When G. Ray Hawkins opened the primary public gallery in Los Angeles dedicated to pictures in 1975, the monetary rewards had been unremarkable. Even names that outlined high-quality artwork pictures drew humble costs.
Ansel Adams’ well-known nighttime panorama “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico” usually bought for about $600 then, and that was on the larger finish of the size. “I remember when we sold a Cartier-Bresson for $350 — it was a big celebration,” recollects David Fahey, who labored with Hawkins for a decade earlier than creating his personal Fahey/Klein Gallery in 1986. “It was a big deal.”
Quickly after that, the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, situated then on modern Melrose Avenue, bought one other print of “Moonrise” for $1,000. Only a few years later, Hawkins bought an Adams mural for $81,000, a file on the time, says Fahey.
“People really made fun of the whole idea of a photograph selling for as much as a thousand dollars, and it was like a joke,” Fahey provides. “It’s hard to believe, but not that long ago people just did not accept fine photography as an art form.”
One motive pictures is broadly valued by collectors and galleries at this time is from the early efforts of Hawkins, who died Dec. 11 at age 80 from an undisclosed sickness. When he started, a marketplace for artwork pictures was already creating on the East Coast, with museum exhibits and public sale homes dealing in photos by the mid-Nineteen Seventies. And though there was significant gallery exercise in San Francisco, there was no public venue for pictures in Los Angeles previous to Hawkins.
“I realized a whole new field was taking shape nobody knew anything about,” Hawkins informed The Instances in 1995. “At that point, there were maybe 25 dealers in the country who handled photography, but they only did it as a sideline. Here was something nobody had done before.”
At a startup price of about $40,000, Hawkins opened the gallery together with his first spouse and co-founder, Randee Klein (later a associate at Fahey/Klein). His first picture exhibition was from Man Ray, the acclaimed surrealist and Dadaist who moved simply throughout a wide range of mediums.
“We opened with Man Ray because people resisted taking photography seriously as art then, so we needed an opening exhibition nobody could dismiss,” Hawkins defined to The Instances. “Our second show was Edward Curtis, the third was James Van Der Zee, and in six months we were out of the red.”
Photographer Richard Avedon, far proper, prepares his exhibition on the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery.
(©Anthony Freidkin)
Even main names like Avedon and Penn, who had beforehand proven on the East Coast, had by no means earlier than had a Los Angeles exhibition earlier than Hawkins hosted them.
“It got the community going,” says photographer Jo Ann Callis, who loved an early exhibition on the Hawkins Gallery in 1978, and is now in collections on the Museum of Fashionable Artwork in New York and the L.A. County Museum of Artwork. She was additionally deeply impressed by the Outerbridge works she noticed there for the primary time. “G. Ray liked a lot of different things, and I think he had a sense of what he could sell. … He had an energy for trying to make things happen, stirring up some interest. He deserves a lot of credit for that.”
Greg Gorman, whose pictures was featured in a number of exhibits on the gallery, stresses its important function within the native arts scene. “For all of us, it was a place to have an exhibition in your hometown in a prestigious gallery, which was very important,” he says. “It certainly added to our credibility as artists.”
The larger names usually drew overflow crowds, as Hawkins, tall and bearded, presided over the openings. On Melrose, the place Hawkins’ gallery was for a time throughout the road from the studio of photographer Max Yavno, the gallery proprietor additionally had a shocking present for auctioning paintings, says collector Manfred Heiting, recalling an easier time of buying pictures.
“When we collected, we just needed our passion and our weekly money. Today, when you want to buy a photograph, you need an expert to advise you. And you need a lawyer and a banker,” Heiting says with fun. You wouldn’t get all of the details about respective photographs that you simply usually would at this time: “What is the provenance, how many of it was made? No, it was just you bought a print for $300.”
Susan Hawkins, the gallery proprietor’s second spouse, provides, “G. Ray loved collectors as much as he loved artists, and he loved helping to build collections. He just loved the medium, and it was all about joy.”
By 1990, Hawkins had moved the gallery to Colorado Boulevard in Santa Monica. The gallery was additionally a spot to showcase the evolution of the medium, as when collector and photographer Graham Nash — finest generally known as a rock musician with Crosby, Stills & Nash — launched a then-new means of digitally scanned pictures on inkjet prints beneath his Nash Editions banner in 1991.
The G. Ray Hawkins Gallery had lasting affect in different methods, performing as a launchpad for a number of future gallerists, curators and photographers. Except for Fahey, others who labored on the Hawkins gallery included Jan Kesner, later an L.A. pictures supplier and gallery proprietor; and the achieved editorial and gallery photographer Lauren Greenfield, who was as soon as an intern.
Photographer Garry Winogrand, middle, with G. Ray Hawkins, proper, at opening for Richard Avedon present at G. Ray Hawkins Gallery
(©Anthony Freidkin)
Whereas at UCLA, Hawkins took a pictures course taught by artist-photographer Robert Heinecken. Hawkins initially opened the gallery to fund his deliberate feature-length thesis movie mission however received hooked on the lifetime of a gallery proprietor and spreading his love for the medium.
After his first marriage led to divorce, he married Susan Ginsberg Glina in 1985.
After Hawkins closed his gallery in 2005, he continued as a non-public supplier, whereas chopping again on the hours he labored. However his life took a startling flip when he pleaded responsible to federal tax crimes and served eight months of a yearlong sentence. He was additionally ordered to pay $35,042 in restitution to the IRS.
After jail, Hawkins returned to his residence in Beverly Hills, and continued work as a non-public supplier, as his spouse slowly took over the general public facet of that enterprise.
Married twice, Hawkins had no kids. His survivors embody his spouse and a youthful sister, Jt. Hawkins.