Selz write one once for a contemporary painter at that time, Richards
Ruben. I don't even know what ever happened to him. I've had a few like that, but that's
all. I don't pretend to be a writer, I'm not interested in writing, and I'm really not
an educator.
- GOODWIN
- Is there some critic's writing which you admire?
- KANTOR
- I don't read most of it. Apollinaire wrote very well because he wrote English very well.
And he wrote about the cubist painters, and he wrote about them quite brilliantly. Some
of the writings of Bob Motherwell about art are quite interesting. There was a critic
who teaches now in New York somewhere, Eugene Goossen, I used to think was very good at
one time. I haven't read any of his stuff in many years, so I don't know what he does
now. But he had a really good insight into what was going on. The newspaper critics bore
the shit out of me. The Harold Rosenbergs and the Clem Greenbergs bore me.
- GOODWIN
- Do you read their stuff in spite of the fact that . . . ?
- KANTOR
- No more. I just don't read it because I find it a total bore. They have nothing to say
that interests me. They have a point of view that they keep pushing and grinding, and I
really don't care. It's just talk, talk--useless talk. At the end, most critics, because
their command of the language is very poor and they have no way of expressing
themselves, all they're expressing is their own ego. It's like the movie critic John
Simon. He has this enormous command of the language, but he's not talking about anything
except himself.
- GOODWIN
- Well, he's probably the worst offender.
- KANTOR
- Right. He talks only about himself. You know, Judith Crist and Pauline Kael are a little
more decent about it, but he's the worst. And he has this fantastic command of the
language, you know, in his very Teutonic way. He hits you over the head with it. But
it's bullshit at the end. And to me the more simply you can state it, the more purely
you can put it down, the better it is. I don't know anyone. John Canaday finally gave up
being an art critic, and is now what? A film critic or something, some kind of critic? I
don't know what he does. Hilton Kramer, I mean, I don't understand what these people
.... Why don't they just call themselves "reviewers," and tell you that "There are so
many pictures, and this is what they look like, and this is the vein they follow, and to
me it looks kind of interesting, and go see it" or something. You know. But no, they
have to read these deep messages into the pictures, and they have to tell you the social
connotations of them, and how they relate in our society, and how brilliantly they're
executed. It's garbage talk, plain garbage talk.
- GOODWIN
- Before we turned on the machine, we mentioned New West
magazine. What is your appraisal of local art criticism over the years? Is it getting
better?
- KANTOR
- Local art criticism? What do you mean, about the local art critics here?
- GOODWIN
- Yeah.
- KANTOR
- William Wilson and Henry Seldis?
- GOODWIN
- Yeah, start with them. Do you read their columns?
- KANTOR
- No, I don't read what they say. The only thing I read in the art pages is the calendar
of what's being shown. I'm not interested in what they say. I'm not interested in the
press releases that they print, from Sotheby or from Christie's or from L.A. City
College or from Mary Corita. These are press releases that are sent out all the time.
And they print them — it's an easy way to fill up the page. I mean you look at what they
call an "art page" here: it's a shambles. It's pathetic. Supposedly the second major
area in the United States for art and growing; I don't know where they're growing. They
must be growing in a mushroom cave, you know, [laughter] in total darkness, like a
fungus, a fungus on our society. [laughter] That's pretty good; I like that.
- GOODWIN
- I want to get back to that, but I notice that you at least subscribe to the national art
magazines.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, because at least you get general information. One of them will tell you what
museums have been buying, where pictures have been selling. There are ads for the
various galleries as to what they are showing. I don't read their criticism. I think
Art News has done a remarkable job in recent years of
turning it into kind of a reporter's way of presenting art, which I like. You know, I'm
not interested in what you have to tell me about art or what you tell me art is. I like
what Art News does: it's a reporter's approach, which is
very nice. They tell you what's going on, where it's going on. They'll tell you there's
a new company that's formed that has a method of detecting fakes or fingerprinting
pictures.
- GOODWIN
- Interviews.
- KANTOR
- Interviews. Which is fine. And I like that. I'm tired of the bullshit of somebody
saying, "This is great," and "This is not good," and "We've found this lost
masterpiece," and "Look at this fabulous lost masterpiece," you know. If you want to do
that, fine. Publish it in a journal, in one of the college journals where people are
interested in the tracking down of this lost masterpiece and the hands it's gone
through, and how they found it, and why they determined it, and the radiology or
whatever they call it, and all of the other aspects of it. That's fine, but basically at
the end very dull reading and only for those people who are interested in it does it
make any sense. But I'm not interested in the X-rayed portraits of Philip IV by
Velazquez. Leave that for a different area. And I'm not interested in what they tell me
about the aesthetics of the Velazquez portrait of Philip IV, for whatever they think it
is, you know. I know what appeals to me and which Velazquez I think is an important one
and which I don't think is an important one. And I don't need someone else's opinion
about it — why he thinks it is or not. That's fine for those people who want to learn,
who think that they have to gather whatever information for whatever reasons in order to
get a rounded idea of what this man's portraits are about. But I'm not interested. And
not being interested, I don't like to subscribe to magazines that are filled up with
this material. So I don't buy them. And if I buy them and I've made a mistake, I cancel,
you know. I don't renew. I think what's wrong with a lot of museum publications is that
same thing. You know, the curators or the director is forced to publish something, so
they publish some piece of garbage and they print it, and they send it out to everybody
and say, "Look at this big, big job we're doing," you know. I remember once years ago, I
sold a very beautiful Guardi drawing to the Los Angeles County Museum. I think it's the
only Guardi they still own. The only Guardi drawing. Anyhow, with the ruins and the
water and the ducks, very beautiful. It was one of those Capriccio pictures. And about
six years later they published it. I thought they must be kidding! Six years to publish
an article on a little drawing. But that was his contribution, his scholarship. Well,
that's the whole institution system, you know. Either you publish or you die, so they
publish any garbage. It doesn't really matter what the garbage is, they publish it. It
doesn't matter when they publish it. You've got to do it. And it's a way of perpetuating
their own system. And I don't understand the purpose for it. Normally, if you publish
something, it's because you have an interest in it, you have an idea, you have a new
approach to something, or something else. But to publish three pages in a museum catalog
on a drawing which they bought, I don't understand the purpose of it except to waste
time and waste effort and to convince an illiterate board that they can do something.
- GOODWIN
- Do you know of any publications which have in fact led an art movement or contributed to
the growth of something that didn't exist previously?
- KANTOR
- Well, there are a lot of publications in the twenties and in the thirties and into the
forties in France. You have, oh, you have a woman like Caresse Crosby at one time. Do
you know that name? She had what they called the Black Sun or Black Dial Press [Black
Sun, actually] . She was a wealthy American woman. And she took at that time, oh, a lot
of the surrealist painters and worked with them and published all kinds of things. It
was a very avant-garde publication. There was one in the United States, also in the
surrealist vein, called Dym, which was backed by David
Hare, the sculptor; and Bob Motherwell worked with it for a while. It didn't last too
long. It was a very good publication.
- GOODWIN
- What about the West Coast?
- KANTOR
- There's nothing here. I'm talking of really very important documents in art. You know
Cahiers d'art, which was published in Paris, was a
great document of art at the time. Vingtieme siècle — you
know that one, which is also a very, very good document of the time, very well done and
very well printed and everything else. Oh, there were some American magazines — I think
at one time American Artist Quarterly, or something, which
was a big magazine.
- GOODWIN
- What about something like Artforum? Did it have an impact?
- KANTOR
- Yes, I think so. Artforum and Art
International. Jim Fitzsimmons--he used to live out here. I don't know if
you knew that.
- GOODWIN
- No. Where did he live?
- KANTOR
- Los Angeles. He started that magazine [Art International]
after he left Los Angeles. His wife was a fashion designer. Well, it is very
interesting. I was reading something in the paper the other day, I guess it was the
Sunday [L.A.] Times, about
this collection of American Indian art which Robert Inverarity sold to the British
Museum. Well, Bruce Inverarity used to live here.
- GOODWIN
- Really?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, I knew Bruce Inverarity very well.
- GOODWIN
- What did he do?
- KANTOR
- He did nothing. He was studying archaeology and stuff. There was a dealer at that time,
Ralph Altman, who died. He used to teach, I think, at UCLA. He was kind of not my idea
of the most honest kind of guy. He dealt in primitive art. Bruce Inverarity was out here
at the time. It's very funny. At that time--this was around '48 — there was a guy out
here also, Milton Fox, who later became the editor of Abrams books. And Bruce Inverarity
and I used to sit around and talk about all the Chumash Indian material. And he said,
"Paul, I tell you, that's all fake." You know, when they were building Highway 101 and
stuff, they found all this material. He said, "It's not true." He said, "What we should
do is get a boat, go out to the Channel Islands, and get that dolomite out there, and
make all these funny little animals." Because that's what they did--they made them all
up. There were some that were real, and the rest were all made up. Suddenly, there was
an entire rash in '48 of Chumash material.
- GOODWIN
- Mrs. Maitland collected it.
- KANTOR
- Everyone bought it at that time. And Bruce Inverarity told me he was convinced that
someone was making them. He didn't know who was making them. I know who, I think, was
making them, but I don't want to say. But he lived out here. He couldn't do anything out
here; he finally left.
- GOODWIN
- Did he go somewhere before Philadelphia?
- KANTOR
- I don't know; I lost track of him. But I remember Bruce Inverarity very well. Now they
call him Robert Inverarity, but he's the guy, because he knew that material extremely
well. He couldn't do anything out here, nothing. At that time they had that Modern
Institute, did I discuss that last time?
- GOODWIN
- You mentioned it.
- KANTOR
- With Arensberg, who wanted to give it all to them and everything. Well, he was around at
that time, too, trying to do something with that institute. Nothing could happen because
it was in the hands of the plebeians, which it always is at all times. I'm convinced in
our society art will always be in the hands of the plebeians who call themselves "the
board."
- GOODWIN
- You mean plebeians in people of taste?
- KANTOR
- Plebeians of taste, right. Not in money or status or financial status. Taste. And it
always will be. It always will be. And they make every effort on their part to tear art
down to their level.
- GOODWIN
- And they seem to succeed.
- KANTOR
- They succeed all the time because they control the money strings. And as long as people
with knowledge and everything else cater to these people, they will continue to succeed.
That's why you get an institution like the Museum of Modern Art--for whatever reason, at
least the money people there will listen to the ones they hire whom they think have some
knowledge. And they certainly have a lot more knowledge than they, the board, have.
Whether they're great or not is not the point. They're more knowledgeable. And given a
chance, they perhaps, you hope, will do a better job. I don't think the County Museum
here has a staff that will do a better job no matter what they let them do. But, you
know, the Museum of Modern Art is a tribute basically to Alfred Barr, whom they hired as
a young man and let him do something. Well, they were very fortunate that they had a
guy, you know. In later years he became kind of gaga, but that's not the point. He did
do an important job at one time in his life. And he did help build a very, very, big,
powerful, first-class institution. And it really doesn't matter how it was done. It was
done.
- GOODWIN
- Do you know of some other museums specializing in, say, modern art that have had a
positive experience like that?
- KANTOR
- Well, I don't know, modern art — Cleveland, for instance, under Sherman Lee has done an
enormous job of building a collection.
- GOODWIN
- Have you had any personal contact with Cleveland?
- KANTOR
- We sold some paintings to them. Not really.
- GOODWIN
- How large a part is the museum market in your work?
- KANTOR
- I don't have the patience for it. Selling to a museum is a very, very, long, tedious,
complicated operation. Because the picture has to be sent to the museum, the entire
board has to be convinced of the thing, and the monies have to be found. If you sell a
picture to a museum, it's a six-to-eight-months to one-year deal. The Museum of Modern
Art recently announced that they bought this big Matisse cutout. It's about 10 X 10
feet, one of those late cutout paintings, collages. And they paid around a million
dollars for it. And I know; a friend of mine sold it to them. But they were four years
in negotiation, and there was all kinds of trade, and everything else. It's a horrendous
effort to sell them. Now, if you have that need and that ego to say, "I sold them this
great picture, and look at it, and that was my picture," that's one thing. But if you
don't have that ego need, it's very, very difficult. I sold a great painting to the
National Gallery in Canada a few years ago, a Lissitzky. It came out of a very important
collection in Germany. And Lissitzky paintings don't exist; they just don't exist. You
know, you find little 2 X 3 inch drawings and stuff like this. This was a 40-inch
diamond-shaped painting. It came from the collection of Ida Benart, who had a very
important collection out of Munich at one time — German paintings. And although
Lissitzky is a Russian, he's sometimes considered German because he worked in Germany.
The Russians now consider him Russian, and he's part of the great Russian experiment.
He's a very important member. The paintings don't exist. And it was an eight-month deal
until I got paid. I owned it with another dealer, and when we got paid, it was eight
months. That's a long time.
- GOODWIN
- Can you describe in a little depth how that whole transaction occurred? How were you
instrumental in getting the painting, and how did it wind up in Ottawa?
- KANTOR
- Well, I bought the painting. I bought the painting with another dealer from a collector
in New York, a man called Armand Bartos, who is an architect who worked with Kiesler,
Frederick Kiesler. And they built the museum in Jerusalem--you know, that museum in
Jerusalem that seems to emerge out of the ground and stuff. Well, Bartos and Kiesler
were the two architects, and Bartos is married to — I think he's married to a
Rothschild. So he's a rich man in that sense, you know. [phone rings; tape recorder
turned off] So I bought the painting with another dealer. And at the time we paid a
horrendous price for the painting, but really a horrendous price. And he didn't want to
pay it. I said, "Look, they'll take it away from us if we have it on consignment, so why
don't we just buy it from them?" So we bought the painting, and I said, "Look, my logic
is very simple. There is nothing that can compete against this painting with any
collector or institution because there are no Lissitzkys on the market, period. You
know, if you want a Mondrian, there is a Mondrian on the market, or two or three. If you
want an important Miro, there is one. But a constructivist painting of this type, there
just is nothing that you can buy. Lissitzky and Malevich are the two rarest painters
around--you just can't buy them. There are none. So we bought the painting, and we
finally sold it to the National Gallery through Jean Boggs, who is the director.
- GOODWIN
- Did you know her from . . .
- KANTOR
- She used to live here. I know her from here. She was at Riverside, wasn’t it? She taught
at Riverside. But it was an eight-month negotiation. The board had to see it; they had
to examine it; they had to think about it. They wanted the picture up there, so this
friend of mine flew up from New York with the picture (because they're very delicate and
we didn't want to put it in a crate and risk it getting bounced). So we bought a seat
for the picture, and we took it on the plane, you know, in a very simple package, and
held it very carefully, and delivered it. But one board member was here, one board
member was there — "Yes, we want it, but we have to have another meeting; we have to
have a conservator's report; we have to have this." There's no one who will take it in
their hands to make the decision, "Yes, I'll buy the picture" — period, you know. They
don't allow any discretion to the director in that sense. Now a dealer goes out--I go
out with this friend of mine; we bought the picture! I don't have to go to an X-ray lab
and have them look at the picture and examine it and have someone tell me about the
chemical composition of the paint and the surface and this. It's of little importance to
me. I know what that picture looks like, and I know what it is. It's a make-work policy,
what all of them do. And it's my money I'm spending, so I better know what I'm doing.
And that's why I say basically that I have more respect for dealers than anyone else,
because it is their money, they're putting it into it, and they're making the decision,
and they're buying the picture originally. And however they buy it, for whatever reason
or anything else, in our capitalist society, money is the most important thing. And with
money then you buy your cultiore, like the museums buy, and like the collectors buy, and
like the others buy. But after they decided to buy the picture, then you have to give
them invoices in triplicate and quadruplicate. "You sent it on the wrong size paper."
"You didn't put down the right information." It's all a stall, then, not to pay you,
because then the plebeian board thinks they're being shrewd. They're going to get
another month's interest on their money before they pay it to you. Little do they
realize that this attitude has caused dealers to give them prices that will preclude any
way of their losing money on a picture. So if they stall for a year or two, there's five
years of interest built into the price because the board thinks they're being very
smart. It never occurs to them that they're also dealing with someone who is smart.
- GOODWIN
- So museums are bad customers.
- KANTOR
- Right. And they get special prices. They're not bad customers — they take too long to
decide and to pay. Or they'll send you back your picture after six or eight months.
- GOODWIN
- What do you think is a reasonable time?
- KANTOR
- Thirty days. That's enough time. If I buy a picture and I want six months to think about
it and play with it, and then pay and send me invoices, people will think I'm crazy. You
know, "What are you talking about?" But it's perfectly okay for them to do it, and it's
perfectly okay for collectors. "Oh, send it out, let me hang it on my walls, and let me
bring in fifteen people to look at it." And each one has a different reason for liking
it or not liking the picture. And it's perfectly okay for everyone to do this except
dealers. When I go buy a picture, if someone offers me a picture, they want to be paid.
"Give me a check, now." I don't say, "Send me the picture, let me study it, let me
examine it, let me think about it." They're not interested. They want to sell it. But
when I want to sell a picture, it's a different story.
- GOODWIN
- What about some other museums you've dealt with?
- KANTOR
- I dealt with a lot of museums. I don't know, San Francisco Museum . . .
- GOODWIN
- What's now called the Museum of Modern Art?
- KANTOR
- Yeah. The Legion of Honor up there, Chicago Art Institute, some small museums in the
South — like the Speed Art Museum in Kentucky — the Albright Gallery in Buffalo, Jim
Demetrion in Des Moines, I don't know, all sorts of institutions.
- GOODWIN
- Do you think there's a way of visibly giving dealers more credit for their work in, say,
a museum. Is there a need for that?
- KANTOR
- Well, it's only in this city. In New York City and in Paris they get all the credit in
the world. When you want to know about a Picasso, you write to Kahnweiler, who's
Picasso's dealer. And if he says okay, it's okay. If it isn't okay, it's not okay.
Durand-Ruel are dealers. I mean on impressionist paintings, if there's a Durand-Ruel,
okay, there's no problem. The one who discovered the Fauve painters, Vollard, was a
dealer, and very important. Wildenstein — nobody challenges Wildenstein. Nobody.
Alexander Rosenberg, who is the son of Paul Rosenberg, is a very knowledgeable man in
his field. No one will question him on his expertise on anything. Klaus Perls in his
areas, you know — he wrote the definitive work on Jean Fouquet.
- GOODWIN
- I'm asking, would it be absurd to try as an experiment putting on a museum label, such
and such a painting through such and such a dealer? It would be instructive.
- KANTOR
- Well the provenance of the picture always has which hands it went through. And the
dealers that it went through is much more important than the collectors it went through
— always, I think.
- GOODWIN
- Aren't there big exceptions?
- KANTOR
- No, never. Doesn't matter which collector owned it. It's the dealer who sold the
picture. And it's always on the provenance as to where that picture came from before the
collector bought it. Because generally that's much more indicative. If you say Vollard
on a Renoir, for example.
1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO (JULY 19, 1976)
- KANTOR
- Vollard came from one of those islands off Africa: Mozambique or Cameroon.
- GOODWIN
- Mozambique, that's an island.
- KANTOR
- Was it Mozambique? He came from one of those funny islands off Africa. And he came to
Paris as a young man, and he became a dealer. And he was Cezanne's dealer. He had
Gauguins, also Renoirs — lots of Renoirs. And what I brought him up about, we were
talking about provenance, you know.
- GOODWIN
- Right.
- KANTOR
- Okay. Friends of mine have told me who knew him in Paris in the thirties. If you wanted
a Cezanne you went there, and he had this funny little shop. And he had thirty of them
lined up, without frames or anything, just canvases. And you'd flip through them, and
you'd buy one, and you'd stick it under your arm, and you'd pay him, and you'd take the
picture. I mean that's what he had. He had the early Fauve Derains, the early Fauve
Vlamincks. And he apparently had quite an eye. He never married, and he had this
mistress for many, many years who was married to a Frenchman called De Galea. And she
was always married to him, she had a son with this De Galea — that's a titled name.
Whether they had money or not I don't know, but "De" is like "Von" in Germany — it's a
titled name. "Sir" in English. And that was his mistress. And when he died, he left
everything to her son, who lived like a feudal prince at this time in France. And he
inherited maybe 400 Renoirs and unbelievable amounts of stuff, all of it unknown. He had
a girlfriend who he got rid of, so to keep her he started a funny little gallery in
Paris. And you would go into this funny little gallery, and you walk down some stairs,
and there's a little room, and there 'd be twenty Renoirs hanging on the wall. And you
say, "Where the fuck would she get twenty Renoirs?" And the dealers all know about this,
and when you see the provenance of De Galea, every dealer knows that that picture is
right. Whether it's in the books or not in the books, nobody even cares. Nobody even
cares. That picture is right because it's right from Vollard. You know, everyone thinks
this great collector, Robert De Galea--it's crazy, you know. I mean he had this
inordinate appetite: there were Degas; there were everything; there were thousands of
paintings which Vollard owned which were all left to this guy. And, you know, every
little scrap is $20,000 or $50,000--you know, for the minor things. So that kind of
provenance becomes very important. Who buys it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean
anything because they don't give any positive identification to the authenticity of the
picture, the one who buys it. It's the one who sold it that gives it the authenticity.
- GOODWIN
- But doesn't it increase the value of the picture?
