Dealer Michael Kohn Reflects on Four Decades in the Los Angeles Art Scene
By Osman Can Yerebakan
When Michael Kohn opened his eponymous gallery in West Hollywood four decades ago, his choice of location seemed far from a plausible business plan at the time. With its breezier pace and dominance of the entertainment industry, the City of Angels did not resonate with the avant-garde grunge of the downtown New York scene where the dealer cut his teeth.
This spring, however, the veteran dealer is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Michael Kohn Gallery during the city’s art week, headlined by Frieze L.A. and featuring other fairs including Felix Art Fair and Post-Fair. The annual gathering’s return, however, comes in the aftermath of the immensely destructive wildfires across Los Angeles County that have destroyed the homes and studios of hundreds of artists and damaged countless artworks. The wildfires have shed a somber light on an otherwise vibrant art world tradition. “The first few weeks of the fires were spent in shock,” Kohn told Artsy. “But freezing completely for who knows how long doesn’t really help the city—we need to try to go back to normal so that businesses can survive.”
While the dealer is eschewing any art fair participation throughout the week, he will celebrate the gallery’s landmark with a group show that features a plethora of periods that it has shown throughout its history. Paul Cézanne, Carl Andre, Chiffon Thomas, Richard Pettibone, Lita Albuquerque, Eddie Martinez, Pablo Picasso, Alex Katz, Donald Judd, Gonzalo Lebrija, and Ilana Savdie are among the numerous featured names.
Navigating through the many facets of L.A.’s art scene has taught Kohn a thing or two about surviving twists and turns. The City of Angels native was an art history student at UCLA when he shared an apartment with a young Kenny Scharf, who would later up sticks to the East Coast. “I was confused when Kenny shared his New York plan because we were having fun in California,” Kohn recalled.
However, it was none other than Scharf who introduced the future dealer to the boiling creativity of New York’s downtown. Kohn would later make the move himself, and formative moments included visiting Jean-Michel Basquiat’s basement studio where the rising star worked on six paintings at a time. He also entered the circuit of leading dealers like Angela Westwater. The perfect alchemy of youthful ambition and being at the right place at the right time led Kohn to editorial positions at Flash Art and the influential now-bygone Arts Magazine.
But Kohn knew early on that he had to carve his own footing. The avid student worked on his thesis at NYU while interning at the Guggenheim, all while opening his first gallery on East 10th Street. Kohn’s first eponymous endeavor coincided with the neighborhood’s short-lived era of experimental commercial spaces, such as Nature Morte, Gracie Mansion, Piezo Electric, Fun Gallery, and P·P·O·W. Kohn’s first show reflected the most impactful tremor on the era’s art scene—the AIDS pandemic—through the work of artists such as gustavo ojeda, Dana Garrett, and Arch Connolly, who all eventually passed away from AIDS-related illnesses.
Witnessing this gruesome sweeping of the art scene, which Kohn recalls as a “terrible terrible moment in the community,” the urge to return to his hometown felt stronger. “My mom was born in Los Angeles as well as myself and all my siblings, so I just wanted to be back,” he said. In 1985, he moved to the West Coast and opened a space in West Hollywood. The young dealer’s priceless possession, however, was his New York connections that he could bring to a metropole where the art market was incredibly nascent. To maintain what he calls the “New York cachet,” Kohn constantly traveled back to the East Coast, so much so that most friends didn’t realize he had moved out.
The title of the gallery’s inaugural show fittingly embodied Kohn’s growing expertise—“New York’s Finest”—and featured a who’s who checklist of downtown artists, with Basquiat, Scharf, and Andy Warhol among them. The storefront where he couldn’t afford to change the black carpeted floor saw a slice of East Village vigor on the opposite side of the country.
But bringing together New York’s blockbuster names under a roof thousands of miles away proposed unprecedented challenges. “I didn’t realize we didn’t have the ease of communication,” said Kohn. “If a client on the East Coast wanted to see a little Warhol print, I would develop its four-by-five transparency, frame it, and pay the equivalent of $50 today for shipping, which was too high for a small gallery.” L.A.’s slim number of local contemporary art collectors at the time—which Kohn jokingly remembers as just “five”—didn’t seem like enough to sustain a commercial space at the time.
His academic background in art history, however, came in handy in establishing a strong resale market of historical and heavyweight 20th-century names. Works by the likes of Picasso, Gerhard Richter, Marcel Duchamp, and Warhol were among them. Another effective strategy Kohn found was to convince a few major collectors to put money upfront towards a show that would encourage established artists to provide work for ambitious solos. The model helped him to organize shows with Keith Haring, Alex Katz, James Rosenquist, and his old friend Scharf.
As Kohn began to carve out a niche on the West Coast, local connections began to find him through a slower process of research and chance. The gallery’s first four years primarily promoted New York artists to the City of Angels, and the dealer was initially hesitant about the highly conceptual angle of local powerhouse institutions such as CalArts, where numerous household names such as Mike Kelley, Carrie Mae Weems, and Jim Shaw studied. “I was friendly with many of its graduates, but I didn’t show them,” he said. However, his taste “developed” over time.
One of the most definitive outcomes of the dealer’s broadened palette was a visit to Californian video art pioneer Bruce Conner’s studio in 1988. The encounter led to Conner becoming Kohn’s first Californian artist signing, whom he described as “one of the great art filmmakers of the 20th century.” The dealer has since been supporting the restoration of the late artist’s films and producing the works in editions of six to place them in important international collections. The project’s most recent bearing is a seven-minute black-and-white film titled THE WHITE ROSE (1967), which is a crown jewel of the gallery’s anniversary show.
Kohn’s formula for longevity and relevance has been his adaptation to market fluctuations by bridging established industry fixtures with fresh talent. Translating his critical lens and New York savoir to a growingly engaged audience, he has trusted his eye for when to take a chance, whether reintroducing veterans such as Conner and Wallace Berman or giving a platform to newcomers like Li Hei Di, Sophia Narrett, and Jinbin Chen Tianyi. Today, he is positive about the art ecosystem in his hometown. “Now we have a lot more collectors coming in,” he said, noting that “the world has gotten much smaller and the communication has become more instantaneous,” unlike his early years.
For Kohn, learning the ropes of the art business has been a decades-long challenge, one that has long proven its fruits. “It took me a long time to learn how to sell art,” he reflected. The early “guilt” of selling what he liked to read about in books has since transformed into confidence in helping establish careers. Kohn believes in the balance between “representing an artist’s intellectual aspect and knowing when to stop talking.”
The dealer feels little regret about not expanding his enterprise or opening outposts in other cities like most of his peers. “The business would be bigger but perhaps would come at the cost of my personal life,” Kohn said. “I did the best I could do, which also includes owning my gallery’s space.”