Robert Berman has always understood one essential factor driving the art market—and especially the auction market:  the passion of collectors.  To hear him tell it, you might think it was his own collector’s passion more than anything else that pushed him into the art business, but that would only be half the story.

Louise Nevelson, “Celebration No. 5” (aquatint, 1979)

Collectors return to auction sales rooms principally for two reasons:  the sheer thrill of the ‘get’ (which between the phones and the sales floor and everything that leads up to it can be a staggeringly capricious business), and the connoisseurship of auction house experts.  Berman studied art and art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but only began acquiring serious connoisseurship when an extended post-Art Institute odyssey landed him in Paris.  His post-graduate education began at the Hôtel Drouot—really an aggregate of many quasi-independent auction houses (operating under an umbrella organization controlled by BNP Paribas), where he acquired specialized knowledge in, among other things, prints, Picasso, Duchamp, and Man Ray.  Four years later, he visited Santa Monica and, for reasons explicable only by the great writer, critic, and sometime playwright Kenneth Tynan and a few other persistent residents, decided to stay.

Larry Rivers, “Homage to Picasso” (1974)

In 1979, he opened B-1 Gallery—a time when L.A.’s art commerce (with one or two notable exceptions) was still pursued principally along La Cienega and Santa Monica Boulevards in West Hollywood.  The rest is … well, not his story alone—but reflects the kaleidoscope of L.A.’s art history and commerce.  He remained in Santa Monica, migrating away from the beach to Broadway; and outgrowing that space, moving in 1994 to Bergamot Station, where he has remained—spreading himself between several gallery spaces, depending upon his exhibition requirements.  Along the way he has entertained all comers, with a special view towards Latin American (including outsider) and Latinx art, and photography.  With that kind of ‘open-door’ attitude, a dealer can expect a lot of art to pass through a gallery.  In 1996, in conjunction with Track 16 Gallery, he co-curated a celebrated Man Ray exhibition.  The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiatives drew Berman into two remarkable participating exhibitions—the first, paired exhibitions of commercial illustration and photography and conceptual photography (including, for example, Robert Heinecken); the second in 2017 (for PST: LA/LA) a collaboration with the New York gallery, Ricco/Maresca, including Carlos Alfonso and the obsessive, hallucinatory visions ‘outsider’ artist Martin Ramirez.

Carlos Almaraz, “Mural for Home Savings” (1988)

But it was never enough for Berman to simply bring in ‘outsider’ art; he has always delighted bringing in the world outside the so-called ‘art world’ of major collectors and art insiders—which is why he has always enjoyed hosting auctions of art collected and accumulated at various intervals over the years.  Pre-pandemic, under the auspices of Santa Monica Auctions, he had been routinely hosting auctions twice a year.  Post-pandemic, Berman has effectively transformed his back-of-gallery operations to the front of the house.  On a recent visit, his gallery/headquarters/showroom was all but exploding with treasures from every part of the world, as well as selected works from three estates with whom he has worked privately to round off what may be one of his most alluring sales to date.  Whether surfer-signaling to the outside world, or opening a keyhole view into his own private world and driving motivations, Berman has made a 1987 Raymond Pettibon drawing the signature image for Santa Monica Auctions’ upcoming November 6th sale—a solitary surfer careening down the face of a towering wave just ahead of its curling crest, Untitled (My Purpose in Life).  It’s well-paired with a 1989 Longo-esque Untitled (I Thought California Would be Different), a print from Diana Zlotnick’s celebrated collection.

Raymond Pettibon, “Untitled (I thought California would be different) 1989

But this is scarcely scratching the surface of a sale unusually rich in Latinx art (from Almaraz to Zúñiga), painting, drawing, rare prints and photographs, and rarities irresistible to their devoted collectors. Having just come from New York and the David Zwirner re-mount of the Diane Arbus 1972 Museum of Modern Art retrospective, I was astonished (yet not) to see a photograph I’d all but suppressed from my memory—one of her grainier 1967 images, Patriotic Young Man With A Flag, N.Y.C.—as disturbing now as it was then.  But what drew me closer were works that had a kind of personal iconicity—works that leave their indelible imprint yet remain quietly sequestered somewhere in the back of the mind until we come upon them again in a radically dislocated context (which is what auction sales floors inevitably are).  It’s a kind of re-discovery, and I found it coming across one of Elger Esser’s pale horizon-line embankments, Seudre Frankreich (2001), which draws me back even as I write this.  (How’s this for a last look?)

Elger Esser, “Seudre Frankreich” (2001)

And as if I needed to be reminded that (unlike Mr. Berman himself) I would never abandon the Paris I love like no other city, the Sonia Delaunay prints and delicate, almost ephemeral Quatre Petits Projets de Tissu (1925-1933) and a Robe de Nuit (1924), which I can only hope she made and wore, took me back both to that enduring world of great couture and design houses and the many petits mains that make them run, and the vibrant cultural capital that gave us Cubism, Surrealism, and what would evolve into the landscape of contemporary art.  There are more examples of this elusive, ephemeral quality than I can name here (the Almaraz pastels are superb; and I was especially taken with some very unusual Motherwell and Sam Francis prints); but that sums up the paradox of art and commerce:  the capacity for such works, such images to grow, to assume an almost talismanic hold on our imaginations.  We’re simultaneously imprinting and imprinted and scarcely aware of it until we bring what become self-contained worlds home to our own private worlds.  Arbus would have understood this; and so apparently does Robert Berman.

Santa Monica Auctions Fall sale will be held Sunday, November 6th, 2022, 1:00 p.m. at Bergamot Station Arts Center, 2525 Michigan Avenue, Santa Monica 90404.  For further information, contact Santa Monica Auctions directly by email (info.smauctions@gmail.com) or telephone (310) 315-1937.

Ed Ruscha, “The End” (1991)