- KANTOR
- That's something else, but it doesn't give authenticity. And I don't really even think
it increases the value. I really don't. There were some very great collectors that
everybody used to think were crazy, a guy like Arthur Jerome Eddy out of Chicago. You
know that name at all?
- GOODWIN
- No.
- KANTOR
- Arthur Jerome Eddy [phone rings, tape recorder turned off] was an attorney for the Union
Pacific, I think, the Union Pacific Railroad. He was in Chicago, and he came from a
family of what kind of means I don't know; but he made money as an attorney, and he used
to spend all his money buying art. And the family thought he was out of his goddamned
head to waste his money — especially what he bought. So, among some of the major
purchases that he made was at the time of the Armory Show in New York, he bought all the
Duchamps and batches of other paintings — Kandinskys and everything else.
- GOODWIN
- What a weirdo. [laughter]
- KANTOR
- A real weirdo to buy that funny art, you know. And he owned the Nude Descending the Staircase, and all the others. He had all the Duchamps.
And they thought he was crazy. And when he died, they took all that crap and they sold
it off. They didn't want any part of it. And that's where Arensberg and the rest of them
got those pictures. By then, Arensberg, the weirdie, was around, you know. They got what
the weirdie Arthur Jerome Eddy had sold. But Arthur Jerome Eddy had this incredible
collection that he bought out of the Armory Show. But obviously, he knew what he was
buying. And he wasn't buying money balls at that time, because these were unknown
artists. They were young painters, you know, the Matisses and the Picassos of 1913 —
young artists.
- GOODWIN
- But did he really know what he was buying?
- KANTOR
- Yes, he did. Like Gertrude Stein knew what she was buying.
- GOODWIN
- But wasn't there a great deal of risk there? In a way, they didn't have time to prove
themselves, right? In retrospect we can say that they had brilliant taste, but at the
time could the same thing be said?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, there are people that have put together collections--for instance today, whether
you like them or don't like the people--that now, only fifteen years later, turned out
that they were very, very astute in their purchases and everything else.
- GOODWIN
- Who would they be?
- KANTOR
- Someone I particularly don't like, for instance, is Bob Scull. But yet you've got to
give this guy and his wife credit for putting together a great collection of post- war
abstract painting at a time when most people were not interested in it; and most people
that were interested were not interested in putting their money into it. They put
together some great, great pictures and a great collection. And you have to give the guy
credit for that. It's easy at this point, for instance, for a man with a lot of money to
go out and buy the great Pollock, and buy the great Rothko, and buy the great de
Kooning, and the Gorky and the Lichtenstein, and up until whatever they're doing today,
you know — buy all the names. It's easy for them. Because that's only money — it has
nothing to do with taste. And you can get someone with enough perspective on all of
these painters to pick the important pictures at this point. There's no problem with it.
Now, there are some collectors in Germany who've put together very important collections
of post-1960 art: a guy like Peter Ludwig, or the other one. There's Ludwig, and I
forget . . . Ludwig is the chocolate manufacturers, and then there's the other guy,
Stroher. But they were buying them as they were being painted, and they put together
very important collections, and they bought through one or two very smart dealers in
Germany. What's his name? I'm at a loss for all the names at this point. At the time of
the first Documenta show in Kassel, there was a young curator, who now is about forty,
who became a dealer. I forget his name. He's a dealer in Cologne, but he was the curator
on that show in Kassel. And I was there at the first Documenta show.
- GOODWIN
- What year was that?
- KANTOR
- Around sixty, somewhere around then, '59. You can look it up. I forget his name, because
he's a very good dealer now in Cologne. But he advised Stroher on his pictures. [tape
recorder turned off]
- GOODWIN
- The names are Peter Ludwig and Karl Stroher.
- KANTOR
- Anyhow, it's an incredible collection put together with the aid of this Werner
Bischofberger , this kid in Zurich. And the other one, I forget his name, but [he was]
much more influential on the whole scene. And he helped this guy put together this
incredible collection of pictures. So it can be done you know. And it can be done with
taste and knowledge and not just money. Because many people with money have put together
the worst collection of garbage ever seen.
- GOODWIN
- That's what I was going to ask. It sounds like it's a stupid question, but do you know
of people who follow the art world very closely, think they're well informed, have an
eye, spend large amounts of money, try to discover the young artists, and come up with
junk?
- KANTOR
- Right, because it's their own ego that's involved, and they won't admit that they don't
have the knowledge or the taste. So they don't take anyone's advice; they don't listen
to anyone. You know, it's that old saying, "I know what I like." I remember I told this
to Vincent Price once, years ago, right after he was on that "$64,000 Question," which
he won. And I said, "You know, Vincent, you don't know what you like; you only like what
you know." And there's a big difference. And so he later wrote a book about that,
[laughter] and he never gave me credit. [Price, Vincent, I Like
What I Know ; A Visual Autobiography (Garden City, New York: Doubleday
& Company), 1959.] But he knew; he was quite bright. But, yeah, too many people
put together collections, and their ego doesn't allow them to give anyone credit for
anything. And they say, "I have to like it; I have to love it; I have to live with it;
it has to be mine," you know. But why can't you learn to love something great? They
learn to love garbage. They learn to love mediocrity because that's all they're about is
mediocrity. And it's the ones who are a little more adventurous or a little more honest,
who say, "I really don't know so maybe I should trust someone else somewhere along the
way." Find someone whom you can trust and work at it or something. But they don't.
- GOODWIN
- Well, do you know some successful collectors who've made it without good advice? [phone
rings; tape recorder turned off]
- KANTOR
- But there's all kinds of stuff like that around. But here, it's the desert. It's
literally the desert because they don't allow for anything past their own inadequacies,
I guess is the word. They're self-made men — they made the money, they did this, they
did this--and so, "Nobody is going to tell me that I don't know about art," you know,
because they've come to art. Shit. Did I tell you that example about the Mozart?
- GOODWIN
- Yes.
- KANTOR
- Well, that's what it is. You know, that's not expensive art; that's only art. But
they're talking about expensive art, like the people that have collections. Like this
phone call here from the bank, which--I'd rather not say who — someone came in with
1,200-odd paintings appraised at several million dollars, and they want to borrow some
money. All right, this is one of the men at the bank who wants to know how you get a
guarantee on the art. And I said, "Well, give me some of the names." Well, Barrymore,
Sausa or something--well , you heard. That's when I said, "Well, tell me, ask him if
there are any Kandinskys, Picassos, Miros, Klees." I said, "First of all, if you tell me
somebody's got 1,290 paintings, you know it's a garbage collection--there is no such
thing as 1,290 paintings in a collection that I wouldn't know about. And if the people
had it, they don't have to go to you to borrow the money." So, you heard, I said it's a
scam. It has to be.
- GOODWIN
- Well, if you say the situation is now a desert, was it worse or better or the same at an
earlier time?
- KANTOR
- I think it was basically the same--just there were fewer people involved. Now there are
more people involved, but it doesn't really mean anything. There's still nothing going
on. I mean, all you have to do is look at that L.A. Times
art page to know that there is nothing going on in this city. There is no art activity.
- GOODWIN
- But isn't that too obvious a place to look? I mean there's nothing, with your name on
that page, is there?
- KANTOR
- No. There isn't anything in that page.
- GOODWIN
- But hypothetically a person who's trying to defend the situation can say, well, "We now
have a separate County Museum; we have Norton Simon taking over the Pasadena Museum; we
have an expanded Getty Museum; there's more activity at UCLA ....
- KANTOR
- Right, right. But those things have always been there — they're just doing more. There
are a few more collectors, but so what? It's still a desert compared to the way other
major centers have flourished in comparison.
- GOODWIN
- Okay, be specific. Which major centers other than New York?
- KANTOR
- Chicago. The Chicago Art Institute is a great, great institution. And even if they only
show you that one goddamned painting, the Grande Jatte.
- GOODWIN
- But when was that acquired?
- KANTOR
- The Chicago Art Institute today is still actively buying paintings. Actively buying
paintings. They are actively forming one of the great collections in the world of
drawings. They have Harold Joachim, who's a great man in the field of drawings. He knows
exactly what he wants, and he actively buys constantly. There is no active acquisition
program in this city, except Norton Simon, which is a one-man thing. There's no
institution here. The Huntington is a very fine institution that's locked into a
particular area of English paintings and does very well. But they've been there sixty
years.
- GOODWIN
- It's really an island.
- KANTOR
- Right. The County Museum has no active program for anything, except bullshit. Social
bullshit is what the County Museum is about.
- GOODWIN
- What do you think of all the little smaller galleries popping up?
- KANTOR
- Well . . .
- GOODWIN
- Say, Newport Beach or Long Beach.
- KANTOR
- I see, galleries. You kind of mean institutions.
- GOODWIN
- Yes, LAICA. [Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art]
- KANTOR
- Well, LAICA's a big joke.
- GOODWIN
- Why?
- KANTOR
- Well, it's run by the same people who have been losers in every other thing they've
attempted. So now they've made one more attempt at a losing proposition. All these
institutions are always predicated upon the fact that dealers are not supposed to be
invited and dealers are not allowed. And the minute that is the attitude of any other
group, then I think that they've already defeated themselves. They'll go to New York,
and they'll kiss the boots of Leo Castelli and all the others, dealers in the field that
they're talking about. But when they come out here, suddenly they don't want any
competition from the dealers, so they exclude them from any considerations of being on
the board or helping or anything else. Then, not only do they do that, but I can tell
you this, and most positively: a lot of them don't want to go to a dealer because they
figure they don't want a dealer to make a commission. So they'd rather the dealer show
the artist, but they would like to go to the artist and buy the pictures directly and
save their miserable commission. And a young painter isn't getting much to begin with
for a painting, so for $200, $300, they've put themselves in a position of being total
assholes. And then they expect dealer cooperation. How is a dealer supposed to pay his
overhead? how is he supposed to pay his employees? How is he supposed to pay his rent,
the advertising, the crating, the shipping, the holding of the hand of the artist, and
everything else? Because these people figure, "Well, we're interested in art, so we have
to get it at a special price." I don't understand their concept. I don't understand
their concept. Dealers are supposed to work for nothing? That's what they say. "You're
supposed to be a humanitarian and help me make money." I told you one client to me once
said — and this may be a repeat from the last time because I don't remember — he said,
"Paul, if you ever get a great, great Kline, and you steal it, I ' d be interested." Did
I tell you that?
- GOODWIN
- No.
- KANTOR
- And I looked at this guy, and I said, "Look, if I got a great Kline and I stole it"--and
this was when prices were pretty cheap for Kline — I said, "Why should I possibly make a
gift of $5,000 or $10,000 to you?" I said, "If you can tell me why I should give you a
gift of $5,000 or $10,000, I'll think about it." But I said, "What kind of nonsense is
that?" I said, "You should be happy that if I had a great Kline that I offered it to
you."
- GOODWIN
- I want to go back a step. You mentioned that there's a great deal of collecting in
Chicago. What are some other cities that strike you as being alert in spending money?
- KANTOR
- I don't know. Outside of New York?
- GOODWIN
- Yeah.
- KANTOR
- Well, people come from all over the world to New York to buy, so New York is a big
buying center. That doesn't mean that only New Yorkers buy there.
- GOODWIN
- Well, I'm thinking of, say, the American art world.
- KANTOR
- I don't know.
- GOODWIN
- What about places in Texas?
- KANTOR
- Texas is like California: it's all talk. There's a collector here; there's a collector
there. There's a guy like Jim Clark in Texas. There's a guy like John Beck, who I think
recently died. There are various collectors in every city, you know, who buy things. But
Norton puts out the kind of positive publicity, you know, that L.A. puts out with not
that much to back it up, and L.A. is a big city — it's the second or third largest city
in the United States, depending on how you count it. But there are no great collections
that have been formed here that no one knows about. I mean they talk about it, so one
guy buys a picture or two pictures. I buy and sell more pictures than most of these
so-called "collectors ." I'll buy a picture before they will any time of the day. All
right, so I sell it. I have personal private pictures, which is a much better collection
than three-quarters of the so-called "big" collectors in this city. All right, I've had
kind of personal problems with a divorce and other things, where there are certain
things I had to do for monetary reasons; but I had a much more important collection than
most of the so-called "important" collectors in this city.
- GOODWIN
- How is your personal collection related to your business? Are they distinct?
- KANTOR
- I don't sell them. A picture like this Kline, I don't sell this Kline. That's my
personal painting, you know. It's a great Kline.
- GOODWIN
- And you expect to keep that?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, and I sold a lot of personal pictures because I had to sell them. And there were a
lot of pictures which my ex-wife got, on top of that. You know, those are the legal
requirements, which makes it kind of discouraging after awhile.
- GOODWIN
- But you collect in the same area that you deal?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, but I collect everything. I buy anything; I buy in all areas. I mean, Frank Perls,
who was a very good friend of mine, once had a favorite expression when people offered
him a picture, and he didn't want the picture, He said, "It's not my century." But there
are many collectors, oh, they tell you they only want a 1950 or '51 Rothko, and they
only want a 1911 Picasso, you know. I told one collector, "You won't pay for a 1911
Picasso if you had the money." But they don't want to hear it. "If you steal it, let me
have it," you know. "If you get a $500,000 picture and I can get if for $50,000, I'll
take it," you know.
- GOODWIN
- What's an expensive picture in this town?
- KANTOR
- I don't know. In this town — $50,000 to $100,000, they think is an expensive picture.
- GOODWIN
- What do you think is the proper amount?
- KANTOR
- To me an expensive picture, $500,000 or over. That's an expensive picture.
- GOODWIN
- Is that what an expensive picture is in New York?
- KANTOR
- Basically, yeah, basically. At the $500,000 level you start to find fewer and fewer
buyers. Up to that there are lots of them. Two, three, four, you can find lots of
buyers. Once it gets over $500,000, it starts to get more complicated, not only in New
York but all over.
- GOODWIN
- How many potential buyers do you have in Los Angeles, people who live in Los Angeles?
- KANTOR
- I don't know, I really don't know. It's according to what level you're talking at. They
sell those damn prints all day long, you know. Or try to. What they call "prints," most
of them are reproductions. They're not even authentic graphics.
- GOODWIN
- Well, fine paintings, your specialty?
- KANTOR
- But I sell everything, you know. I sold a set of the Warhol Mao prints the other day, which I bought when they came out. I bought a couple
of sets. And I sold one the other day. [phone rings; tape recorder turned off] I don't
know.
- GOODWIN
- Are there 100 people?
- KANTOR
- On what level?
- GOODWIN
- Collectors. People who want to build distinguished, so-called "museum quality"
collections.
- KANTOR
- I was interviewed about this once in the L.A. Times. I
don't remember what I said — was it fourteen or something? I got this thing around here
somewhere. No, I don't think there are more than fifteen or so, twenty. Maybe I
stretched it a little to make it look a little better for publication, but I don't think
there are.
- GOODWIN
- I couldn't think of fifteen, but then I don't know the market.
- KANTOR
- I think I said something around there. I don't remember. But that's about what there is.
And the rest is all talk. Merely because someone buys a painting doesn't mean anything,
you know. Or two paintings or three paintings. That's not a collector. They may have all
the intentions in the world of buying more, but the fact is, either you buy or you don't
buy. And if you buy, you become a collector; and if you don't buy, you become a voyeur,
you know.
- GOODWIN
- I think it's perfectly proper if we mention some names.
- KANTOR
- Of who? Collectors here, the big collectors? Well, there are static collections, you
know. There's like the [Alexander] Goetz collection, but they've sold off a lot of
stuff, too. Because when he died, for whatever estate purposes or anything, they sold
off a bunch of pictures. The [Sidney] Brodys' is a static collection. They don't buy;
they've been selling.
- GOODWIN
- Why is that static?
- KANTOR
- They don't buy.
- GOODWIN
- I mean, have they fulfilled their ambitions?
- KANTOR
- Well, those are personal things, I don't know. Taft Schreiber, who just died, bought
very cautiously and very carefully and ground out the kind of purchases for a while.
Freddie Weisman and Marcia Weisman — they still continue to buy. That's a very big,
active collection. And a very important collection. Norton Simon, we know about. Eli
Broad buys occasionally in various areas. He has a great Miro, and he bought van Gogh
drawings; he bought Giacometti. Now he's buying more contemporary stuff, like
Motherwell. [tape recorder turned off]
- GOODWIN
- You've mentioned about six.
- KANTOR
- Well, there are others. You know, there's a guy, this writer, Michael Crichton, buys
contemporary stuff. There's a guy like Ed Janss, who off and on buys paintings, and
sells paintings also. They're around, but I don't take it seriously because a lot of
them buy in a haphazard manner. If something strikes them, they buy. They don't look to
buy pictures; they don't have the need for the paintings. So if it strikes them as a
nice picture they buy it. Gifford Phillips buys a picture occasionally. I don't know
what he buys at this time. But basically, most of the stuff he bought, he bought years
ago. It's not an active collection in that sense. He sits on every board and takes up
time and space everywhere, and says, "I'm Gifford Phillips." Well, who gives a fuck if
you're Gifford Phillips or not? You know, what do I care? I'm Paul Kantor, right? You're
George Goodwin?
- GOODWIN
- Right.
- KANTOR
- Right. That makes three. [laughter] So. But they want recognition for that fact, and I
don't understand it. I understand it, but I can't accept it. I wouldn't go around
saying, "I'm Paul Kantor, and I sold some pictures, and I know this" — that you're
supposed to pay homage to me. You're a human being and I'm a human being, and if I sell
you a picture, I feel as though I'm doing something for you as well as you're doing
something for me. It's not as though you're wasting your money. It's not as though you
picked up a tab for $5,000 for a big party or something, and it's gone. You know, you've
got something tangible that you've bought. They don't go to someone like Van Cleef
& Arpels and buy a big diamond ring and say, "Look at what I did for you." They
feel they got value for the money they spent at Van Cleef & Arpels or Cartier's,
you know. Or if they go buy a house, they got value for the money they've spent; they've
bought a home. But with the picture, the dealer is supposed to get on his hands and
knees and kiss their shoes because they bought a picture from him. And I say, "I've done
you a favor by selling it to you."
- GOODWIN
- You said last week that the cheapest picture you can sell is a masterpiece because the
price always appreciates.
- KANTOR
- Right. Top quality is always the cheapest buy, and poor quality is always the most
expensive. And if you're dealing with someone whose taste you respect and whose
knowledge you respect and everything else, you'll do a lot better with them. Even if you
don't know, they'll sell a much better picture. I'm not talking about myself; I'm
talking about any of them, you know, in whatever field you're buying. You go into a guy
like Nick Wilder, who knows the field he's working in very well, and you offer Nick the
same respect that you offer anyone else. And you say, "Look, I want to buy a picture" by
one of the artists he represents, whoever it is — say, Ron Davis — and say, "I want a
really first-class picture, you know. I only have so much space. I can't take a 12 foot
picture because the wall is only 10 feet" — Okay, you have physical limitations — "and
if you have a really important picture, let me know because I'm interested in buying
one, and I trust you on it," you'll do much better with Nick. Because if you treat him
with respect, he'll treat you with respect. And that's with all people. If people treat
me with respect, I treat them with respect. If they treat me shabbily, I treat them the
same, or worse. And you the same; you know that. It's just a matter of decency.
- GOODWIN
- Mutuality?
- KANTOR
- Right. But some of these so-called "collectors" don't understand it. They think they can
do anything they want whenever they want to. So what basically happens at the end is
they do poorly.
- GOODWIN
- You didn't mention Robert Rowan.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, Bob. Bob Rowan's got a very important collection.
- GOODWIN
- Is it still growing?
- KANTOR
- He buys. He buys, you know. He recently got a divorce. I don't know what happened, or
who got what or anything else. He buys and he sells pictures and stuff. Yeah, he
continues to buy paintings and I think quite actively buys them.
- GOODWIN
- Is there anybody else in the Pasadena area?
- KANTOR
- Who actively buys pictures? Not that I know of.
- GOODWIN
- Is that one of the reasons the museum collapsed over there?
- KANTOR
- No, I don't think so. There are other reasons for that.
- GOODWIN
- Don't you think if there were more collectors who made contributions . . . ?
- KANTOR
- No, I think what happened, it was a one-man operation. Bob and Carolyn ruled that
museum, and he didn't really want anyone else in the museum. And at the end he wouldn't
put up enough money or Carolyn put up enough money to keep it going. Because when you
don't want anyone, then you have to be willing to pick up the tab yourself. And he
wasn't willing to. So he wanted everyone to pick up the tab, and ...
- GOODWIN
- . . .for him.
- KANTOR
- . . .for him, and not have anything to say, and people said no. So only the kind of
vassals around Bob who would agree with him, who sat on the board, would approve
everything he wanted. But at the end he wouldn't pay for it anymore, so it collapsed.
- GOODWIN
- Why don't you think he supported the museum?
- KANTOR
- He wanted everyone else to do it. He was being cheap — that's all it is. It's a matter
of plain dollars and cents. He's being cheap. And Carolyn is wealthy beyond belief, his
ex-wife--enormous wealth — but they wouldn't spend the money.
- GOODWIN
- Was she personally interested in collecting?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, I think so.
