Swimming in the Mainstream

Among the many sea changes that occurred in the ‘60s was the mainstreaming of art. Compared to Abstract Expressionism in the ‘50s--which was tantamount to a private club--Pop Art spoke to everyone. And conveniently enough, at precisely that moment an explosion in graphic arts made it possible for all those fledgling art lovers to collect original work at relatively modest prices.

Graphic workshops had long flourished in Europe, but the print field of early ‘60s America was largely dominated by New York’s Universal Limited Art Editions, a workshop and publishing house founded by Tatyana Grosman in 1957.

Los Angeles began to catch up three years later with the opening of June Wayne’s Tamarind, a facility conceived for the training of master printers. However, Tamarind did not invite artists to use the facilities; into that breach charged Gemini G.E.L., an artists’ workshop launched in 1966 by businessmen Sidney Felsen and Stanley Grinstein, and master printer Ken Tyler.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary with an exhibition opening today at the Murray Feldman Gallery in the Pacific Design Center, Gemini has published 1,700 editions over the past three decades, including works by such key artists of the past 50 years as Wallace Berman, Man Ray, Bruce Nauman, Willem de Kooning, Kenneth Price, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol and Edward Ruscha, among others.

More important, perhaps, are the ongoing relationships Gemini forged with Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein and David Hockney; through multiple editions done at Gemini, these artists’ innate affinity for the medium deepened to the degree that graphics became central to their art-making practices.

Including works by 25 artists, Gemini’s anniversary show was curated by Felsen, who says, “I looked at the complete body of work by each artist and tried to select pieces that show the evolution of how a given artist approached the medium.”

A self-effacing, easygoing man, Felsen has been friends with Grinstein since 1946, when they met as students at USC--where, surprisingly enough, neither was studying art.

“I was a business major and in the ‘50s I had a CPA practice, but during those years I began taking art classes for the pleasure of it,” recalls Felsen, who was born and raised in Chicago. “Stanley and his wife [architect Elyse Grinstein] were collecting art avidly then and Stanley used to come to my classes with me, so we developed a strong connection to the art scene here.”

“We were art groupies,” Grinstein interjects with a laugh.

“I was aware of the graphics workshops in Europe,” Felsen continues, “and knew that other than U.L.A.E. [Universal Limited], there was nothing comparable in America. Stanley and I agreed it would be interesting to have such a shop in L.A., so we shook hands and began.”

Picking up the story, Grinstein says: “Our initial inclination was to approach older artists figuring they wouldn’t be around much longer, so we started with Edward Hopper, who wanted us to do a restrike of an old image he’d done. We weren’t interested in that, so we contacted Mark Rothko, who was enthusiastic but wasn’t ready to come in and work. Then we approached [color theorist] Josef Albers and he said yes.

“We did 17 images in editions of 100--a project that took 17 months to complete,” he adds. “We weren’t sure how we’d do financially when we started, because although we believed the American artists were important and knew most of them hadn’t done graphics projects, we didn’t know if anyone would buy them.”

Adds Felsen: “The print market basically didn’t exist when we started, so we marketed the Albers editions by doing a brochure and taking out an ad in Artforum--and to our surprise, it sold phenomenally well.”

Gemini’s next artist-in-residence was Man Ray (who was in L.A. for his 1966 L.A. County Museum of Art retrospective), then the shop kicked into high gear in 1967 with the arrival of Rauschenberg. “Bob was crucial to the development of Gemini,” Felsen says. “He’s done 220 editions with us and was instrumental in bringing Johns, Lichtenstein, Frank Stella and Claes Oldenburg here in the late ‘60s.”

Most of those artists were making graphics of unprecedented scale, and Gemini kept up with them on the technical end. “We’ve never told an artist something they wanted to do wasn’t technically feasible,” Felsen says, “and we have ongoing relationships with various fabricators and electricians because there’s a constant search for new applications of the process.

“The print shop is always running, and though we may be working with three different artists at various stages of a project, it’s best to have one artist here at a time because each one needs our complete attention,” he says. “The stays range from one to six weeks and each artist has his own way of working here; Rauschenberg, for instance, works very long hours and often goes until 4 in the morning.”

Gemini’s average edition size is approximately 35. “Editions got smaller when prints got bigger,” Grinstein says, “and edition size also fluctuates in relation to the market. There are probably half a dozen print shops in America now that do what Gemini does, and probably a hundred smaller print shops throughout the country doing good work, often of a regional nature.”

Most of Gemini’s circle of artists are now hovering around 70 years old, as are its proprietors--which raises the question of the workshop’s future.

“We’re interested in getting younger artists involved here, but if you increase production, you lose the intimacy that’s crucial to the process, so we’re limited to doing three or four projects a year,” Felsen says. “We have ongoing relationships with roughly 15 artists, which means that every three or four years they can come here and work. If we didn’t feel that every one of those artists was continuing to make really strong work, we might make some dramatic changes, but that’s not the case.

Adds Grinstein: “These are the great artists of our time and we have no reason not to remain loyal to them, so our dance card is full. The time will come for developing relationships with young artists, but it doesn’t seem to be in the cards right now.”

* “Gemini G.E.L.: Celebrating 30 Years,” through Feb. 24 at the Murray Feldman Gallery in the Pacific Design Center, 8687 Melrose Ave. Mon.-Fri., noon-5 p.m.; Sat. by appointment. (213) 651-0513.