- GOODWIN
- Wasn't the situation comparable to the County Museum? You mentioned several notable
collectors, and many of them are trustees of the County Museum.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, they do nothing. They sit there. They sit there in a position and do nothing. The
County Museum is such a particularly ugly situation because it's a county institution
that's in the control of a private corporation. A self-perpetuating private board.
They're a self- perpetuating board. No one elects them — they elect their own members.
It's a very ugly situation. They haven't done anything in twenty-five years that I know
of, and I'm sure they're not going to.
- GOODWIN
- Do you know of another museum that has such terrible problems?
- KANTOR
- No, I don't know. I mean there are, but I have more knowledge about this one because I
live in this area. I'm sure that in other cities the same thing exists.
- GOODWIN
- That's what I want to know. Do you think that the County Museum . . .
- KANTOR
- ... is unique?
- GOODWIN
- Yes.
- KANTOR
- No.
- GOODWIN
- Unique in having worse problems than most museums with bad problems. [laughter]
- KANTOR
- I think the unique ones are the few museums that are well run and are growing
institutions, you know, and have active programs for acquisitions and organizational
shows and everything else. But I think the L.A. County Museum is typical of most
institutions in this country. It's an institution run by a board for their own personal
pleasure and for their own social and cultural needs. They say, "Oh, I'm a member of the
board of governors of this so-and-so museum. Well, I mean, how more cultured can I be?"
Right? But they don't do anything.
- GOODWIN
- Do you think the situation is going to change there? How could you improve it?
- KANTOR
- Where? At the County Museum? Getting rid of the board, getting a new board, and a board
that's either willing to hire a staff. Listen, they've never had a director of that
museum who's been worth anything, ever. They have a director now that I think is
retarded. Really, I say that very seriously. And before that, I remember when they hired
this bird man, Jean Delacour, you know. He was interested in stuffed birds. So they hire
him as the head of an art museum.
- GOODWIN
- Well, doesn't it seem logical that county government should get out of the art museum
business?
- KANTOR
- No, they should have people who are interested in art. They should get a staff that's
interested in art. There's nothing wrong with the county — it's nickels and and dimes to
the county, a couple of million dollars or whatever they put into that. That's no big
thing.
- GOODWIN
- But if the private collectors were forced to do it on their own, maybe they would show
some results.
- KANTOR
- I don't think so. They don't want to pay. Nobody wants to pay for anything here; that's
the point. There is this incredible amount of wealth in this area, but no one will pay
for anything. [knock on door, tape recorder turned off] Nobody will pay for it. Okay, so
Getty pays for it. Whatever he does, he's willing to pay for it. And most of it is paid
for by Uncle Sam anyhow. You know, if you have unearned income, it's taxable up to
somewheres around 77 percent. So Uncle Sam is paying most of the tab, but they still
won't do it. They still want control. They want Uncle Sam to pay, and they still want
control. They don't want to give up anything. It's a very selfish, narrow point of view
that doesn't lead to anything. So Norton Simon is willing to pay for it. There's a man
like Daniel Ludwig out here who built that area called Westlake — in Agoura — or
whatever that's called. And he's the largest shareholder in Union Oil or something. This
is a man who's worth a billion dollars. He hasn't done one fucking thing in this city
for anybody. No one even knows that name out here.
- GOODWIN
- That's right.
- KANTOR
- And he's one of the richest men in the world. He lives here. The Dohenys, whatever you
can say about them, there's still a lot of money somewheres in that family. There's
enormous wealth. All right, you get a company like ARCO. They're willing to do
something; they're looking to do something. They've put up a public gallery. They want
to expand. They buy a corporate collection. They promote young artists and everything.
They're interested in doing something. But there are all kinds of major corporations
here.
- GOODWIN
- Is that a token involvement? Or is it respectable?
- KANTOR
- No, no, it's not a token involvement. It's a very serious involvement. I happen to know
something about it — it's a very serious involvement. There are all kinds of major
corporations, all kinds of great wealth here, and they do nothing. They don't want to
know about anything. They have no public interest in anything. The L.A. Times put up that Music Center and everything else. The Chandlers
won't put up money — they want everyone else to put up money. Firestone [Tire and]
Rubber — Firestone is a big outfit. So they put up $100,000 to the County Museum. They
get their name up there — the Firestone Gallery--and that's the end of their commitment
to art. Well, that's one shit painting by Renoir. But if you give them a painting like
that [Kline], it's stuck in a corner or something like this. But they give them $125,000
in cash — obviously cash means more to them than art — so they put his name up there.
You know, Leonard and Polly Firestone, forever, immortalized for their fucking $125,000.
And somebody gives them art; they're down the tube. That was one of my major fights with
them. I got them millions of dollars worth of art.
- GOODWIN
- The County Museum?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, and they couldn't care less. If someone gives them money to build a room. It's
that insane corporate megalomania, and that's important to them. The art doesn't mean
anything. Because someone gave them money for a room so their name is enshrined forever.
And someone who gave them a picture worth ten times that amount, or five times that
amount, oh, the picture's in a corner and nobody has ever heard of the guy again, you
know. I don't understand that kind of philosophy or that kind of mentality. But that
goes on here all the time. Bob Rowan and Giff Phillips said, "Oh! I'm so shocked that
Norton Simon changed the name of the Pasadena Museum to the Norton Simon Museum." I
said, "You must be crazy. This man has committed millions and millions of dollars and
paid millions, and you think he's not going to change the name to his own name?" I said,
"You must be kidding."
- GOODWIN
- We haven't mentioned Armand Hammer.
- KANTOR
- Let's keep it for next time. There are too many people coming, and I got to go, okay?
Lets start it off with Armand Hammer next time, okay?
- GOODWIN
- Okay, that's something I look forward to.
1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE (JULY 29, 1976)
- GOODWIN
- Last session we concluded with a discussion of some of the local collectors, and we were
going to pick up today with Armand Hammer, remember?
- KANTOR
- Yes, I remember. As a collector.
- GOODWIN
- Right. Have you dealt with him personally?
- KANTOR
- Yes. Some time ago, not in recent times. I'm never too sure if Armand Hammer is a
collector, an investor, a dealer. He's basically a dealer. And when they bought Knoedler
and Company, it was Armand Hammer's great dream to go public — run up the earnings of
the company, go public, sell the stock, get all the money out, own the company, you
know, a typical stock market operation. And that was Armand Hammer's dream, except it
didn't work out that way. Then they bought the old, venerable firm of Knoedler 's that
was going broke, pumped some money into it, and promptly did nothing with the firm. They
had no scholarship, no understanding. At the end they wound up with a firm and were just
other art dealers. You know, Armand Hammer makes a lot of money in other things that he
has also all kinds of tax money that he can play with. So basically it was an operation
predicated on Uncle Sam and tax money. And if he can make a lot of money going public,
selling stock, then he would do it. And if he didn't, why, Uncle Sam would pick up the
bill for everything. And the pictures he bought were always bought, I don't know, in
very strange ways.
- GOODWIN
- What's an example?
- KANTOR
- Well, there's a whole collection of his paintings that he promised the National Gallery.
There's a whole collection that he promised UCLA. The quality is very poor on the
paintings he buys--or bought. And there was a whole collection of old masters that
unfortunately USC accepted. There was later a lot of trouble with one, in the
appraisals, which was in all the newspapers. They were highly over- appraised, and I
think the government made him get new appraisals, which were much lower.
- GOODWIN
- Wasn't that a Rubens?
- KANTOR
- Well, there were also a lot of questionable paintings as to whether the attributions
were right. And I don't know whatever became with that, but it's all been kept very
quiet because the University of Southern California, I guess, didn't want the publicity
on it.
- GOODWIN
- As far as you know, is he getting any expert advice?
- KANTOR
- I don't know how he bought or who he bought from. He bought basically through his
brother, Victor Hammer, who ran the Hammer Galleries in New York. Who they consulted or
what they did, I don't know. I know the few things I sold him were only bought for
resale, so they were bought for the galleries and not for his own personal collection.
But I don't know what is for resale and what isn't for resale with him. Like a lot of
collectors, everything is for resale at a price.
- GOODWIN
- Isn't that true with Norton Simon?
- KANTOR
- Oh, a lot of things he buys he sells, sure. But he buys on a much more selective basis.
He's also got a much more important collection. There was an exhibition of a collection
of Armand Hammer that traveled around the country some years ago. There's catalogs out
on it and stuff. If you look through the catalog, you see where it is. It's not very
impressive as paintings go, not very impressive as a collection itself. It's a lot of
big names, bought at — I don't know on what basis they were bought; they were bought.
But he's one of the collectors in the area.
- GOODWIN
- Do you think the L.A. County Museum has benefited by his contacts with the Soviet
government?
- KANTOR
- I think Armand Hammer and the Knoedler Galleries have benefited. I don't know where the
L.A. County Museum has benefited any.
- GOODWIN
- I'm thinking of the various exhibitions that have come here, such as Scythian Gold.
- KANTOR
- Scythian Gold was done with the Metropolitan Museum, so it's come here. He's taken full
advantage of the publicity. And all right. so there were paintings that were shown here
a year ago — I guess about a year ago; I don’t remember exactly. But then the County
Museum loaned them a lot of paintings. Now the paintings are on loan for a year or a
year and a half to the Russian government, and there was a space on the wall, and a
little sign said, "On loan to the Russian Government. " So for one and a half years,
they can't bother to even rehang the gallery to cover up that empty space. So I don't
know how the County Museum has benefited, because they stripped the museum of important
pictures and have done nothing in it's place. So for the short time that they showed the
Russian pictures, they've also taken other pictures out of the museum. So the only one
who's got the publicity is Armand Hammer. "The great Armand Hammer did this, the great
Armand Hammer did this, the great Armand Hammer did this." When he was up for possible
indictment by the government for evasion of federal election laws, he suddenly got sick
and wound up in the hospital for six or eight months until he bought his way out on a
settlement. And then suddenly he got better. So I presume we're going to start to hear
about all the other great things Armand Hammer is doing for Los Angeles and the County
Museum next.
- GOODWIN
- Do you have any doubt that his paintings will actually go to the County Museum? KAMTOR:
I have no idea. All I know; is the ones promised the National Gallery are a lot better
than the ones promised the County Museum. So to me, you know, on a plain pragmatic
basis, it shows what he thinks of the County Museum versus the National Gallery. They
got the better paintings, so obviously he likes them better. And the County Museum got
secondary paintings.
- GOODWIN
- The leftovers?
- KANTOR
- The leftovers, all right. So that's Armand Hammer.
- GOODWIN
- What about another collector, David Bright?
- KANTOR
- He's dead.
- GOODWIN
- Was he a former client?
- KANTOR
- I never sold him anything. I knew him, but I never sold him anything. He came up on the
scene one day, bought a lot of paintings. He was one of the men working with the County
Museum when they were building that new building. And one day he died in his sleep in
New York at the Sherry- Netherland Hotel, and that was the end of David Bright. Whenever
you would call David Bright and ask him about a painting or something, the first thing
he'd ask is, "How big was it?" You know. Because he had to have big pictures. And he did
buy some very good paintings at one time.
- GOODWIN
- His collection is more or less the core of the modern paintings at the County Museum.
- KANTOR
- Well, I don't know what they own or what they don't own. There was litigation at one
time with the widow because it is a community property state. And although he can will
his share of the property to the County Museum, he certainly couldn't will his wife's
share. So there was a lot of litigation. How it was solved, I don't know. On that you'd
have to find out from the museum, if they'll tell you. And then some were kept. Yeah,
anything is the core of that museum's because the museum does not buy, period. And if
they buy, nobody knows they're looking for anything. They never tell anyone what they
want. And I don't think they even know what they want. They're certainly not interested
in art, as far as I can see.
- GOODWIN
- What do you think they should be buying at this point?
- KANTOR
- I don't know what they should be buying, you know. If it were up to me, I would buy
twentieth-century art.
- GOODWIN
- Well, what would be a sensible plan?
- KANTOR
- I don't know. I don't know what their collection even consists of at this point. It's
such a mess, their entire collection. And the way the collection is hung in there,
there's no way of even making any sense out of it. Well, there's no way of making any
sense out of anything in that museum because those galleries are so bad you can't even
see what's in those galleries.
- GOODWIN
- Is it even too late to build a respectable collection of twentieth-century paintings?
- KANTOR
- No, it's never too late. It's only a matter of money. Many museums started fifteen years
ago or so. The County Museum has a new building now that's at least twelve years old,
isn't it? Something like that.
- GOODWIN
- That's about right.
- KANTOR
- There are many museums that started fifteen years ago, sixteen years ago, putting
together a collection like the North Rhine-Westphalian government in Germany put
together a museum in Dusseldorf under Werner Schmalenbach. They took an old building —
they didn't build any edifice for $10-15 million; they put the money into pictures, and
they got a collection of art that makes the County Museum look sick, just by going out
and buying paintings at the time. But they also had a man who understood something about
art. He was committed to it, and they let him buy paintings. But this museum has never
had anyone committed to buying pictures on any level, on any basis, of any quality, at
any time. And that includes almost all of them after Dr. Valentiner. There's never been
anyone there who's committed to buying paintings or cares enough to buy paintings.
There's no board there that cares — no one on the board who cares enough about it.
- GOODWIN
- Do you think the County Museum has such a bad reputation that anybody with talent would
be afraid of coming to work there?
- KANTOR
- There's no reason for them to go to work there. People with talent, why should they go
to work for the Los Angeles County Museum? They have a board that doesn't want to buy
pictures, they have no money to buy paintings, and they have no interest in art. And
they have an ugly building that is impossible to display anything in. So why should
someone of any merit, or any talent, or who has anything to offer go to work for these
people? It's like taking a high-powered executive of a major corporation and asking him
to go to work for a defunct outfit that has never gotten anywhere in the history of its
existence. There was a time when they could have attracted someone, but I think their
history speaks for itself. They have a print-and-drawing curator who sits there for
thirty years or more, Ebria Feinblatt, and has no idea of what's going on — just no idea
of what's going on in her field.
- GOODWIN
- She's never been active in the modern area.
- KANTOR
- She's never been active in any area.
- GOODWIN
- I think her bag is old master drawings.
- KANTOR
- It's supposed to be; it's supposed to be. But what has she bought in the last few years?
She bought a few graphics. She bought a redone Durer graphic one day for an enormous
price that was on the market for years. Everyone knew that the thing was heightened and
fixed up and restored and everything else, and she went out and bought it. She didn't
even know what she was buying. I don't know of any twentieth-century paintings that
County Museum has bought of any consequence. They've gotten a few from Dave Bright.
They've gotten from various collectors that have donated things. I don't know of one
twentieth- century painting of any merit, French painting, that they have bought, went
out and paid money for and bought. "This we want, and this we need." Well, when you're
dependent on people giving you things, you're never going to put a collection together.
- GOODWIN
- Well, isn't that the tradition of the older, established museums?
- KANTOR
- No. It's only the tradition of this institution.
- GOODWIN
- No, that the art comes from personal collectors?
- KANTOR
- Well, there have been collectors who have willed their collections to the institution,
sure. But they also buy in order to fill in. This museum doesn't buy; it doesn't fill
in, it doesn't do anything. It sits there like a beggar on the streets and says, "Give
me, give me, gimme." So it's a dead institution. And when Norton Simon took most of his
stuff out of there, it was pathetic to see what little there was left.
- GOODWIN
- Well, is there any museum on the West Coast that seems vibrant?
- KANTOR
- I don't know, I don't know most of the museums. Most of them have no money, and the
boards give them no money. Most museums are dead institutions. They're not alive, and
they're not active. Some of the new museums that are dedicated to contemporary art do a
much bigger job. All right, contemporary art costs less. There are a lot of other things
involved. It's more available. But they also have more interesting, more active people.
What happens with the older institutions is that they get bound up in their own
importance, and all they do is maintain what they've had, and have socials and parties
and entertainment. And if you give over $100 you're invited to one party, and if you
give under $100 you're invited to another party. And then the board has their own
special parties with all the visiting dignitaries that are all black-tie affairs where
only they are invited. And all of this is footed by the taxpayers and footed by the
county. And the idea of the board being self-perpetuating there, and also being a
separate corporation that holds in trust, supposedly, the art work, is unbelievable. So
the county foots the bill for I don't know how many millions a year, and they sit there
like these little roosters, you know, cock of the walk. And they think they're important
people, and you're supposed to pay homage to them. Well, I don't understand that. But
it's all right, if that's what they want. But they want help from the community, and
they want help from everybody. And they cry the fact that they're not getting support.
Well, they don't deserve any support.
- GOODWIN
- Do you think the County Museum in particular or other museums more generally suffer from
a bigotry in terms of social interaction?
- KANTOR
- I don't understand.
- GOODWIN
- Well, we've talked about many collectors in Los Angeles, and certainly many of them are
Jews.
- KANTOR
- Do you think there's anti-Semitism there?
- GOODWIN
- Yeah.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, I think so. I know so. I don't want to go into who or what, but that board has
been anti-Semitic for a long time. And there are many members on the board whom, I'm
sure, still are. But I can't prove it, except that I know I've been told this by certain
people. So they have, I guess, their quota of Jews now on the board, but I don't know.
- GOODWIN
- How can you account for there being such a large number of Jewish collectors in this
city?
- KANTOR
- In most of the world, your major collectors have been Jews, a good deal of them. In
Germany, most of them were before Hitler. A lot of them. A lot of your collectors are
Jews. I don't know why. There are all kinds of ethnic theories about it. But it's like
the old wealth of this city, or in any city, sit back and say, "Old money, we have old
money, you know." What they mean by "old money" is that they've inherited their money,
and they're frightened to death to spend any. And they do nothing for the community. And
the people who have made money don't mind spending it because they feel they can make
more. And so they feel the arts are worth supporting. The Chandlers, who are certainly
one of the richest families in this city, are always asking other people for money.
"Give money for the Music Center, give money for this, give money for that." They're no
big benefactors of anything on their own. They just raise money. But to me, benefactors
are the ones who give money, not who raise money. The Dohenys haven't done a damn thing
ever in this city. And a lot of the other so-called "big, old families" sit back and
think it's everybody else's task to give money while they control it because, after all,
they're Mr. So-and-so or Mrs. So- and-so, you know. And I couldn't care less. They've
never done anything. That's why this city is in the mess it is culturally. But that's a
total other problem; I don't know what you would call it — a "sociological" problem. But
it's a factor, which is an even more important thing. Most of your important dealers in
the world are Jewish. Old master, contemporary, or twentieth century, whatever field you
name, most of them are Jewish. For whatever reason that is.
- GOODWIN
- Certainly many of the academics, too.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, I don't know about that. But then when it comes down to museum directors and
everything, you see, they're the ones picked by the boards. And the boards pick one of
their own kind. So the boards always pick someone who agrees with them and has their
mentality, I guess.
- GOODWIN
- Is there any way to characterize the people who have been art dealers in this city over
the years?
- KANTOR
- There were no art dealers in this city.
- GOODWIN
- What about the people who have had galleries on La Cienega?
- KANTOR
- Oh, they're all pathetic little places, handling young artists. It has nothing to do
with art on any major basis or anything. There have been some dealers: Frank Perls, who
is dead; Dalzell Hatfield, who is dead; the Stendahls, who deal in pre-Columbian art;
oh, James Vigeveno, who's still alive but doesn't do much of anything, dealt in very
commercial French taste: Vlaminck, Utrillo, Dufy, Chagall, that kind of picture. There's
one print dealer, O.P. Reed. Felix Landau, who used to have a gallery here, has no
gallery here anymore. There used to be one good antique dealer named Adolph Loewi ,
who's dead now, who's gone,
- GOODWIN
- And the reason there aren't any more successful dealers is people don't buy their goods?
- KANTOR
- They don't buy pictures here; they just talk. It's all talk. Some buy, but they don't
buy here. And they have to go to New York. It's the same as if someone wants to buy a
picture and they go to the County Museum. The first thing one of the curators says,
"Well, let me go to New York, and when I go to Europe, I'll find you something." And all
they're looking for is a free trip. It doesn't occur to them to work with the dealers in
this area. I was at a party at Maurice Tuchman's house on July 4. And they have some
kind of a Contemporary Art Council or something at the County Museum which originally,
when it was formed, was put together by all the losers who were involved in contemporary
art (without mentioning any names of these people). But dealers were excluded.
Automatically, dealers were excluded. Now, the reason for that exclusion I don't know,
because some of the people on that committee, I know what their husbands' occupations
were, and still is, and I think they should be so lucky as to have dealers even talk to
them. They are the lowest. But anyhow, the other day Tuchman asked me if I would join
the council. I said, "I don't see joining the council and joining fifty losers." I said,
"Why don't you get rid of all your losers and then start to reconstitute the council
with some people who are interested in art and who know something and who are willing to
do something?" I said, "You have that thing going for years, and it's a total, complete
mess because of the people you've got there. They're entrenched. They have the power." I
said, "I see no reason to align myself with people like this. I wouldn't be found
walking down the street with them, more or less joining a group and trying to do
anything with them." I said, "They're total losers."
- GOODWIN
- Are there fifty "winners" around?
- KANTOR
- Oh, you can put together fifty people.
- GOODWIN
- I mean could one reconstitute the council?
- KANTOR
- I think so. I think so. Where the control is in the hands of people who know what they
are doing, or who have a dedication to it, or who are interested in giving money and who
are interested in listening to an idea. But no one wants to join a losing group. It's
like this LAICA that's now in Century City. It's also made up of all losers who run
that. These same people take positions — no matter what group forms, they take a
position, they're on the board. And they don't know what they're doing. Period. And they
have no idea of what art is all about. But they're all in there, and they're all in
control. And so no one else joins, and ultimately it fails. And they say, "Well, it's
the area." It's not the area. It's mediocrity perpetuating itself. And they always get
someone at the head of it who makes sure that there's no one else around who would be
more qualified or who would have something to say. This is the demise of the Pasadena
Museum. Bob Rowan didn't want anyone around who was willing to do anything about that
museum.
- GOODWIN
- Could you just mention by name one "winner," one perceptive art collector?
- KANTOR
- Here? Norton Simon. [laughter] He's the most obvious collector in the world. He lives
here, and he's not on the board of the County Museum.
- GOODWIN
- Well, he has been.
- KANTOR
- He has been, but he's not anymore. And I only know rumors of why he's not there anymore.
But whatever it is, he's not there. And I also know some things that he proposed to
them, they were unwilling to accept. Like buying pictures — they were unwilling to
accept purchasing pictures.
- GOODWIN
- Why would he want to fool around with a group of ... ?
- KANTOR
- Because he likes it. He likes to be involved in these things. To sit on the board is no
big thing. I know another, a client of mine, B. Gerald Cantor, who gave them all the
Rodins. At the end they installed them in that museum in a way that was — I mean, you
just want to shut the door and forget about them. They're so badly installed. Well, he
sat on the board. He no longer even goes to board meetings because there's nothing to be
accomplished with board meetings there. It's all cut and dry. It's spelled out
beforehand.
- GOODWIN
- Do you think the County Museum has benefited substantially from his gift?
- KANTOR
- Well, it's a major gift. But the way it's installed, you wouldn't even know that those
things are there. Or you look at the Rodins, the way they're installed in the gardens,
and they're kind of lost. They're like little things lost somewheres or stuck in
somewheres, behind a bar or something. You wonder what went on in the minds of those who
installed it. Why do they do those things that way? Granted, the institution is so badly
laid out that there's not much that can be done. But certainly the installations can be
improved 1,000 percent.
- GOODWIN
- Do you think Cantor is a perceptive collector? Because I've certainly heard things to
the contrary.
- KANTOR
- No, I don't think he is. He has one specific area of taste, and that's what he kept
buying. I disagree with it, but I tried to convince him otherwise. But he is very
hardheaded about it. And it's the old saying: he says, "I know what I like," you know.
And that's what he buys. And I always maintain, you only like what you know.
- GOODWIN
- Is he doing something now, other than Rodin?
- KANTOR
- I don't know. I don't think he is. Oh, he's bought other pictures. He's got Renoir; he's
had Kandinsky; he's had Pissarro, Boudin, I don't know, others. I think he's recently
got a divorce or so, so I don't know who owns what anymore. But he bought other
paintings. He would never heed advice of anyone particularly. He always said he listened
to me, but he didn't. If he listened to me, he wouldn't have that collection that he's
got.
- GOODWIN
- Isn't the great criticism of that collection that most of them are not authentic?
- KANTOR
- No, that's completely wrong.
- GOODWIN
- Well, they're cast by the French government.
- KANTOR
- Most people don't understand. Well, you can say the same thing: UCLA has that big
Lachaise, cast by Felix Landau. It has nothing to do with Lachaise in that sense.
- GOODWIN
- Well, isn't that the point?
- KANTOR
- No, you see, most people don't understand the whole Rodin market. They just repeat by
rote what happened. Rodin died in 1917. At the time he died, he willed everything not to
the French government but to the city of Paris. And one of the provisos in the will was
that whatever was cast in his lifetime, they were able to complete out to twelve, an
edition of twelve. What wasn't cast, they were given permission to cast. This is in his
will. It's a matter of public record, which they can get. They were allowed to cast
twelve of whatever was not cast. The foundry that started to do the casting then was
Alexis Rudier. But Alexis Rudier was casting them for the Rodin Museum, which was
established on his death in the Hotel Biron in Paris. Alexis Rudier died, and there was
a big court fight after World War II as to who had the rights to the Alexis Rudier
foundry. After a big, long court case in France — and the French are very tough on art
and art laws — Georges Rudier won the rights legally to be the successor to Alexis
Rudier. Georges Rudier I think was the nephew. So he became the legal successor by
French law, in a long, drawn-out court case, to the rights to the Alexis Rudier foundry.
Now, the Alexis Rudier foundry, for twenty-five years or thirty years, was casting
Rodins for the Rodin Museum, under the auspices, you know, owned by the city of Paris.
They were never marked anything except "Alexis Rudier. " In the early sixties, all the
Rodin material became public domain — you see, after fifty years, not counting the war
years, which the French discounted. So in order to protect the estate, they started to
then be marked with a "C" for copyright, and were marked "Musee Rodin," and then
"Georges Rudier Foundeur," and then the edition. And they continued to cast them. Now,
the woman who was heading it, Madame Goldscheider was not a very knowledgeable woman.
She taught kind of medieval art at the University of Paris, I think, but was only
interested in young, contemporary artists. And in order to finance a lot of them and to
exhibit them and stuff, she started to cast more of the Rodin pieces — all of which were
never cast before, and she had a perfect right to do it. The criticism that can be
leveled against her and the cast is that she never gave Rudier any money for them. She
paid very, very little. She refused to have new molds made. You know, she would use the
old mold. Rudier was using a sand-casting method rather than a lost-wax method. So he
was cutting corners. So when the castings came out of the mold, they weren't cleaned up
too well. But patinas were just kind of, well, supposedly done in the manner of the old
Renaissance bronzes, you know, of shellac, you know. But he did it very poorly. So the
patinas were bad and the castings were bad because they weren't cleaned up. That's the
only criticism you can level against her. She didn't make bootleg casts. The bootleg
casts have been made throughout history by all kinds of people because sculpture still
is a mechanical process.
- GOODWIN
- But what is the largest portion of Cantor's collection?
- KANTOR
- Museum casts. They're poor casts, okay, but they're not fakes. I know, because they all
came from the Musee Rodin. He bought some at auction; he bought some Alexis Rudier. But
Alexis Rudier was casting for the museum, too. The museum at this point is also using
Goddard, and they've used Susse, and there's a third foundry which they've been using.
But now that Goldscheider is out, they've kind of virtually cut off casting for a while
because there's too many Rodins on the market. Previously, they just cast, cast, cast.
Rodin was a very, very prolific artist.
- GOODWIN
- But haven't they expired the number of casts they're allowed?
- KANTOR
- Well, the twelve, yeah. Well, if they expired, they don't cast those anymore. But there
are still a lot of plasters that have never been cast. But the quality of them is coming
out a lot better than it was. And they're not casting them as rapidly. She was desperate
for the money in order to finance these young students and these contemporary painters.
So there was no quality control on the casts. She also wouldn't, as I said, pay Rudier
any. money, so they couldn't pay for a man to sit there and clean up the casts, and
clean up the gates and the mold marks, and to make a new mold if the old mold wasn't any
good. And sand-casting always gives you kind of a rough casting, compared to a lost-wax
process. And the lost-wax process is a lot more expensive.
- GOODWIN
- And how does this experience compare to what happened at UCLA? You were mentioning Felix
Landau.
- KANTOR
- Well, Landau made a deal. Landau and another dealer in New York, Bob Schoelkopf, made a
deal with the Lachaise family. Now, one thing that can be said about Lachaise, aside
from his art, is that he was a meticulous craftsman. And if you look at the pieces done
in his lifetime that he supervised and that he worked on, they are meticulous pieces.
But these casts that Landau did were very poor casts, done with the permission of the
family. I don't know what, I guess the family had legal rights to give him permission to
cast them, but they're very bad casts. And they sit in the same position that these
Rodins are at the County Museum. They're authorized casts, but they're bad ones. Now,
that doesn't make them fakes. It just makes them poor casts. All of the Degas sculpture
are posthumous casts. No one ever knew he even did sculpture until after he died, and
they found them in the studio. And he didn't know much about sculpture. So when you find
those pieces with an arm missing or a leg missing or the armature wire, they cast the
best ones. The rest they threw away because they were so bad they couldn't even be
salvaged. But he didn't know enough, well enough to make even a model. So you see the
armature sticking through on a lot of them — not that he wanted it that way; he didn't
know how. They just fell apart. And they cast as best they could. But they're all
posthumous casts. Now a lot of artists won't allow posthumous casts. Giacometti won't
allow it. Picasso never would allow. Oh, he was most difficult with the castina of those
pieces.
- GOODWIN
- What about Matisse?
- KANTOR
- Matisse the same way. They won't allow it, didn't allow it. When Despiau died, one of
the provisions in his will was that no posthumous casts be made. And a man like Manzu,
for instance, only used to cast one. So every one was unique. Later on, some years ago,
he allowed two to be cast. So, once you allow two, then you always allow yourself to be
open to others being made surreptitiously. I don't know what the story is with Max
Ernst, who also did a lot of sculpture. They've ruined the Richier market, the Germaine
Richier market, by casting them after her death. They just cast, cast, cast until they
were like multiples. What's the difference if you call it a "multiple" or you call it a
"sculpture"? But, no, the Rodins are all right; they're just poor casts. They're real
casts; they're just poor ones. And then, of course, the same thing happened with
Maillol. Most, a lot of those are — well, I don't want to get into that.
- GOODWIN
- All right. Well, I'd like to have you talk about dealers for a little while longer,
since you have a unique perspective.
- KANTOR
- Dealers here, in Los Angeles?
- GOODWIN
- Yeah. Could you just describe . . ..?
- KANTOR
- There are no dealers.
- GOODWIN
- Well, the people who've been in the business, whether they've been successful or not, or
whether they've made a particular contribution or not. Take Hatfield, for example.
- KANTOR
- Well, Hatfield has been around a long time. She's still around. I never go there
anymore. That was always kind of a very commercial gallery. They used to show some
painters at the time who were then painters of the area. So they used to show Richard
Haines. They used to show Serisawa, Millard Sheets. That was their taste in art.
- GOODWIN
- Earlier, you referred to the Hatfield Gallery as being a "hotel" gallery.
- KANTOR
- That's all right. The location doesn't mean anything. But generally, the concept is that
you cater to a certain clientele that way, and you have that kind of picture, you know.
- GOODWIN
- Does that mean a basically . . .
- KANTOR
- Commercial.
- GOODWIN
- . . .ignorant?
- KANTOR
- Commercial taste. Not ignorant — commercial tastes of Vlamincks and Utrillos. And
they've had other paintings, and they've had good paintings at times. You see, Hatfield
at one time was partners with Earl Stendahl. In fact, it was Stendahl — did I say this
before? Do you remember any of this?--Stendahl originally started downtown next to where
Cannell & Chaff in is now, that decorator shop, on Wilshire near Vermont, around
that Bullock's Wilshire area. And Stendahl was a candy manufacturer. But Stendahl also
had a gallery, and he had some very, very good shows. And Stendahl had shows of Klee and
Kandinsky that Galka Scheyer would give him to put on. Galka Scheyer was, you know, the
girlfriend of Jawlensky and also the dealer in the Blue Four. You know that whole story.
So they would have exhibitions like that, and Hatfield worked for Stendahl. And later
they split up, and Hatfield opened his own gallery in the Ambassador Hotel. But at that
time, for instance, Stendahl showed the Guernica
--Picasso's Guernica.
- GOODWIN
- In Los Angeles?
- KANTOR
- Yes.
- GOODWIN
- I've never heard that.
- KANTOR
- Frank Perls had the whole document on that thing. I think he must have given it to UCLA
or somebody. And he had all the things, what Hedda Hopper and all the others said about
this great, fabulous piece. And it was a big show, the only time it's ever been shown
anywhere, and it was used to raise money. And all the movie people came. I forget what
the cause was, whether it was for the Spanish Republic or the Red Cross or something.
- GOODWIN
- But they weren't trying to sell it, it was just a benefit?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, it wasn't for sale. But the painting was here on exhibit.
- GOODWIN
- Did you see it? Were you here?
- KANTOR
- No, I wasn't living here then. I came after World War II. But the painting was here on
exhibit, and Stendahl showed it. And nobody says anything about that. After World War
II, for instance, when Sam Kootz , of the Kootz Galleries in New York got some paintings
from Picasso, he had a big show of Picasso out here at Stendahl' s, right where Stendahl
's still is. And there were like ten, twelve pictures of Picasso there. And Sam Kootz
came out, and they had this big opening. And before the opening that afternoon some
disreputable- looking, shabby character walked in there with a friend of his and looked
around, and there was this one very beautiful, small portrait of Dora Maar. And he asked
Earl, he said, "How much is that. Earl?" I think he said $8,000. This was in '47 — '46 —
'47, I don't know. And he looked at it, and he said, "Okay, I'll buy it." And the guy
who bought it was Bill Copley, the painter now; but Bill Copley then went later on,
opened a gallery in '48, and had, oh, five or six shows. He had a show, Max Ernst,
Tanguy, Man Ray, Cornell, Matta. Then he closed the gallery.
- GOODWIN
- This was after you arrived.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, in '48. And he had a little gallery. It was in a house, right near, right on Canon
Drive, I guess near where that little theater is now. The house has since been torn down
and something built there. That big office building is there, but there was that little
house. And they had these fabulous shows.
- GOODWIN
- Did anybody buy anything?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, big Tanguy paintings for $300. A painting like that, no one bought anything. He
sold nothing. Bill sold nothing. The only thing he did, he used to guarantee the dealers
whom he got the shows from, 10 percent of the value of the show in sales. And so he was
stuck buying 10 percent of the value. The Max Ernst show, he had like ninety paintings
there. Because Pierre Matisse at that time gave him a show, and he loaded him up with
paintings. And the whole value of the entire show was, I think, $80,000. And poor Bill
had to buy $8,000.
1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO (JULY 29, 1976)
- KANTOR
- So, anyhow the Picasso that Copley gave them still hangs at the County Museum. And along
with that great Magritte, that Seated Man with a Hat and
Birds, and no face or something. And when he donated those two pictures, the
director of the museum at that time was Jean Delacour, who was only interested in birds
and his ninety-five-year-old French mother. And he was hired by the board — knowing he
was only interested in birds and ornithology, he was hired by the board as a director of
an art museum, spent his retiring years here. There's an auditorium named after him
downtown. He refused to hang those pictures. He said they were that terrible and that
ugly and that dreadful. And he refused to hang them for many, many years. Anyhow, that's
how they got their Picasso and that Magritte. And those were in the early days of the
dealers here. Bill later had a gallery, as I told you. He bought all those pictures
because no one else would buy them. Frank Perls had a gallery here. He came here in
1938, '39, opened a gallery here because Billy Wilder convinced him to come here from
New York, where he was with his brother, and opened a gallery on the Sunset Strip.
- GOODWIN
- Where about?
- KANTOR
- Oh, it's up near where — oh, just west of the Playboy building up there, where Allan
Adler is or something. I forget; I don't know the names of the streets.
- GOODWIN
- Little boutiques in there.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, that's where he was. But in recent times all the La Cienega galleries combined are
basically little galleries that show contemporary painters. And either they're run by
some woman whose husband can afford the losses, or someone else who has backing of
somebody who can afford the losses. And I say "afford the losses"--they ' re all tax
losses, so Uncle Sam pays a good deal of it.
- GOODWIN
- Can you speak a little in depth about Frank Perls?
- KANTOR
- Since he's dead.
- GOODWIN
- He isn't here. He was originally included in the study, but obviously ....
- KANTOR
- Well, Frank Perls is German, was German. His parents were dealers in Berlin, and they
were dealers even before World War I. His father is still alive and is a dealer in New
York. His father must be ninety years old at this point. Hugo Perls. His mother — Kaethe
Perls — and his father had this gallery in Berlin. They built the first Mies van der
Rohe private house in Germany. And Pechstein did all the murals in the house. The house
was totally destroyed during World War II. It no longer exists. The street doesn't
exist; nothing exists. It's all been replanned, and there is no such neighborhood
anymore. So Frank grew up as an art dealer — he and his other brother, Klaus. Kaethe
Perls also used to hang around with the painters at that time, and there are two famous
portraits of her that Munch did. One of them sits in the Basel Museum. I don't know if
you've ever been there. Have you ever been to the Basel?
- GOODWIN
- No.
- KANTOR
- There's a great museum, if you want to see a great museum.
- GOODWIN
- I'm planning to go.
- KANTOR
- You walk into a room full of Holbein drawings, fabulous Holbein drawings, because
Holbein used to live in Basel. And in the middle of all those Holbein drawings is a
great Grunewald painting, six feet across of a green Christ. But anyhow, one of her
portraits sits there, and her other portrait sits in Oslo, that Munch did, this
red-headed woman. You can't miss them when you see them. And she early on would buy
drawings from Picasso and pictures from Picasso, and she used to erase the penis on the
pencil drawings. She was famous for that. But they left Germany in the beginning when
Hitler came to power, and opened a gallery in Paris, on the rue de l'Abbaye. If you know
Paris ....
- GOODWIN
- I don't know that street.
- KANTOR
- You know where the Cafe Deux Magots is? You know where the boulevard St. Germain is?
- GOODWIN
- Oh yes, yes, right.
- KANTOR
- Cafe Deux Magots--across the street diagonally, there's a church [St.-Germain-des-Pres]
which is a sixteenth- century church, but part of it goes back to the eighth, ninth
century, and they have some of the gargoyles and chimeras still around in the courtyard.
And in the center of the yard, there's a big Picasso sculpture, which Picasso gave them,
of a woman's head, done in the thirties, a piece about two feet high. That street is
l'Abbaye, and down the street there, from that church, is where the gallery was. And
then, I think in 1937, Klaus Perls went to New York to open a gallery. And a year later
Frank's mother, Kaethe, who was a very dominant woman, sent Frank to help Klaus. Well,
Klaus didn't want help, but anyhow, Frank arrived. And they had differences of opinion
as to how to operate and everything, and Frank came out here.
- GOODWIN
- About how old was he when he came to Los Angeles?
- KANTOR
- Let's see, Frank was around sixty-four when he died, and that was when? Last year,
wasn't it? A year ago when he died, in '75. So he was born, let's say, in 1910, '11. So
he came to Los Angeles in '38, he was twenty-seven years old. But Frank, you know,
studied art history and went to the University of Munich, finished his PhD, but he
never, I think, took the exams. He didn't care. But he went to school with John Rewald,
and they've been friends ever since. And they were in the University of Munich together,
and I think John Rewald went to the Sorbonne . I think Frank stayed in Germany. He wrote
a thesis on the unknown master painter of the fourteenth-century Cologne madonnas. Great
PhD thesis for a German art historian. [laughter] And Klaus, who went on and got his
PhD, took the exams and everything, wrote the definitive work on Jean Fouquet, which
Paul Wescher many years later plagiarized. And I think Klaus sued him. Wescher' s dead
now, so I can say it. But Wescher plagiarized the entire book. And Klaus went on then to
become a dealer in Vlamincks, Utrillos, Soutines, Rouaults, Miros, certain
Picassos--that' s his taste. And he wrote a book for Hyperion on Vlaminck. In his field
he's very good. He knows exactly what the paintings are and everything else.
- GOODWIN
- Still is?
- KANTOR
- Yeah. There was an old-time dealer in Paris who died, call Mouradian, who was the expert
on Modigliani after Ceroni died. But Mouradian is now dead, and I think Klaus is the one
pretty much accepted as the expert on Modigliani. And he's as good as anyone on Vlaminck
and Utrillo and Chagall. And as a matter of fact, a funny story with Frank Perls: Kaethe
Perls, when they had the gallery in Paris, would go to Petrides, who was a dealer and
who still is a dealer — Petrides was the dealer for Utrillo--and she would buy Utrillos.
But Petrides was also a Greek tailor. And when Kaethe would buy several Utrillos, she
would get credit for a suit. So Frank Perls came to the United States with the best
collection of Petrides suits in existence, including tails, which he had stored away
when he died. They're stored away somewheres — a hand-signed, Petrides full-dress suit.
He thought that was very funny. But, you know, Frank had that enormous snobbery that
only a German scholar can have, where they think that they know everything. And after
all, Petrides was just a tailor. The fact that he's been a dealer for forty-five years
and went on to be as important as anyone [phone rings; tape recorder turned off] Frank
had this kind of snobbery. But he had this gallery here, and he had very narrow tastes.
- GOODWIN
- He was your neighbor. KA.NTOR: Yeah, we had galleries next to each other on Camden Drive
for about ten years. And he was also a very close friend of mine.
- GOODWIN
- How did your specialities differ?
- KANTOR
- Well, I had a much broader knowledge in areas that he knew nothing about. He knew
nothing of contemporary American painting. He knew nothing of twentieth-century American
painting. He knew very little about impressionist painting. Even in twentieth-century
French painting, he had narrow areas. You see, Frank would always latch on to a dealer
whom he's worked with, a European dealer. So whether it was a Pierre Matisse or Curt
Valentin (when he was alive) or Heinz Berggruen, he would follow their tastes. And
that's what he would work with. So if they didn't show certain artists, Frank didn't
bother. He didn't know anything about them. So he wouldn't know anything about a painter
like Bonnard, for instance, because none of them had bothered with Bonnard. American
paintings, he knew nothing about. Abstract paintings used to be a big joke to him, even
though he once had a show about abstract painting. It was a big joke, you know. He knew
nothing about it. And he would come to me for all of this. We would do things together.
So if someone offered him a picture, he would show it to me. And I would say, "Let's buy
it," or "Let's not buy it; we can buy it for so much," you know. He was interested in
artists like Dubuffet because Pierre Matisse showed Dubuffet, Miro because Pierre
Matisse had Miro and Berggruen had Miro. But he really didn't know that much about Miro
or have that feeling about Miro because, there again, they were kind of abstract
pictures, which didn't appeal to him too much because his basic training was in much
more commercial stuff or where he used to call "pretty." He said, "It's not a pretty
picture," you know. Well, "pretty" picture means it's easy to sell. And that's what the
average buyer likes. And of course those also bring the highest prices.
- GOODWIN
- How successful was he financially?
- KANTOR
- He did well at the end; that I know. He never really made any money until the last
couple of years of his life. I don't know — I think in a way that kind of killed him,
because Frank was kind of a hypochondriac, and he was now able to indulge himself fully,
twenty-four hours a day. He didn't have that monetary pressure, you know, that he needed
to pay this or needed to do this or needed money for this. He didn't have that pressure.
And I think in the end he just indulged himself to a point where he killed himself.
- GOODWIN
- Did he have many of the same clients you did?
- KANTOR
- There aren't that many clients in the city, you know.
- GOODWIN
- Well, I mean some of the collectors we've mentioned: Taft Schreiber, the Brodys ....
- KANTOR
- Yes, everybody knows these people, so you talk to them. I sold the Brodys one thing,
twenty-odd years ago, for like $150 or something. But the Brodys bought a lot through
him when they were buying. He was a friend of theirs. Yeah, there are only a handful,
and everybody knows who they are. And so you call them or you talk to them. But whether
you sell them or don't sell them, who knows? Those are the vagaries of the art business.
- GOODWIN
- What kind of personal collection did he have?
- KANTOR
- Nothing. He had no personal collection. He had, oh, virtually no personal life.
- GOODWIN
- Did he have a family?
- KANTOR
- No, he was married several times, but the last time he was married, he was divorced like
fifteen years before he died and never got remarried. He was kind of a real lonesome
character at the end. I was one of his closest friends.
- GOODWIN
- Who were some of his other close friends?
- KANTOR
- Billy Brice, the Brodys were, a couple out in Pasadena, Joe Koepfli and his wife, and
Wright Ludington, kind of partially because that was a little far away--although he did
buy a piece of land right next door to Wright Ludington at the end that he had hoped to
build on at one time.
- GOODWIN
- Where did Perls live in town?
- KANTOR
- Malibu at the end. Because I moved to Malibu, I was living in Malibu, so he moved to
Malibu. Had an apartment there. Heinz Berggruen in Paris was a good friend of his.
- GOODWIN
- To what extent were you competitors?
- KANTOR
- I don't know. You know, I don't know if any dealers are competitors. You know, each
painting is different. So if someone is looking for a painting, it would have to be that
you had a painting similar to the one he had, of the same quality and everything else.
All right, granted the collector doesn't know one from the other, sometimes you can
persuade him that your painting is a better painting than the one they're looking at.
But that's about the extent of competition. Otherwise, if he had a great Miro, for
instance, or access to one, and the collector was interested in it, and I didn't have
one, well, where's the competition? We're not in competition. I could go look for one
and tell the other collector, "Look, I know where there is one, too. Let me at least
show it to you." So in that sense, you're competitive, but that's all. The real
competition in art is only in graphics, where it's the identical piece. Then there's
competition, you know. Then it's solely by price, I would imagine. If someone is cheaper
than the other one, then you buy. It's the identical piece. But in paintings or drawings
or anything, where it isn't the identical piece, you can always make out a case for your
own picture, you know, versus the other one, even if it fits the space better, you know,
or whatever it is. But that's the only competition really in art. The problem in this
city is there are no dealers who have any pictures or access to pictures. Most of them
work on a very minor level. It's no more than the university that gives PhDs from
slides, which I think is a total outrage.
- GOODWIN
- Do you remember somebody named William Putzel?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, I didn't know him, Howard Putzel. I think it was Howard Putzel. Was it William?
- GOODWIN
- That's what I have in my notes.
- KANTOR
- I think it was Howard Putzel. He had a gallery on Hollywood Boulevard next door to what
was then the Stanley Rose Book Shop, and the Stanley Rose Book Shop was next door to
Musso & Frank's. Musso & Frank's is still there. The Stanley Rose Book
Shop was an avant-garde bookshop in the thirties that, you know, carried T.S. Eliot, who
was a big poet at that time, and some of the other writers. And all the intellectuals
who came to Hollywood and hung around Hollywood — and there were a lot of them then —
used to go hang around the Stanley Rose Book Shop. You know, there wasn't that much
around at that time. So if Faulkner came out to do something, or Saroyan came out here,
or whoever came, they used to hang around there. And they would eat at Musso &
Frank's — which is still a good restaurant; I think it's one of the best restaurants in
the city. And he had a gallery next door.
- GOODWIN
- It was the left bank.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, kind of, really. Yeah, it was a good bookshop, a good gallery, and a good
restaurant. And the red car ran on Hollywood Boulevard, and it wasn't that shabby, seamy
street that it is today. And Pickwick was just a little place on the corner, further
down, by McCadden. You know, I don't even think Pickwick existed. That came later. There
was a little shop. I remember when he started, and he used to have shows from New York.
And the only show I know of that he had was a big Juan Gris show. And the most expensive
painting was $300. And no one bought anything — nobody bought anything. He finally
closed the gallery, moved to New York, and I think in the early forties, dropped dead of
a heart attack or something. He was a young guy, forty years of age or less. The one
around this town who knows him, who could tell you a lot more, is Lorser Feitelson. But
Lorser Feitelson will give you such a distorted point of view ....
- GOODWIN
- In what way?
- KANTOR
- Well, distorted to make Lorser Feitelson the brilliant painter that he is. Because, you
see, Lorser Feitelson in the early twenties was in Paris as a painter, and he's lived
off that reputation now for fifty-odd years — you know, how great he was. And I mean all
you have to do is look at that stuff he paints and did paint, and he never had it and
never made it. He had a gallery here for a while with a woman called Muriel — she's
still alive — Muriel Tyler. And she was married to a painter called Myron Nutting. But
before she married Myron Nutting, she lived on Clark Street, and Lorser Feitelson was
her advisor.
- GOODWIN
- Where was her gallery?
- KANTOR
- On Clark Street, in her house. She had a house. She came from the South, and she had
some money. And so she showed Tanguy and some other things. Lorser Feitelson was not the
most astute of advisors, and things didn't go too well there. Anyhow, when she married
Myron Nutting, he got her to close the gallery and get rid of Feitelson as her advisor
in art because he felt that Feitelson was not being straight with her. But he knew
Putzel. But you'll get a total distortion from him, based, you know, to make him
something. To me, he's an old fool, you know. And I haven't spoken to him in twenty
years. I had a show one time of Kirchner, the paintings. And he walked into the gallery,
and he said, "That's all you're interested in--the money balls, and these pictures where
you make money, and names; and what do you know about art?" And finally — this was in a
gallery that I had--he came in to kind of insult me, and I said, "Look, if you don't
like it, just get out." I said, "I don't have to account to you for anything." I said,
"You're a broken-down artist who never made it. Don't tell me what to show or not to
show. If you like it, fine; if you don't like it, I don't want to know about it. And if
you have any insulting remarks, tell them to someone else. Just get out of here." And
that's the last words I had with Lorser Feitelson. That was twenty years ago. But he
represents the last of the old-guard, bitter artists out in this city, who never made it
and who want to be part of art history. And you get a distortion from them that has
nothing to do with what went on. I don't know who else would know of Putzel — who was
around, who's still around.
- GOODWIN
- Wasn't Barbara Byrnes the person who took over that gallery?
- KANTOR
- No. She had a gallery called American Contemporary Gallery, and that was in a little
courtyard on Hollywood Boulevard on the north side of the street, between Las Palmas and
McCadden, a few doors away from where Pickwick is now. Jimmy Byrnes at that time was the
curator at the County Museum, and she had minor shows of local artists--Ynez Johnston. I
bought a painting out of the first show she gave Ynez Johnston. She showed Ed Kohn,
Edmond Kohn. Is he still alive? Gabe Kohn , you know, the sculptor who just died — this
was his brother. She showed a guy called Michael Frary, who is no longer around; Jules
Engel, who is still around. She had a few shows there, but Barbara was the world's worst
businesswoman. And after about, oh, I guess she was in that place around six, eight
months, she moved to a little house on La Cienega and Rosewood, where Norms is now,
whatever that street is. And it was a little house, and there were lots on both sides.
Lambert's was a little place on the corner. All the artists chipped in and built the
place for her. I helped, and my then-wife helped. She had this other gallery, and that
was also around '48. She opened with a show of Dorothea Tanning. That show was planned
for the Copley Gallery, but Copley closed, so Barbara opened with that show. She had a
show of Eugene Berman, and Jan Stussy had a show there at one time. That gallery was a
big disaster, too, and they closed that, because Barbara, in her own way, was as
inefficient as a dealer and knew as little about running a gallery as Jimmy Byrnes was
as a curator.
- GOODWIN
- Did she work for you for a while?
- KANTOR
- Never. Did she say she did?
- GOODWIN
- No, she worked for another dealer at one point. I'm trying to think ....
- KANTOR
- Here, in Los Angeles? Oh, she worked for Frank Perls. But she didn't work for Perls.
Frank Perls used to have a regular girl that watched the place and that worked for him.
I think on her off days Barbara would sit--on Wednesdays or Saturdays or something. And
then for a while — I think after the girl quit, until he found another one — Barbara
worked with him maybe a month or two. But just kind of watching the store, nothing else.
- GOODWIN
- How is it that La Cienega became kind of the gallery street?
- KANTOR
- Rent was cheap. That's what it was. Rent was cheap there.
- GOODWIN
- Near Hollywood?
- KANTOR
- No, Barbara Byrnes was the first gallery there. And then I remember sitting up--Jake
Zeitlin was thinking of moving in and buying that red barn at that time. It was kind of
rural still at that time there.
- GOODWIN
- It's hard to imagine.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, that barn was a working barn, you know. And I think that barn was all of $30,000
for it at that time, with the land and everything else. And Jake had been bankrupt twice
before in the downtown section, you know, on Seventh Street, where a lot of the
bookshops were at one time, behind that Bullock's area. I remember sitting up with Jake,
oh, until about one, two in the morning — Jake, I and Jimmy Byrnes and Barbara. And he
was very frightened about going into that place because it was $30,000, and he'd been
broke twice before, bankrupt — I mean, in bankruptcy. And he didn't know if he could
afford it, whether it was worth it, and I think I convinced him that it was worth it. It
was either $20,000 or $30,000, I forget which it was. And so he bought it then, at that
time. But he didn't have a gallery — he only had books. And, you know, maybe he would
have a few little prints around or something. But Landau at that time was on Melrose.
- GOODWIN
- What was his background?
- KANTOR
- Who?
- GOODWIN
- Landau.
- KANTOR
- He was a record salesman.
- GOODWIN
- Was he from the East?
- KANTOR
- Landau was Austrian, originally. He came out here as a kid, around age twelve or
thirteen, under Hitler. You know the family were refugees. Felix is, I don't know,
fifty- one, fifty-two, fifty-three, something in that area. But he had a gallery on
Melrose. Then he gave a show to O.P. Reed and his wife, Rosemary, who lived at that time
I think in La Jolla. And then they became kind of backers of Landau.
- GOODWIN
- What kind of things did Landau show?
- KANTOR
- Also contemporary artists. But Landau then stepped up later into French art, German art,
national, international art, you know, rather than stay a little dealer showing Los
Angeles artists, or California artists, you know. It's a big thing when they show
California artists. But then there was a fire, and after that he moved over to La
Cienega Boulevard, too. Then for many years he and O.P. Reed were partners, until they
broke up.
- GOODWIN
- What was Reed's background?
- KANTOR
- Oh, I think Reed was an art student at USC and a painter. O.P. Reed was a painter and, I
think, studied art at USC, and after this show he got into the art galleries with Felix.
I am trying to think what else there was. But most of the places at that time all
existed by also making frames and selling frames because you couldn't exist by selling
art alone. So basically, you know. Landau, even on La Cienega, up until the end when he
split up with O.P. Reed and even afterwards, still had a frame shop in the back. I had
one. Barbara never had one. That's also probably why she folded — because she never sold
any pictures. And La Cienega started on that basis. The rent was cheap. I think she
moved there; it was an easy enough location. Landau was there. Jake Zeitlin started
there. And I guess gradually, one by one, other places opened there. Esther Robles was a
big frame shop at that time. She worked only for the decorators, and she had little
pictures, decorative French pictures. But she never really worked up into anything,
either. Finally closed at the end. I don't know. I heard various stories about it, but I
don't know. I couldn't verify any of them. But she was around at that time, at the
beginning. And of course Stendahl was, still is.
- GOODWIN
- What about the Franklin Gallery? When did that come along?
- KANTOR
- Harry Franklin? Well , later, years later. There was a Frenchman called Oscar Meyer who
opened a place of antiquities on La Cienega Boulevard. And, oh, right near that area
where Munn's Picture Frames is, I don't know who was in the place he had, but Oscar
Meyer opened this place. Well, that was the last one. He was kind of an adventurer. He
opened up a little place first on La Cienega, south of Third, for a little while. Then I
think he opened this place up near Munn's. He found Harry Franklin, who had come out
here from New York. Harry Franklin was in another business entirely. And Harry Franklin,
I think, financed Oscar. Well, Oscar, it turns out, was a complete thief, among other
things. He was a friend of mine, supposedly, and he just cheated Harry Franklin in every
way that he could. So they broke up, they dissolved the partnership, whatever it was,
however disadvantageous it vas to Harry Franklin. And Harry Franklin wound up with all
kinds of material. And I think from there he got more interested in doing something and
started a gallery of his own — and started it on a totally different level than Oscar.
Oscar had all kinds of little antiquities, where Harry Franklin sticks mostly to Pacific
art now. He has some pre-Columbian and some other things, but for a long while it was
only Pacific stuff. Some African.
- GOODWIN
- How significant is his business?
- KANTOR
- I don't know, I really don't know. I just don't know; I don't know what he does. I know
people who have bought from him. I'm not particularly interested in ethnic art, so, you
know, to me it's folk art. And I put it all in the same category. It may be very
expensive folk art.
- GOODWIN
- Does that mean bad?
- KANTOR
- No, well, ethnic art, you see, is art of a culture. And it doesn't mean it's bad or
anything, except to me it's not fine art. Fine art is the art of an individual coming
out of a culture, but he is the guiding light. Ethnic art — there are 10,000 of them.
How would you like 10,000 people to be sitting turning out Picassos today? Well, that's
what ethnic art is.
- GOODWIN
- Except they're not Picasso. [laughter]
- KANTOR
- That's right. Right. Well, if they had one guiding guy there who apparently was the
artist, and everyone copied him. Well, in the case of pre-Columbian, for hundreds of
years they copied the same thing. Well, it puts it in a different light as far as I'm
concerned. And it's the difference, you know, when you got down to it, with the Greeks-
you know, the difference between Praxiteles and just a piece of Greek sculpture.
Praxiteles was the great Greek sculptor who signed his pieces, and all the rest were
pieces done in the culture, unsigned. So you don't know who, or what, or a communal
effort, or three hands or ten hands. Nobody knows who carved it, who finished it, who
did this, who did the other thing, you know. It's like the same in the time of the
Renaissance. It's either a Rubens or it's a school of Rubens. Well, the school of
Rubens, every fucking student that went through that atelier worked on pictures. So it's
all school. But Rubens is still a Rubens, and school is still a school, you know. And
there are lots of school pictures. And that to me is my feeling about all of this ethnic
art. It doesn't mean I'm right.
- GOODWIN
- So you've never been involved in it?
- KANTOR
- No, I used to buy some pieces for myself when they were cheap, and it didn't really mean
anything. I wouldn't pay any big money for ethnic art today. I just don't have enough of
an interest in it to do it. That doesn't invalidate it. It's just my feelings about it,
you know. But some of it is quite beautiful. GOODWIN; Last week you mentioned Ralph
Altman.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, he was a dealer in primitive art, mostly African. He was German. His widow may
still be around, or she may have died. I don't know if she's around. Her name was Pat,
Patricia. I have no idea where to find her if she's still alive. He taught for quite a
while at UCLA. I think he closed his gallery, or he had his gallery and taught — both. I
thought it was kind of weird that he would bring people over. But he dealt in primitive
art, and he had a gallery on La Cienega, just north of Melrose on the west side of the
street. Strange place, because there are no galleries have ever opened down there even
to this date, that far, you know. But there again, he always reminded me of Oscar Meyer.
Primitive art dealers as a rule are kind of very strange, secretive people. I don't know
if you've ever talked to any of them or go into these galleries. They're funny people.
And everything is a secret, you know, because they're dealing, and three-quarters of the
stuff is fake that they're dealing in.
- GOODWIN
- Or stolen?
- KANTOR
- No, it's mostly fake. I remember when Stendahl, when I used to go see Stendahl in '48,
what an important Colima would look like, and what was an important Colima piece then is
just a little run-of-the-mill nothing today. And African pieces have been faked in
Germany since the time that African art was first discovered, you know, by German
missionaries and brought back into Germany in the late nineteenth century. And they're
absolute experts at it, the Germans. I mean they make fabulous fakes. So I don't know
what's real and what isn't. Well, you know there's one culture, that Amlash culture,
that was a total invention. Somebody invented the Amlash culture one day. And Stendahl
gave the museum a whole collection, which they accepted, of Amlash. It's all fake. I
think they finally took it all out, because I think everyone realized it. I don't know
who the hell invented it, but one day someone invented Amlash, you know. And they were
beautiful. And suddenly they appeared all over the place, like--I told you the last time
you were here--with the Chumash Indian pieces that Bruce Inverarity swore were all fake,
the ones that were coming out. There were some real ones, but suddenly there were
thousands, you know.
- GOODWIN
- The Primus-Stuart Gallery.
- KANTOR
- Ed Primus, yeah.
- GOODWIN
- They dealt in some . . .
- KANTOR
- . . . pre-Columbian, yeah. Well, Dave Stuart is still there. They were partners. Ed
Primus was a painter, a frustrated painter. He's still alive, he's still around. I think
he's a dealer in Burbank or someplace. I don't talk to him. But he started a gallery. He
started off with little Mexican-Indian stuff and a few little pre-Columbian things. He
didn't know what to do; he used to sell real estate. And he was a painter, but he made
no money, and his wife worked. She was always kind of a right-hand woman to John Huston,
the director. And the first show he had was in a little bookshop on Cahuenga called
Larry Edmunds Book Shop. And the fellow who owned it at that time was a fellow called
Milton Luboviski, who's still around. He's got a place on Hollywood Boulevard now,
although he probably is partially retired. [phone rings; tape recorder turned off]
- GOODWIN
- We're reviewing the galleries. How would you characterize the Ferus Gallery?
- KANTOR
- Well, I read that homage to the Ferus Gallery. [Turnbull, Betty, ed. The Last Time I Saw Ferus; 1957-1966. Exhibition Catalog,
Newport Harbor Art Museum, 1976.] That catalog has got a lot of distortions in it. No
one seems to know where the name "Ferus" came from. I'm the only one who knows where
that name came from.
- GOODWIN
- Tell us.
- KANTOR
- Well, they killed someone; they ran someone over. And in homage to the guy they killed,
whose name was Ferus, they named it the Ferus Gallery. There was a guy, Ben Bartosh, who
was involved for a while with that gallery; [and there was] Walter Hopps, who used to
come around to see me all the time and then got mad at me one time because I didn't save
a Diebenkorn painting for him. Irving Blum had nothing to do with that gallery until
years and years later. And Irving Blum came out here as a porno filmmaker. He made the
original porno film, called Mr. Peeps or something.
- GOODWIN
- Really? [laughter]
- KANTOR
- Yeah. Irving is also a refugee, an Austrian refugee, who grew up in Arizona. Made this
porno film and then came out here, and he suddenly became an art connoisseur with Walter
Hopps. And at that time, they had moved from this little place on San Vicente — they had
kind of a California Victorian, wooden house with a porch and steps going up to the
porch--and they moved out to La Cienega. And at that time, Ben Bartosh had gotten out,
and "Chico" (Walter Hopps) was partners with Ed Kienholz, who had come back from
studying in Spain or somewheres. And they were very, very in, so they had an unlisted
number. First of all, they were behind some other houses, in the back, so you had to go
through an alley to find them. It was kind of like an expanded garage space that they
had. And they had an unlisted number, which was total insanity. Kienholz would never sit
there, and Chico's never sat anyplace in his life, you know, if he had to do it. He
still doesn't. And so, I don't know, they had one or two girls who used to sit there and
answer the phone when it would ring, but it would never ring because no one knew their
number. They had some shows that were kind of interesting. And then I think Kienholz
wanted out when Chico decided they should list the phone number. Kienholz thought they
were getting too commercial. So he says, "I want out of this." So Chico found Irving
Blum at that time, who was wandering around here looking for something to do. So Irving
then became his partner, and then I think they moved across the street to another
location where they were, you know.
- GOODWIN
- Sounds like the Marx Brothers.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, it was kind of one of those crazy stateroom scenes, you know. But Kienholz has
always been kind of a difficult guy. I don't think he's much of an artist, but, you
know, he had one or two ideas that he exploited at the time. And I don't think he's done
anything in years that's worth looking at. But he certainly wasn't one to be a dealer,
since he has the mentality of an artist. Artists hate dealers; for whatever reason they
hate them, they hate them. They think the dealer is their opponent.
- GOODWIN
- What impact did the Ferus Gallery have locally or beyond?
- KANTOR
- Well, they had a lot of interesting shows, and they had a lot of shows with a generation
of artists whom I didn't show. I was the only one who was showing abstract painting
until they came along. And, all right, I showed some of the New York painters; and I had
Diebenkorn; a guy like Emerson Woelffer, who never really made it; Ynez Johnston, who
never made it. But they came along with a whole new group of artists who had come up or
were coming up. So for whatever reason I had, the years that I put in before were too
tough, and it was easier to sell French paintings. So I was starting to slip into other
things, more name paintings, rather than younger, more contemporary artists. In a sense,
they had a fresher point of view because they were . . .
- GOODWIN
- . . . rebels?
- KANTOR
- They weren't rebels; they were younger. They didn't have the time put in or take the
beating, you know, of spending years and years and years at something and getting
nowheres with it, absolutely nowheres. People today still start galleries with a fresh
point of view: they want to do this, they're full of enthusiasm, and they want to have
shows and exhibitions and happenings and events. That's great. But you need that kind of
young energy. And I was losing it. At the same time that I was losing it and seeking
another path where it was easier to work from, they had come up with that enthusiasm and
with all the artists coming up at that time. So in a way they introduced all of that
stuff to this area. So in a way, that was their contribution. All right, some of them
made it, and some of them didn't, you know. But they did show Warhol for the first time,
which was a big thing. They did show the Lichtensteins when people were laughing at
Lichtensteins. But the same way today Irving Blum laughs at hyperrealist or photorealist
paintings. He says, "Paul, that's horrible; it's nothing; I guarantee you you're wasting
your money," and this and that. So, Irving, you see, is also over the peak in that
sense.
1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE (AUGUST 2, 1976)
- GOODWIN
- Last week we finished the discussion with a review of some of the galleries and dealers
that have existed in Los Angeles over the years, and we were in the middle of a
discussion of the Ferus Gallery. And you were going to mention some of the new artists
who were emerging on the scene.
- KANTOR
- New artists--what? Today?
- GOODWIN
- No, at the Ferus Gallery when it opened.
- KANTOR
- Well, I think we went through that. I went through that. I said, you know, the artists
that came up at that time they still have. It's the ones from New York that have made
it--Warhol and Lichtenstein and Sam Francis. And the local artists that they've showed,
to me, are still kind of basically local artists. All right, they have shows in New York
— Ed Moses, Billy Bengston — I don't even know if Billy Bengston shows in New
York--Craig Kauffman. But they've never made it as artists any more than any kind of
local, California painters.
- GOODWIN
- What is "making it" as an artist in your judgment?
- KANTOR
- An international reputation and an international market for the paintings, where they
freely sell any place in the world. That's making it. Or freely sell in the United
States. There's some regional artists, like, well, in the United States, John Marin.
John Marin doesn't sell in Europe. Hopper--Edward Hopper sells in the United States at
enormous prices, or Winslow Homer sells at enormous prices in the United States. But
they don't sell anywheres else in the world. You bring a Hopper to any other part of the
world, and they look at you. They think it's a big joke. You bring a Chagall anyplace in
the world, and a Chagall is Chagall. You can sell it. So "making it" really means you
have a free, open market for someone ' s paintings .
- GOODWIN
- Can you be a little more specific about "making it"? Are there certain dealers who would
handle a first-rate artist or certain museums which would do retrospectives of his work?
- KANTOR
- A lot of museums do a retrospective of a man's work because it's a cheap show. It
doesn't mean anything. It's also dependent on the caliber, the quality of a museum
director. An easy show is an easy show. Maybe dealers organize shows for museums because
the museum director is too damn lazy or the curator is too damn lazy to do anything on
his own. A museum show to me doesn't mean anything.
- GOODWIN
- Does an artist have to have a show at the Museum of Modern Art to have "made it"?
- KANTOR
- No. An artist has to have paintings that sell at a price easily, on a broader basis than
just where he comes from. And that's having received some sort of reputation. The bigger
the reputation, the more international it becomes, and you can sell them anywheres. I
give you an example of Chagall. You take any of the great names in French painting, you
can sell them anyplace in the world. Everybody knows who they are. You take a man like
Ed Moses, who's got concurrently today two shows, one at the Los Angeles County Museum
and one at UCLA. Outside of a few young dealers in Germany who may handle his work, Ed
Moses is a total unknown in the rest of the world. So if you go down to South Africa and
say, "I have an Ed Moses for sale," the guy says, "Thanks a lot. I don't buy Jewish
painting," or something. But you go down there with a Dubuffet, they know exactly who
Dubuffet is. Whether they like Dubuffet or don't like Dubuffet, that depends on the
individual collector or buyer. But the validity of the man as an artist is established.
- GOODWIN
- But of course, Ed Moses is much younger than any of the established ....
- KANTOR
- Well, he's no younger than Andy Warhol. He's no younger than Roy Lichtenstein or
Rosenquist or Wesselmann or, I don't know, any number of ... .
- GOODWIN
- Jasper Johns?
- KANTOR
- Jasper Johns, Bob Rauschenberg. He just didn't make it. At the end, there's only a
handful of artists in any movement who one remembers. If you go back to impressionism,
you've got four impressionist painters: Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, and Renoir. And all the
rest are second-, third-, fourth-echelon painters. They all have a name; they all have a
place. So you have Guillaumin. You have Marfra. You have Moret. You have all sorts of
them, but when you think of impressionists, you think of four painters, period. And even
in more recent times, in the so-called abstract expressionist movement, you have the top
painters of Pollock, Rothko, Barney Newman, Clyfford Still, Kline. Then you have
Motherwell, Baziotes, Guston (in those days), Gorky, and that's it. And all of the
others who were around de Kooning — did I say de Kooning? And all the others have gone
by the wayside. And that's a lot.
- GOODWIN
- Does that mean, though, that they're not good artists? If an artist hasn't "made it,"
especially during his lifetime, does it mean he's mediocre?
- KANTOR
- It doesn't mean they're good artists or it doesn't mean they're bad artists. Generally,
time has a way of separating the innovators from the followers. And a man can be a great
craftsman and have nothing to say and still become an important artist. You know, a man
like Ingres — his skill was so great that he's an important artist, but he's done it on
his skill. But, no, it doesn't mean that, except generally history has proven that the
leaders and the innovators of a movement are the ones who survive, and the followers
fall by the wayside.
- GOODWIN
- Do you think fifty years from now the market for Warhol and Lichtenstein is going to
hold up?
- KANTOR
- Yeah. Because they're the ones that started the movement. And whether you like pop art
as a movement or don't like pop art as a movement, it's an important movement in
painting.
- GOODWIN
- How do you know?
- KANTOR
- It's close to twenty years old now. And I mean the movement is long over. And it's led
to all kinds of other things in art, you know. So it's just one of the logical steps,
one of the progressive steps, in painting. I mean a movement doesn't come out of the
clear blue sky; it comes out of the whole background and the whole past.
- GOODWIN
- But not all movements have been as valid as others.
- KANTOR
- They're all valid.
- GOODWIN
- Or as lasting or influential as the others — say, op art as a movement.
- KANTOR
- No. But the movement has a validity, and the one or two who were involved in it will be
remembered. Yeah, sure, some of them are of a minor nature compared to others. But it's
also according to the strength of the artist or the artist at the foundation of the
movement. So some writers are minor writers, and some writers are major writers. And
some painters are just minor painters. I remember years ago when Eugene Berman used to
live here. Do you know that name?
- GOODWIN
- Yes.
- KANTOR
- Berman, you know, was also one of the refugees from Europe who lived here. And he was
basically a theatrical designer, costume designer, and he was very good. He always
wanted to be a fine artist, but it was most complicated and difficult for him. And he
was the major influence at that time on Howard Warshaw and Billy Brice. They thought
Berman was the most fabulous, and they used to paint these little itsy-bitsies like
Berman used to paint. And they'd sit there, and they'd gloat over how well they did it.
And I used to think it was pretty trashy, but what can you say? Berman told me one day,
in his studio in Paris, he'd been working for several years on some concept, some
idea--he didn't tell me exactly what it was--and Picasso came over to see him one day
and saw what he was working on, you know. And two months later Picasso had a show, and
there was that same idea. Picasso had worked it out, milked it, done everything, and in
two months he had an entire show, thirty, forty canvases. And there was nothing left of
the idea; it was finished. There wasn't one bone left to pick. So there was Berman
working for years on a minor idea, which Picasso went through and, in one month,
finished it off. There was nothing left. And most painters will tell you that when
Picasso is finished with an idea, there is nothing left for them. There is nothing left
for them to pick on. That's why a lot of them like Matisse and some of the others —
because they leave them something to work on, something to play with. They open up an
avenue for them. Picasso doesn't open an avenue for anyone. He opens it, does it, and
closes it, and there's nothing left. There is no way you can come off looking like
Picasso once he's through with the idea. So that's a major talent. And the lesser
talents have to look elsewhere.
- GOODWIN
- Well, where are some of the places you look, both in the United States and abroad, for
upcoming major talent?
- KANTOR
- I don't. I don't look anywheres. I let someone else look. I'm not interested in
discovering artists at this point in my life, not interested in trying to work with
artists. I'm just not interested. I let someone else do the work and the effort and have
them get their just rewards from the artist in the form of vindictive venom that they
spew out against the dealers and the public and everyone else. Merely because someone
paints, that doesn't make him an artist, as far as I'm concerned. I think the biggest
joke around is that anyone who picks up a paintbrush calls himself an "artist" and wants
recognition as being an artist. Like every hooker in Hollywood here is an "actress." And
every unemployed flake who walks around this city and has nothing to do, who is looking
for something, calls himself an "assistant producer" or a "writer" or an "assistant
director" or something like this. That doesn't give them credentials merely because they
call themselves something. A man who picks up a paintbrush and makes pictures, to me, is
a picture-maker. He's not an artist. An artist denotes something else. And this whole
concept of artists' equity, where the artists are fighting for their rights--most of
them are not artists to begin with. So they align themselves with artists, and they say,
"I'm one of them." Well, that's fine. If I picked up a paintbrush and put some paint on
a canvas and I'd call myself an artist, so what?
- GOODWIN
- You don't have a very sympathetic view towards struggling artists?
- KANTOR
- I do, I do. But a lot of them are just not artists period. And I have a very pragmatic
point of view.
- GOODWIN
- But doesn't it take an extraordinary amount of talent along with other unidentifiable
factors to become a great artist?
- KANTOR
- It doesn't take talent. It takes something to say. No one calls himself a "philosopher."
Look, the craft, anybody can learn. Anybody can learn enough craft to express what he
has to say. But what have you got to say that means anything? So it's like people who
call themselves "writers." You read that garbage they write — because the written
language is something we're much more familiar with — you read it and you say, "He must
be kidding if he calls that literature. It's not even worthy of comic strips." And it's
the same with painters, except people aren't familiar with the language of a painter and
you see the garbage that's being turned out by an individual, you say, "You must be
kidding if you call yourself a fine artist."
- GOODWIN
- Well, I think that's a sad situation.
- KANTOR
- It's a very sad situation; it's unfortunate. But I think it's a true situation. But why
should I cater to someone merely because he calls himself a "painter" or an "artist"? Or
why should I take him seriously? I don't take him seriously when he calls himself a
"writer." Or I don't take him seriously when he calls himself a "scientist" because he's
got a bachelor's degree in physics. He says, "I'm a physicist." Well, shoot, you know
something about physics, but you're not a physicist in the sense of what a physicist is.
- GOODWIN
- But don't you allow yourself a certain luxury by dealing for the most part with highly
established, if not the greatest, artists?
- KANTOR
- What do you mean a "luxury"?
- GOODWIN
- You didn't discover Picasso.
- KANTOR
- Right. I don't claim to have discovered him.
- GOODWIN
- Right. But ....
- KANTOR
- I can appreciate his genius. I didn't discover Mozart, but I listen to Mozart.
[laughter] Didn't discover whoever it is, you know, but I still can appreciate whatever
it is they've done. The same as with Picasso. But why should I waste my time? First of
all, there's a life style that I have that requires a certain income. There is no way of
getting that income off a young artist, ever. Secondly, even if I could make the money
with other artists and indulge myself — I say I like this artist, I'll buy his works or
something, so I buy him, you know, for my own pleasure, for whatever pleasure I get out
of it. But I certainly am not going to devote my efforts to the promotion. I did that
when I was a lot younger and in every instance was not very well rewarded. In fact, if I
had it to do over again, I would never be involved with young artists.
- GOODWIN
- Not at all?
- KANTOR
- No. Not handling their works. Maybe as people, that's one thing, but not handling their
works or trying to promote them because it's too difficult and too complicated and not
very appreciated. And I could repeat this experience with all sorts of dealers I know,
all around the world. There are some artists that are very nice and very easy to get
along with, where there's a kind of mutual arrangement and everything else. I personally
like the French system a lot better. If you believe in an artist, you buy his work,
period, and you have control over it. But artists don't like that. They resent the fact
that anyone makes any money on their paintings. You saw the picket lines before Parke
Bernet for the Bob Scull and Ethel Scull auction. I don't understand that at all. I know
what they're talking about; they want to participate each time. They only want to
participate, as I think I said a long time before, in winners and no losers. And it's
like a stockbroker selling me IBM stock; and if it goes up, he says, "I want part of
your profits because I told you about it." I don't understand that at all.
- GOODWIN
- But don't other creative artists receive royalties for their work?
- KANTOR
- That's when it's done on a big commercial basis, like in the movie industry or in
television. Where it's exploited. It's totally, completely, commercially exploited,
whatever it is. All right, or in music. But it comes in in the form of pennies from
millions of records or from millions of playings on something. But here the artists want
a one-to-one deal. "You bought my picture; you owe me money." They have it when it comes
to reproduction rights. There's an outfit in Paris called SPADEM — I don't know what the
abbreviation is--that very carefully monitors all reproduction rights of artists on
their paintings and stuff like this. But all right, so it comes in the form of pennies.
But on a one-to-one basis, I don't see how an artist can [argue] that "You bought a
picture; now you don't want it. And you sold it, and you made money. Now I want part of
it." Well, that's total insanity.
- GOODWIN
- Well, what is the artist's reward in this system?
- KANTOR
- He sells his pictures — and most of them resent selling them, also. They want control
after they sell them; they want people to consult them as to how they hang it, what they
do with it. It's a total insanity on the part of the artist. He wants the money, and yet
he wants the control. And he's not going to have both. If you want the control, keep
your goddamn paintings, show them to people, and then put them away, like Clyfford Still
does. Then he has perfect control. But they want the money at the same time. And they
want no one else to make any. And they resent it if you make money on them.
- GOODWIN
- Is this even true of the most successful artists?
- KANTOR
- Oh, sometimes. Some are and some aren't. Rothko resented dealers very much. De Kooning
doesn't give a shit about dealers. You know, he likes dealers. "Do what you want; you
got the paintings." He told me this a long time ago. He said, "I don't care who owns the
paintings or where they hang or anything else." He said, "They're my paintings. I made
those paintings, and they're mine, so they will always be mine." He says, "So they're
hanging in a museum or hanging in someone's house." He says, "It doesn't mean anything
to me." He says, "I made them, and they're mine." That's, I think, a much more sensible
attitude than wanting total control of everything, because nobody is going to give them
control.
- GOODWIN
- I'm not personally defending the demands of artists, but it seems that there should be
some balance, some interest for them.
- KANTOR
- In what way? Monetarily or what?
- GOODWIN
- Yeah. There has to be some ....
- KANTOR
- Well, when they sell the painting originally they get money. And if he makes it, he
shouldn't sell all of his paintings and hold back a batch of paintings. If you believe
that you're going to be a great artist . . .
- GOODWIN
- . . . which most of them believe.
- KANTOR
- Okay. Then hold some back. Sell enough to just live on, and keep the rest.
- GOODWIN
- Do you know of any artists who are capable of managing their own careers?
- KANTOR
- No. The closest anyone came was Clyfford Still, that I know of the names. And Clyfford
Still, I think, is a complete fraud in many respects because he makes copies of his
paintings and sells only the copies and keeps the originals. And one day when he dies,
people are going to find this, because he's openly admitted this to many people. He
keeps the original and sells you a copy.
- GOODWIN
- Replicas?
- KANTOR
- Yeah. So that's a total fraud as far as I'm concerned. He's not selling you an original
work of art; he's selling you a reproduction, a handmade reproduction. That's
fraudulent. Perhaps that's how he gets his kicks. But at the same time, he also is the
great exponent of exploitation of the artist by the museum, by the collector, by this
one. Everyone is supposed to get on their hands and knees and pay homage to Clyfford
Still. So he'll then sell you a reproduction of his paintings for $100,000.
- GOODWIN
- Well, earlier in your career, you showed the work of young, relatively unestablished
local artists.
- KANTOR
- Right.
- GOODWIN
- Can we talk about a few of those? Say, Diebenkorn, since he would be probably the most
important.
- KANTOR
- All right, so say "Diebenkorn." What do you want to know?
- GOODWIN
- How did you learn about him?
- KANTOR
- I found a painting of his in a show at the County Museum. The painting was done in '48,
so maybe the show was in '48 or '49. It was one of the local California shows. He had
entered the painting in the show. I liked it. I didn't have the money to buy it. The
jury at that time I [included] Perry Rathbone, who was at the St. Louis museum [City Art
Museum of St. Louis] , later at Boston, and now works for Christie's, because he
smuggled a painting into .... What was that painting?
- GOODWIN
- Raphael. KANTOR; It was a fake. And they returned it to Italy. It was a known fake, a
questioned painting on the market. There was Charlie Cunningham, who was then at the
Wadsworth Atheneum, who is now, I think, at the Art Institute of Chicago. The third
juror was Andrew Ritchie of the Museum of Modern Art, who then went to Buffalo, and I
don't know where he is now. Those three eminent museum people gave first prize to a
wallaby painted by Howard Warshaw--a wallaby done in, well, that's when they were
painting fake Renaissance-type pictures, based on what Eugene Berman was painting. This
was what I was saying before. It was this picture of this damn wallaby, and I mean
totally insane picture. It had nothing to do with anything, and that got first prize.
And Diebenkorn, who entered this picture, a 1948 landscape, which I thought was the best
picture in the show, was totally ignored. Anyhow, in 1950, driving through New Mexico, I
met Diebenkorn. He was at the University in New Mexico taking his master's degree at the
time. And I bought that painting and two others from him. And that's how I met him.
- GOODWIN
- When did you give him his first show?
- KANTOR
- In '52 or -3, something like that,
- GOODWIN
- Did he sell any paintings?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, he sold a few paintings. I sold some in the second show. The most expensive
painting he had in the first show was, I think, $300. I sold four or five big, big
sales. Drawings at that time were $10, $12 a drawing. And I bought a couple, I guess.
But that's how I met Diebenkorn. Then I gave him another show. Then he made a deal with
a gallery in New York and refused to give me any other pictures ever again. That was my
reward for showing Mr. Diebenkorn. And I still know more about his paintings than anyone
around. I still think I know his pictures as well or better than anyone around,
including this big retrospective that they're having now, an upcoming show at the
Albright Gallery, which is very, very poorly chosen.
- GOODWIN
- What do you mean when you say you know his paintings well?
- KANTOR
- I know what his paintings are about. I know the good ones from the poor ones, the areas
where he's got problems in the pictures. I know what his whole image is about and how
it's put together, how his paintings are put together. No one even knows how his
paintings are put together. They go there, they watch him, they don't even know what
he's up to. They don't even know how he achieves some of the effects that he's got. And
it's always the same; no matter what period he paints, it's always the same thing. He
always does the same thing.
- GOODWIN
- How would you rate him as an artist?
- KANTOR
- He's not one of the greats.
- GOODWIN
- Is he a "winner"?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, I guess in a way, sure. His paintings sell very well today and at very respectable
prices. He doesn't have much of a market outside of the United States. In fact, I think,
there's no market. He's had shows in London with Marlborough, but they're basically
bought by Americans and then brought back to the United States.
- GOODWIN
- Do you think his work has grown?
- KANTOR
- Grown? Different. I don't know if it's grown. I don't know what that word means. But I
think it's as vital as it was? No. No , I don't.
- GOODWIN
- Do you think [phone rings; tape recorder turned off] Do you think Diebenkorn is in some
way a product of Southern California?
- KANTOR
- No, he comes from Northern California, and his original work was all done in Northern
California. He is the product of the New York School of painting, you know. Those
painters were out there, and he saw them here. Diebenkorn was very influenced by Hopper,
always has been--Hopper and Matisse. And in the earlier days, before World War II,
Hopper was a big influence as a young artist.
- GOODWIN
- Do you think it's possible today to have a regional style of painting?
- KANTOR
- No, no. Regional painting was destroyed along with the acceleration of means of
communication and transportation. There's no such thing as regional painting anymore,
unless you go into the bush country in Australia, because all you have to do if you want
to know what's going on anyplace in the world is pick up the phone. Or else you can get
the latest magazines a week after they're out, anyplace in the world, and it shows you
what's happened in New York and Paris and all over.
- GOODWIN
- Well, wasn't the New York School in some sense a regional school?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, but that was at the beginning.
- GOODWIN
- Was that the last one?
- KANTOR
- That was the end, sure. It was before the era of the jet, of the computer, of everything
else. So it all started there, but it doesn't really matter at this point. It only
matters in this point that there's a milieu in which to paint. So you have other people
you can talk to; you have other ones who you can discuss ideas with and stuff. And you
only get that in kind of big, commercial, cosmopolitan centers. And so the artists all
hang around with themselves here in Venice, but there's no driving force there. They're
all minor talents. There are no great talents to carry a whole movement. So it's a
movement carried by minor talent. When I say "minor," you know, [it's] not in a
deprecating way but in a comparative way. Because a painter who paints today competes
with 400 years of Western painting. And he's competing with Rembrandt and Cezanne and
Picasso. He's not competing with some kid down the street. And if you want a place in
history, that's your competition. And it's unfortunate.
- GOODWIN
- In a very circumscribed sense, Rico Lebrun was the leader of a local movement.
- KANTOR
- The leader of a very minor group of painters.
- GOODWIN
- He was the focus of attention.
- KANTOR
- He was the focus with Howard Warshaw and Billy Brice. And I used to laugh; I used to
think they were kidding me — in this day and age, to paint that garbage. Rico Lebrun 's
idea, when he painted this big Crucifixion, you know, this
monster — and he was a little guy, and he had this Napoleonic complex. And he would do
little sketches and photograph them and then project them on a canvas and then distort
the projector. That's his idea of distortion. That was his understanding of cubism. You
take it and then you distort it and then you copy it. You trace it. And all the students
would trace it, you know, and then the master would come and fill in. It was like paint
by the numbers. It was a totally ridiculous process. And Rico Lebrun sat there as the
grand master. He was a fool, as a matter of fact.
- GOODWIN
- You wouldn't admire him by any criterion?
- KANTOR
- No, I think he was a bad painter.
- GOODWIN
- What about his skill as a draftsman?
- KANTOR
- He had no skills. That's not skill. I mean, you look at his drawings, and you look at
what he's imitating — Picasso — and you can see the difference. There is no skill. You
look at his drawings, and you look at de Kooning's drawings or anyone's drawings. They
were very heavily labored drawings, with the most vulgar commercial overtones. There is
nothing honest about those drawings. There was nothing immediate about them. You know,
drawing is a very immediate, honest expression of an artist. And Lebrun's drawings were
heavily labored, uninteresting, ugly drawings.
- GOODWIN
- So obviously you never sold any? [laughter]
- KANTOR
- Who me? I wouldn't. When people asked me, I said I don't think they were worth buying. I
was called recently by an attorney who was getting a divorce from his wife and they have
a big Rico Lebrun painting — well, big: 30 X 40 inches or something. And he was told it
was very valuable. And I said I would have no idea what you could even do with it except
put it in an auction and hope that someone who is interested in Lebrun will pay $300,
$400 for it.
- GOODWIN
- That's it?
- KANTOR
- Well, they come up at auction in New York, maybe they get as much as a $1,000 for it.
But I remember when Rico Lebrun would give little scraps, little pencil, little ink
scraps, 3 X 4 inch ink scraps that he would give to Barbara Byrnes when she had a
gallery on Hollywood Boulevard in '47. And he would want $125 for these little scrap
drawings. At that time, when Chagall gouaches were $40 and $50, $40 to $50, he was
wanting $125 for a little scrap drawing. Well, that scrap drawing today is worth maybe
29 cents, and the Chagall is worth $50,000. You could buy Picassos and Klees — Klee
watercolors at that time, beautiful Klee watercolors were $100.
- GOODWIN
- And they didn't have buyers?
- KANTOR
- No. And Rico Lebrun was demanding $125. I remember Barbara Byrnes proudly showed me
these things. I thought she must be kidding. But that was the extent of this man's ego,
pumped up out of all proportion to his talent. And in a provincial area like Los Angeles
at that time, he was able to function and exist. That's no longer possible.
- GOODWIN
- Do you think local artists now have anything more in common than a limited ability?
- KANTOR
- What do you mean, "more in common"?
- GOODWIN
- Are there certain factors here that are distinctive, something about the environment
that affects artists in a positive way? Or are they just totally operating within a
self-sufficient system?
- KANTOR
- I don't know how they are operating here. I really don't know. I don't know how they're
operating. I don't know what the environment offers them or doesn't. I'm not an artist.
It offers them something , because they all hang around together in Venice. They all
think they're fabulous.
- GOODWIN
- If you were an artist, where would you want to live?
- KANTOR
- I wouldn't want to be an artist. I don't know. I'm not an artist; I don't know. I don't
know what their problems are. I know what their problems are only in an intellectual
sense. I don't know what they are in any other sense.
- GOODWIN
- Well, if an artist came to you, and you saw that he had some potential, not necessarily
to become a great artist but to possibly become a "winner," what kind of advice would
you give him?
- KANTOR
- I don't know. I have no advice. It's like telling a writer — where do you have to live
in order to write? Or a musician, where do you have to live in order to compose, in
order to perfect your skills as a performing artist? I don't know. I don't think it
really matters anymore where you live. It's only what you have in your head. You see, it
all started at the time of the Renaissance. If you wanted to know what was going on in
northern Flanders, you know, at the time of the high Renaissance, you had to go there.
There were no reproductions; there was no means of communication; there was nothing
else. You know, you had to take a journey for three months to get there. But today, if
you really want to see what the paintings look like, what the painters in New York are
doing, what the painters in Paris are doing, if you can afford it, you get on a plane
and you go there for a few days or a week or two weeks, and you see it, and you come
back. And it's done. But then you're on your own. Now you can either hang around with
them forever, hoping that through osmosis you're going to get some of it or not. But
there's no reason to be in any area in that sense anymore. You can paint in the middle
of the desert, and you know exactly what you are painting. That's with abstract
paintings. But some artists say they've got to feel comfortable here, they've got to
have the light, and they've got to have this. That's great for other types of painting,
but basically what they're talking about [is] , they need a consistent light where they
can keep the control of the color. And it's not like they need the light, that cold grey
light of Paris that the impressionists had, where you could see just what, when they
discovered it for the first time. That's a hundred years ago.
- GOODWIN
- Well, is it even important to acquire a technical education by going to art school?
- KANTOR
- Well, I think they should have a technical education and should have some background in
art, yeah. I think they should know what Cezanne painted and looked like because he's at
the foundation of a lot of it, you know. Too many of the artists today have no idea of
what art is all about. They sit there and they splash paint. And they say, "Look what I
can do." But they have no technical background and no knowledge of what went on. They
can't exist in a vacuum, which is what they do. They exist in a vacuum, with no
knowledge and no background. And it's very difficult, unless you're a total, complete
genius where it comes to you. And that, no one has been able to explain. But the closest
thing to any genius in recent times is Picasso, at age ten, eleven, was making these
fantastic paintings, you know. But you don't get that in art. You get it sometimes in
music — Mozart who at age three, four was able, you know, to play for the king of
Austria, the emperor of Austria. He was composing at that point, you know. And music is
a very complicated language, too. But in painting you normally don't find that. Picasso
is the only example I can think of, you know. He had this incredible skill at so early
in age. The rest have to acquire it. It's years and years of training to acquire it. You
should know what the hell you're painting. You should know something about your craft
and your medium. You should know what was done, who did what, you know. But most artists
have nothing to say. I mean you talk to them, and they're total dummies. They have
nothing to say.
- GOODWIN
- You mean they're uninteresting people?
- KANTOR
- They're simple. A lot of artists are very simple- minded people. Now, you can't be a
simple-minded person and make a complex statement. Your statement can only be a very
simple statement.
- GOODWIN
- Does this Kline painting make a statement to you? KANTOR; Yeah, but I'm not going to get
into that. I'm not going to get into the whole thing of what is a statement because
there you're trying to translate a plastic language in terms of words, and it becomes
very difficult. That's where we started at the beginning here, with this whole idea of
"sensitivity" or how someone does something. It's no more than you make the same
statement that a Mozart quartet makes. But you say, well, what does the Mozart quartet
say? What does anyone say? What has Shakespeare said — you know, this one was fucking
this one, this one was trying to kill this one. At the end you can boil it down to very
simple words, and the statements in that sense don't mean anything. You're down to
comic-strip level. And that's what, unfortunately, totalitarian states do because then
they can control. And unfortunately that's what our governor of the state of California
has done with the arts commission. He's turned it over to a bunch of plebeians who don't
know what they're doing. And the art commission in the state of California is a total
bust. They should get rid of it because the way it's constituted now; it's a pure waste
of whatever monies they're spending.
- GOODWIN
- So you think the government should support the arts?
- KANTOR
- They can give money to the arts, sure.
- GOODWIN
- Why?
- KANTOR
- Because there are a lot of talented people who are creating, who are doing things. And
there are groups who are doing things. And it's very difficult to get money for these
groups or for these people. In that sense, at least it would give them an opportunity to
develop something if they have it. So you have a group of so-called enlightened,
intelligent, aware people who sit on the board. You know, they've got 300 applications
and there's so much money, and so they try to weigh it as best they can. They make a lot
of mistakes, sure, but it's not wasting money, not the way money is wasted in this
country. What they waste on one bomber going down is more than they spend on the arts
for the year.
- GOODWIN
- In all the states.
- KANTOR
- Right. And they shoot up those bombers like they're nothing.
- GOODWIN
- Well, isn't the basic difference between Brown's art council and Reagan's is that
Brown's has more artists than prominent political supporters?
- KANTOR
- Well, I don't know what he's got. First of all, he's put it into the hands of artists.
And the artists were all picked on a political basis — you know, whether you're a
Chicano or you're a woman or you're a black or you're from Northern California or
Southern California. First of all, artists can't run a board because a board is
something entirely different. If they're creative people, they're creative people. Now
they suddenly become business people. Now they suddenly determine policies. Who are they
to determine policies? What is their background to determine policy or any concept? And
the artists who were picked were very poorly chosen. There's no talent there. I know in
music, Henri Temianka, the violinist, was chosen. He was requested to put Temianka and
me on the board from all of Southern California. Both of us were turned down. Now, not
talking about myself, but Henri Temianka is a very, very fine violinist. He's been
around a long time. He's been part of that Hollywood Quartet, which is a very good
group. And he would have had some stature. Instead, they picked the assistant director
of the Fresno symphony orchestra. Well, what the fuck? — Fresno doesn't have a musician
to begin with. So he's the director of an orchestra that means nothing. And the whole
board is constituted like that, the whole arts commission. So it's a useless kind of an
organization. I don't see any sense to that organization.
1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO (AUGUST 2, 1976)
- GOODWIN
- Would you have liked to have served on the state arts council?
- KANTOR
- Not the way it's constituted, no. I wouldn't mind serving on it if there were some
people on the board who amounted to something. But the way the council is constituted
now, I wouldn't lend my name to people like that. The same as I'm annoyed about this
whole interview because three-quarters of the people chosen I think shouldn't have been
chosen to begin with. And I'm not interested in what they have to say. So why would I
serve on a council that's done the same way?
- GOODWIN
- Are you now serving as a director of any organization?
- KANTOR
- No. I'm not a joiner, basically. I belong to the Art Dealers Association. I don't know
why, in this city, because the Art Dealers Association in this city is kind of a
travesty.
- GOODWIN
- What does it do?
- KANTOR
- I don't know what it does. It doesn't do anything — except have social meetings, which I
refuse to attend.
- GOODWIN
- Why was it organized?
- KANTOR
- Well, it was organized as an art dealers association, as a professional organization,
like any organization is organized — whether it's the AMA or the Bar Association or
whatever it is — to maintain some standards. But there are no dealers here, and there
are no standards maintained. All meetings are social meetings. They have dinner, and
bring your girlfriend and bring your wife and have fun. Well, I told them I will not
join anything like that. I'm not interested, not particularly interested in professional
organizations that don't do anything. The New York Art Dealers Association is a
different thing.
- GOODWIN
- What do they do?
- KANTOR
- First of all, they have some dealers there who know what it's about. And they maintain a
very high standard of professional attitudes about things. One of the major things they
do is, they work with the IRS on all the gifts given to various tax-free institutions.
And among other things, they with others — they're not the only ones — sit and determine
real ones from fakes. Because donating fakes is really fraud. And they also do the
appraisals for the government a lot of times on the value of paintings.
- GOODWIN
- How does one become a member of that organization?
- KANTOR
- You're invited by the board. You have to have a certain amount of years as a dealer. You
have to have a certain reputation. Then the rest of the members are polled as to whether
there are any ejections. And if there are objections, then the objections are heard,
whatever the objections could be. Sometimes you find someone who is not too scrupulous a
dealer, so they say they don't want him because his reputation is too unsavory as a
dealer.
- GOODWIN
- Do they have members from outside New York City?
- KANTOR
- Oh, yeah. From the whole United States. They have a list of members.
- GOODWIN
- Are you a member?
- KANTOR
- I don't know. I had a major fight with them for years. That was a very personal thing
with one or two of the dealers in the association. So for years I wouldn't join. But
that's a very different thing.
- GOODWIN
- Well, the association in Southern California is fairly new.
- KANTOR
- It's old enough. It's old enough for them to have done something.
- GOODWIN
- Who were these people who were originally behind it?
- KANTOR
- I don't know, I really don't know. Some of the La Cienega dealers — I don't know who
they are because I'm not interested in most of the stuff they're interested in. [tape
recorder turned off] Anyhow, I don't know; that's drifting afield.
- GOODWIN
- Who are the dealers in New York you most respect?
- KANTOR
- It's not a matter of "most respect." There are a lot of very knowledgeable dealers in
Now York: Sidney Janis, Pierre Matisse, Gene Thaw, Stephen Hahn, Klaus Perls, Alexander
Rosenberg. I'm talking nineteenth- and twentieth-century dealers. There are all kinds of
old master dealers around, too, you know. You know, whether you like them or not--
Sidney Janis, as I mentioned — they've got a lot of knowledge and a lot of information
and have been around quite a while and have a very good grasp of the entire situation.
But ....
- GOODWIN
- But that doesn't mean you respect them.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, I respect them for that. I may not like them as people, I may not want them as
friends of mine, but that's something entirely different. Some I do, some I don't, you
know. It's like the Marlborough Galleries. I don't particularly like Frank Lloyd, but
he's done a big, big job as an art dealer, you know. And you can't help but admire the
guy.
- GOODWIN
- Are there some dealers in New York without galleries at the present time who might be
called your counterparts?
- KANTOR
- Private dealers?
- GOODWIN
- Yeah.
- KANTOR
- There's all kinds of them.
- GOODWIN
- I mean, who would some of those people be?
- KANTOR
- Gene Thaw is a private dealer. Stephen Hahn is becoming a private dealer. Sam Salz is a
private dealer. Thannhauser, until he left--he's an old man now — is a private dealer.
Most of them are becoming private dealers and getting out of the galleries. Because the
galleries get too complicated: the overhead is too big; you're stuck with the gallery
and everything else. And a lot of these dealers like Rosenberg, you walk in there, he's
not available to you unless you have an appointment. Wildenstein, you just don't walk in
there, unless you have an appointment, and say, "Show me pictures."
- GOODWIN
- Well, how does a private dealer make new clients?
- KANTOR
- Well, I don't want to get into that. It's by reputation and recommendation.
- GOODWIN
- But does a prospective client, a customer, feel reluctant to visit because he'd be
forced to purchase something?
- KANTOR
- Not necessarily. But if you make an appointment to see paintings, then you have an
interest. If you sit in a gallery, people think you're a shopkeeper. You're there for
their pleasure when they have a half-hour and nothing to do, so they wander around.
Well, that's fine, except if you've got a gallery, that doesn't mean you should be
available to whoever walks in there. You don't walk into an attorney and say, "I got a
half-hour to kill; I'd like to hear a little bit about law." You know, they think you're
crazy. Why should they come in to me? I spent twenty-five, twenty-eight years at this.
Why should they come into me and sit and yak with me and get information from me? Why
should I give them information. So they want me to do appraisals; they don't want to pay
for appraisals, for insurance, or for anything else. They don't want to pay. I'm
supposed to give free information to everyone about everything.
- GOODWIN
- Hopefully, the result is a sale.
- KANTOR
- No, I don't give free information. Hopefully, with an attorney, you're going to pay him.
Well, why not pay me? I don't give a shit what you do with the information, pay me. I'll
be happy to give it to you. Do you want to consult with me? Consult with me — if I want
you as a client. Maybe I don't want to give you information. Maybe I don't need your
money. When you go to an attorney, he doesn't take you on because you say you have
money. He wants to hear the case; he wants to know what it's about. He wants, you know,
to think about it. You see, a lot of dealers will not sell a first-class picture to
someone if they don't think they know what it's about.
- GOODWIN
- They don't deserve it?
- KANTOR
- Right. Why waste a picture on somebody?
- GOODWIN
- Well, since when are the biggest collectors the most perceptive collectors?
- KANTOR
- Well it's not even a matter like that. It's putting it into a decent collection, though.
That's one thing. But to put it into a collection of garbage, you know, the dealers say
no; they don't show you the picture. They don't tell you that they have it. I got
pictures that I wouldn't show to people.
- GOODWIN
- Including, say, Armand Hammer?
- KANTOR
- It's according to the person, you know. It's according to the person, according to the
painting, you know. If you've got a great picture, there's no problem selling it, so why
waste it on somebody who doesn't know what he's got? You may as well do it with someone
who really knows what that picture is about. At least there you get some recognition for
what you're doing, you know. You also get a better feeling that at least, you know,
you're not wasting your life. I don't spend my life trying to please those people who
come around who want to buy. I mean, that would be kind of very low opinion of yourself.
- GOODWIN
- So you're at a stage where you don't have to cultivate clientele?
- KANTOR
- Well, you all do in a way, but I don't cater to them. I don't expect people to cater to
me, and I don't cater to them. Why should people expect me to cater to them?
- GOODWIN
- So you don't cater to anybody?
- KANTOR
- Not unless I want to. Not because they're going to buy something from me. Why should I
cater to them? They're not doing me a favor. I feel I'm doing them a favor by selling
them a good painting. So, you know, just because someone has money, that doesn't mean
that they have control of a situation. They have a control of a money situation, but
that's all.
- GOODWIN
- Sounds like your business is pretty good.
- KANTOR
- I do very well. I do very well. Listen, there's a mutual respect in any kind of a deal.
Read that book — did you read that book on [Sir Joseph] Duveen by [S.N.] Behrman?
- GOODWIN
- Yes.
- KANTOR
- Well, there's one passage in there when this guy from Chicago who had these Thompson
restaurants or cafeterias or something wanted to buy pictures from Duveen. So he spoke
to him — and this was at a time when plenty of paintings were available — and he said to
him, "Go home and get some more money and knowledge." He said, "You're not ready for me
yet." And I think that's fabulous.
- GOODWIN
- There aren't very many dealers who can say that.
- KANTOR
- I've seen them do it. I've seen them take pictures away and say it's not for sale. I
know one big collector who was being shown a picture at Wildenstein. The painting, it
was a Cezanne, and it was $1 million. And the collector was sitting there, and he's
quite interested in the picture. And Daniel Wildenstein — who's normally in Paris, who
happened to be in New York at the time--walked by and saw one of the men showing the
painting. And he stuck his head into the room and he said, "Put that picture away, it is
not for sale to Mr. So-and-so." And he put it away.
- GOODWIN
- About how many masterpieces, top-quality paintings, will you sell in a year?
- KANTOR
- I don't know. A masterpiece is different than top quality.
- GOODWIN
- What's the difference?
- KANTOR
- Masterpieces are masterpieces, and top quality is top quality. A masterpiece is a
landmark painting, whereas a top-quality picture is something entirely different. So
Picasso's Guernica is a masterpiece.
- GOODWIN
- Do you sell masterpieces?
- KANTOR
- I would love to. [laughter]
- GOODWIN
- Well, have you?
- KANTOR
- I don't know if I've ever had — ah, I've had a few, I guess. I don't know. That's a very
different thing. I don't know. Masterpieces then become a definition of something
entirely different.
- GOODWIN
- Well, how many top-quality paintings pass through your hands?
- KANTOR
- I try to sell mostly top quality and nothing else. I don't like selling junk. Junk, I
get rid of in auction and to other dealers and, you know, junk buyers who want bargains.
And there are plenty of them around.
- GOODWIN
- How would you categorize the Kline--top quality?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, I think it's a very important Kline, yeah. Yeah, I think it's as good as anything
he's done.
- GOODWIN
- So how many paintings like that would you sell?
- KANTOR
- I don't know, I really don't know.
- GOODWIN
- I mean, just to get some dimension in here.
- KANTOR
- I just don't know, because, you know, things vary. Sometimes you sell nothing. The
summertime is very low, so you do nothing, you know. I don't like to buy anything that
isn't first-class in quality. At the time that the Japanese and the Italians were
buying, you bought anything; you didn't give a damn. And you sold it, and they didn't
know what they were buying, and who cares? So you made the money on it. But basically, I
don't like to put my money into anything but first-class paintings. I don't like to buy
second- or third-quality paintings because at the end you sit with them. They're junk. I
don't like to buy junk. There are art dealers who have no taste, and they buy junk. Or
they have the taste of the average bourgeois buyer, which is trash, so they buy trash.
And they show trash. You walk down Madison Avenue, and you see gallery after gallery
with that trash in the windows and stuff. It's commercial junk. That's okay, because
that's what people are buying. Listen, artists don't operate at peak capacity at all
times, either. They operate on different levels.
- GOODWIN
- Is your business now as good as it's ever been?
- KANTOR
- No. It's down now because it's very quiet now. And there's kind of a recession that has
taken over. So it's quiet in the art business today. But it also separates the dealers
from the neurotics and from the . . .
- GOODWIN
- . . . hacks?
- KANTOR
- Well, what one dealer once called the "menopausal" galleries. And there are a lot of
them around. And it's not a derogatory, antifeminist term. It's just that a lot of bored
housewives decide that they'll become dealers because "it's so easy and such fun, and
you deal with the arts and the artists." And they have no concept of what the art
business or art is all about. They're in there, and they call themselves "dealers." I
put them in the same category as the people who put paint on the canvas and call
themselves "artists." They're not dealers, and the artists aren't artists.
Unfortunately, we have a whole collection of those galleries here in town. They call
themselves "art galleries," and they call themselves "dealers." Well, all right, it's an
art gallery because it shows pictures. The level of the gallery — that's something else.
And the caliber of the dealer- that's something else. And they're in the same category
as the artists whom they show, and I don't know.
- GOODWIN
- So there are probably as many great dealers as there are great artists?
- KANTOR
- Oh, I don't know. There are a lot of great dealers, very knowledgeable men.
- GOODWIN
- Do you know of a riskier business?
- KANTOR
- Riskier? Why is it risky?
- GOODWIN
- Because there are so few people who make it.
- KANTOR
- You mean as an artist?
- GOODWIN
- No, as a dealer.
- KANTOR
- As a dealer. I don't know, I guess so. I guess it is kind of risky in that sense.
There's only a handful.
- GOODWIN
- Don't you think it's risky?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, I guess it is. Not for me, you know.
- GOODWIN
- Well, it was earlier, wasn't it?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, I guess so.
- GOODWIN
- When you got into the business.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, I guess it was. It never occurred to me in that sense. But, sure, I guess it is.
- GOODWIN
- Well, it seems the life expectancy of a typical La Cienega gallery is ... .
- KANTOR
- They're not galleries. They show young artists, and they're backed up with tax
advantages to their backers or to whoever is financing it, you know. They're backed up
partially, like all business is backed up on that basis, you know. They open galleries
because they're neurotic people who have nothing to do. They have no training in art;
they don't know what it's all about. Not only that, besides not even being good business
people, they all say, "Oh, I dedicate myself to the young artist." Well, fine, A for
effort. The community needs it. But that doesn't make them dealers.
- GOODWIN
- Earlier, you characterized the L.A. art scene as being not a desert, but a cave with
fungus growing on the walls.
- KANTOR
- Is that what I said, really?
- GOODWIN
- Right. [laughter] How would you say San Francisco is compared to Los Angeles over the
years?
- KANTOR
- I don't know. I don't live up there. But I know that there's less there than there is
here, much less.
- GOODWIN
- In terms of collectors, dealers?
- KANTOR
- Collectors and dealers, yeah. I don't know about artists, but there are probably less in
the way of artists, too, because of the smaller area. But there are very few dealers up
there and very few collectors. And maybe there are a few new collectors that have
started; I don't know. But basically, San Francisco has almost nothing up there. A few
collectors, old-time collectors, I guess a few contemporary ones, and not much more. But
I really don't know what goes on up there.
- GOODWIN
- Would you say San Francisco has produced some notable artists?
- KANTOR
- Diebenkorn. He's the only artist that came out of the West Coast. That is the biggest
name. He and Sam Francis, who also came out of Northern California. And those are the
only two. No one came out of Southern California, really at that level. Not that I can
think of, unless you can think of one.
- GOODWIN
- Kienholz?
- KANTOR
- Ah, he's not on their level. He made a name for himself at one time, but Kienholz
doesn't do anything that anyone looks at, at this point. Kienholz is a promoter of
himself, basically.
- GOODWIN
- What about the museum scene in San Francisco?
- KANTOR
- I don't know. They got Walter Hopps — not Walter Hopps — what's his name?
- GOODWIN
- Henry Hopkins.
- KANTOR
- Henry Hopkins. Then they have the [Palace of the] Legion of Honor. And they have, what .
. . ?
- GOODWIN
- The De Young.
- KANTOR
- The De Young, right. I don't know what they do up there.
- GOODWIN
- Oakland, Berkeley.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, well. But I don't know. It's like the museum thing here: they've got all kinds of
them too. I don't know, there's no institution of any stature that keeps going. They
die, somewhere along the way they die, and they become static institutions. That's
basically, I guess, because of money. But also because of the directors they have.
- GOODWIN
- And the director is, of course, appointed by the board.
- KANTOR
- Right. And the board only finds what they want. When they have a man like [Kenneth]
Donahue here, that's what that board wants.
- GOODWIN
- He's been there a long time. They had their chances.
- KANTOR
- Ric Brown picked him because Ric Brown didn't want any competition. He wanted to be the
kingpin, so he picked him. Ric Brown went to the Kimbell Museum ten years ago. What has
he done there? Nothing.
- GOODWIN
- There's a museum now.
- KANTOR
- Well, but that was the predication to begin with, before they even hired him: that they
had the money, they were going to build an institution. What has he done?
- GOODWIN
- He bought a collection.
- KANTOR
- Have you seen that collection?
- GOODWIN
- It's better than this collection.
- KANTOR
- I don't think so. I think it's pretty bad, most of it.
- GOODWIN
- Of course, it's small, and it's not strong in modern art at all.
- KANTOR
- It's not a matter of modern art. Ric Brown supposedly took his PhD thesis on the light
in the paintings of Pissarro. He bought a Pissarro that's the world's worst Pissarro. I
could buy a better picture like that in ten minutes on the phone. He bought a Pissarro
that's unbelievable in quality. And some of the other pictures are unbelievably bad in
quality. The choice was just very, very poor. And it wasn't the money because some of
those pictures are so bad that it doesn't matter what you pay for them — you've
overpaid.
- GOODWIN
- What about the architecture?
- KANTOR
- Well, that's something else. I don't care about the architecture of a museum. All of
these directors have this kind of megalomania; they have corporate megalomania about all
of this. They got to have a big building; they have to have a big staff; they have to
have this; they have to have that. And they have no pictures. They have no pictures.
It's like what the Pasadena Museum did. They put all that millions and millions and gave
up the building. All they had to do was clean up the building they had, which was a
class-A building, and put that $6 million into paintings instead of into architecture.
But they all have to have big offices and conference tables and complicated phone
systems and wiring systems and parties. They're not involved in art — they're involved
in bullshit. They're involved in corporate bullshit. All right, a corporation is
something else. It's a big money-making operation, and the money keeps pouring in. They
don't care, so they account for their own personal comforts along the way. But they
never lose sight of the ball, which is putting out the product which allows them to do
all this. But museum directors lose sight of the product. The product is paintings and
an art program and everything. That's what they lose sight of, and they're involved in
everything else but that. They're involved in sitting with board members and having
conferences for three hours over a big lunch, you know. And to determine, well, after a
year, "Shall we have this exhibition or shall we not have this exhibition? Shall we hang
these paintings? How shall we hang these? Oh, we're short-staffed. We need three more
preparators, because we have to hang that picture just properly." It's a big joke; they
have nothing to hang. They get monies; they get lots of monies. They spend it foolishly.
They spend it on the wrong things. They spend it on opulence. Have you been in the
Louvre? Well, that building hasn't been touched in 200 years. But they've got the
fucking paintings there!
- GOODWIN
- That's the other extreme.
- KANTOR
- Right. [laughter] Right, and you can't see them because it's dark in the wintertime and
stuff. But they've got the paintings there.
- GOODWIN
- They've got the goods.
- KANTOR
- That's right. They can always put electric in there, you know. And you can always paint
it, I guess, eventually. But if you want to see art, there it is. Okay, so they have
their problems in the presentation, but if you want art, they've got the art, and you
can see it. You go to these museums; they have no art, what's the sense in going to
them? To look at their ugly buildings that they put up, like that County Museum? It's
the ugliest building in Los Angeles. All you have to do is look at that Pasadena Museum.
Have you been there since it's been redone? Well, they did a terrific job, in the
installation and everything else. It looks like a different institution than the one
that was run before. And basically, it's the same architecture. They've just cleaned up
and changed around ....
- GOODWIN
- Polished up.
- KANTOR
- Yeah. All right, the floors are too shiny. I told that to them.
- GOODWIN
- Landscaped.
- KANTOR
- Right. But done properly, you know, so you can see those sculptures out there, and you
can see the paintings on the wall, and they try to break it up somewhat and not pay
homage to the ego of the Frank Stellas you know--who gives them a fifty-foot painting.
"Give me all of the walls on the west side of the building because I made a big
picture." It's a total joke.
- GOODWIN
- You seem particularly devoted to painting as opposed to sculpture.
- KANTOR
- You know, I don't like sculpture that much because it's too mechanical. There's
sculpture I like. I think, for instance, the greatest sculptor of the twentieth century
is Picasso. He's more productive, and he's one of the great sculptors. But a lot of
sculptures are reproductions. I don't like that. I don't like six, ten, twelve,
eighteen, thirty, twenty-six, whatever it is. It's a different thing, you know. And
it's, oh, I don't know, at the end it's one process removed. The painter's hand puts the
paint on the canvas or the line on the paper, whereas with a sculptor, unless it's
carved in marble or wood or something, the castings are a mechanical process done by a
mechanical means by a foundry worker. And no matter what they say that the artist cleans
up those castings, most times he doesn't do it. So it's one removed. It's not the hand
of the artist on the work, except if it's a carving. And there's a big difference once
it's one step removed. I had this discussion with someone once about a playwright. See,
the actor thinks he's important or the violinist thinks he's important. But he's a
performing artist, and he's not the creative artist. And no matter how creative his
attempts are, he's not the creative artist. [tape recorder turned off] A creative artist
is different than a performing artist. How'd I get onto this?
- GOODWIN
- Whether you preferred painting over sculpture?
- KANTOR
- Yeah. And in a way, well, it's that same kind of analogy. You've got an interpreter of
the artist who makes it for him. And the same way you have an interpreter of Shakespeare
in the form of the performer who presents it to the audience, you know. And you have an
interpreter for Mozart in the form of the violinist who presents it to you. So you get
different interpretations by different performers. And in times, also the interpretation
changes according to the culture.
- GOODWIN
- I think that's a fascinating point.
- KANTOR
- But with the artist, there is nothing. You see, there's no middle man. In other words,
he does a picture: there's the picture, and you're the viewer. And if you can bring to
it what you want, you get it. But I don't need someone. I don't need a docent going
around, you know, with something plugged in and saying, "Well, look at the craquelure as
it's developed." Who gives a shit about what they have to say? If you want to know, go
find out what that artist is about, and find out what art is about, and you can see it
for yourself. You don't have to have someone tell it to you. The minute they start to
tell it to you, it's their interpretation. And basically with sculpture, some guy made
it. Some guy made it and says, "This is what the artist made, and look at it this way,"
you know. And it loses something; for me it loses something. And that's why I don't
particularly like it.
- GOODWIN
- Are there some American sculptors, though, who you think are first-rate?
- KANTOR
- Well, sure, you get a guy like David Smith, you see, who made his own. Or you get
someone like Brancusi. They're all unique pieces--no, there 're some that are editions,
but he worked on every single one of those things.
- GOODWIN
- Nevelson?
- KANTOR
- Yeah, but I don't like her as an artist, particularly. But she makes her own at least.
At least what they do, you get, you know. Well, there are a lot of them who work in
plastics and resins, the Larry Bells and the rest. But that doesn't mean you have to
like their art, either. But if I like their art, then I tend to go for the paintings
better than the sculptures. So if I like a man like Picasso, who turned out an enormous
amount of sculpture, I tend to go for the paintings more than the sculpture, although I
think he's a great sculptor. Like I think Max Ernst is a very important sculptor.
- GOODWIN
- What do you think of the recent and ongoing movement by artists away from tangible
objects? You know, video, performance, conceptual art?
- KANTOR
- That's what it is. It's what I was just saying: it's an interpretation for you. Or it's
a performance. I don't know; fine, if that's what you want. It doesn't interest me. I
don't mind seeing it.
- GOODWIN
- Is it art for you?
- KANTOR
- No, it's an interpretation, that's all. It's a performance. It's one of the performing
arts, like an actor. An actor is not a fine artist. You can tell it to me all day long,
and someone can put on a play, and someone does the costumes, and someone does this, and
someone does this, but it's all an interpretation of the creative work. And so they put
on this play. But I can sit and read that play and let my imagination run wild, the same
as I can sit and read a novel. That's the creative work. When they make a movie out of
it, someone has interpreted it, and it's been limited by all kinds of things. You see,
they can't interpret poetry for you. They can read it to you only. But there's nothing
else they can do with it. In a play or in a novel, when they interpret for you, they
change it all around the the way they want it. Did you ever hear Toscanini conduct
Beethoven? They used to talk about Toscanini. I mean, it's a joke. I mean it's like he's
conducting La Traviata, you know, with all the Italian
romantic overtones that you don't find in Beethoven. But that's what you get because
that's his mentality, and that's the way he thinks. And so in video, video art, I don't
know — they call it art-- it’s performing art, video performing art. Fine, that's what
it is. He can take his cock and stick it right in front of the camera and say, "Look at
this." And they pee, and wow, isn't that fabulous. It's a great performance, you know.
"Look at my art. "
- GOODWIN
- So you think this is just a current aberration — it's nothing that's going to have
lasting or profound effects on the state of the arts?
- KANTOR
- Oh, it can last. I don't know how long it will last. Maybe they'll continue to do it
forever, now that they got the equipment to do it. It's just something that I find as a
performance rather than a creative effort. It's like Chris Burden lies there and dares
you to plug in the current and electrocute him. Well, someone is going to come around
and do it one day. Goodbye, you know. It's like the earth art, you know, where all you
have left at the end is the photograph. Well, Christo wraps southern Australia, okay, so
go wrap southern Australia. It's a performance, and it's a big ego trip, and it's a big
performance on their part. And if you want to accept their performance as a performing
art, that's fine; so they perform, you know. Or you lie in a coffin there for three
days, and then someone sneezed and talked, so you get up and say, "You've ruined my
act." Come on, it's the emperor's new clothes. That can go on all day long, and it has
gone on.
- GOODWIN
- So you're committed to the concept of art as being a tangible, beautiful, expressive
object.
- KANTOR
- Yeah, more than, you know, a performance is a performance. And that's something entirely
different. That's the performing arts. It has nothing to do with the fine arts. It's a
tangential aspect of fine art.
- GOODWIN
- [phone rings; tape recorder turned off] What do you think of the current fashionableness
of photography?
- KANTOR
- I don't know. It's beautiful, some of those photographs. It's a lot of taste.
- GOODWIN
- Which ones?
- KANTOR
- Oh, there's all kinds of them. You mean, which photographers?
- GOODWIN
- Yeah, which photographers do you think are artists?
- KANTOR
- Well, I didn't say they're artists. It's a lot of taste and everything. It's a different
thing entirely. I don't know. I don't put it in the same category as painting, you know.
Because it's just — I don't know. I don't know where to place it at this point. It's
becoming very fashionable and very chic, and it's becoming very expensive. But it's
also, you know, using a camera. All right, the older ones that used plates where they
didn't crop or anything — they just printed the image--did a beautiful technical job of
printing an image and stuff. But the ones who crop, that's a different thing entirely ,
who crop and enlarge and blow up and expand and play. I guess in a way they can say
they're doing the same thing that an artist does when he draws and eliminates and puts
in and takes out and stuff like this. I guess in a way they say the same thing. Except
most of them make reproductions. It's a reproduction, again.
- GOODWIN
- An interpretation?
- KANTOR
- Yeah. So, I don't know. Well, it's not even the same way as a lithograph or an etching,
where they make 50 or 100 or 200, whatever they make. You first have to have a subject,
and you got to see it, and you then use a mechanical means of reproducing it, whereas a
painter goes out and tries to capture it or capture the spirit of it, you see. We've all
sat and looked out at the ocean and seen these fabulous sunsets. And someone could take
a camera and do it and put it down. And then you've seen the painter try to do it, and
they fail nine out of ten times because they can't get the essence down on that paper.
And the photograph really never gets the essence down on that either, except the
photograph is just a reproduction of what you see. But you don't get the awe, the
impact, that you get out of the sunset. Sometimes in motion pictures you can get more of
an impact because somehow the motion picture is more alive than a still photograph. So
if you get a movie camera on the sunset, and you see the waves move and everything else,
you get the whole fueling and the whole scene at one time and the impact of the energy,
which a still photograph doesn't really give you — and the painter has a lot of
difficulty in capturing it. Sometimes Monet was able to do it. There's a book, you know,
The Selective Eye — in a way, that's what you have. The
photographer has a selective eye. He sees something and records it mechanically. And the
painter has the same selective eye, but there's a lot more to it because you've got to
capture the essence of what you see. Not just a reproduction, otherwise you just become
another corny painter, making pretty pictures. And it's that essence which I think
distinguishes the photographer from the painter or from the creative artist. He has an
eye, and he sees something, and he's able to record it.
- GOODWIN
- Do you think, though, the interest in photography is really a fad?
- KANTOR
- No, I think it's very valid, it's very beautiful. The price structure — that's something
entirely different. That has nothing to do with the validity of the photographs, what
someone has done or has skill in putting it down. The price structure is one thing.
- GOODWIN
- So you're implying the price structure ....
- KANTOR
- That has nothing to do with the validity. You know, it's like price structure has
nothing to do with the validity in fine art, because you can get $3 million for a scarce
painting, you know. That isn't the validity. The point is he's an important artist, and
there are no paintings. So you can command greater prices for what there is. But that's
supply and demand only. That doesn't have anything to do with the art.
- GOODWIN
- Do you think in an ideal world, art is a commodity? It should be bought and sold the way
it is today?
- KANTOR
- Well, it's according to what your definition of an "ideal world" is. I don't know; I
don't know if anything should be bought and sold. To some people, in an ideal community
or in an ideal world there are no commercial aspects. It's all government, and everyone
shares and shares equally.
- GOODWIN
- Or no government.
- KANTOR
- Or no government, right. Total anarchy. But in primitive societies, of course, nothing
is ever bought and sold--maybe a wife, you know (but I guess that's one step up, you
know). But, you know, in a lot of primitive societies or these communes, there is no
such concept as commercial aspects of anything.
- GOODWIN
- Well, are there aspects of the art market that disgust you?
- KANTOR
- Nothing disgusts me. They don't hurt anybody. The only thing that disgusts me is people
that hurt someone. Artists don't hurt anybody. People don't hurt anybody. It's not like
you're running a factory, and you're exploiting the workers or exploiting somebody or
overworking someone. Nobody hurts anyone, really, in the art world.
- GOODWIN
- Except maybe the artist?
- KANTOR
- Well, he takes it as a personal thing, that he's unique. But he's not more unique than
any of the other three-odd billion people on this earth, in that sense. And, all right,
even the so-called genius that comes up, you can say, oh, what a terrible life, or what
a terrible this or terrible that, but he wouldn't have had it any other way. He wouldn't
have done it any other way. So I don't know if he's hurt. Sometimes they're hurt by
getting recognition, and then their total talent or their drive is destroyed by the
recognition of the people. So in that way maybe he's hurt. But he's not hurt in any
other way. He just wants all the luxuries of another type of life and yet wants to be
recognized as an artist at the same time. It's an anomaly with most of these artists
because they want what is contradictory to what they're attempting to do. They want to
be businessmen at the same time they want to be artists. Well, one is a contradiction of
the other. Why don't they become dealers? And sell their own art? Some of them try it,
and it doesn't work too well.
- GOODWIN
- Let me try and squeeze in one final question. Are you a bitter person?
- KANTOR
- No, why should I be bitter?
- GOODWIN
- I don't know.
- KANTOR
- No, I think it's a big joke. I spell it out the way I see it. I'm not bitter about it.
I've done very well selling paintings. I live quite luxuriously. I got this only from
selling paintings and art. I have no other income, no other sources of income, no other
money. So I like it. I just am not about to involve myself in the machinations of the
artist and the collector and the rest of them and pay homage to them. Why should I be
bitter? It's their problem, not mine. They're the ones who are trying to impose
something on me that I don't want and tell me that I'm wrong. Well, I'm perfectly happy
and perfectly convinced that what I'm doing is good. And I could live the rest of my
life three times over and not need them.