Art: Cut-Rate Art

People who never bought an original picture in their lives now throng a Manhattan gallery called the Hall of Art, buy some $2,000 worth of canvases a day. They are there because of an ex-druggist, ex-suntan-oil and alarm-clock promoter, ex-salesman of the kazoo-bazooka and the megazoo. The idea man is a 45-year-old, roly-poly, Russian-born go-getter named Max Pochapin.

The war blasted Go-Getter Pochapin (pronounced Po-chaypin) out of the radio-recorder business. Says Max: “I made up my mind if I had to go into another business I’d tackle oil painting. It is the only industry I know that doesn’t use modern merchandising technique. They are selling today as they sold 50 years ago.” He adds: “I always loved pictures…but I was scared off by prices ranging from $700 to $3,000.”

Of this union of sales sense and pictorial passion was born Art Movement, Inc., whose Manhattan outlet is the Hall of Art. Physically the Hall of Art is a big street-floor and mezzanine store on Manhattan’s West 40th Street. Artistically, it is an Ali Baba’s cave whose open-sesame is the fact that its canvases, which are plainly visible through the window, have price tags that can be seen from the street. Prices range from $10 to $250.

Few “Moderns.” Inside, the Hall of Art is as self-consciously informal as a summer-art-colony show. Overflow canvases are stacked on the floor against the walls. Most of them are picturesque landscapes, seascapes, cottage scenes; still lifes of the flowers-and-carafe school, and a scattering of nudes and portraits. There are almost no “moderns.” For one remarkable aspect of Pochapin’s achievement is the fact that he has found a market for scads of hithero unsalable, solid, conservative U.S. paintings.

Visitors may examine pictures as long as they like (the Hall of Art’s sales staff practices “negative selling”). While onlookers look (there are comfortable chairs and settees for the less rugged), a radio plays soft music, an imitation-marble figurine of a naked girl (with an electric bulb inside) sheds a subdued light on a mohogany console. Promoter Pochapin’s managerial desk stands near a wall, for anyone to approach.

50% Commission. Artists come to Pochapin now. But when first he got his idea, Pochapin advertised in the newspapers for paintings. He was promptly swamped by consignments from one of the least businesslike groups of producers in the world. About 50% of this artistic avalanche was rubble, had to be shipped back to the donors. Startled but determined, Pochapin next consulted Who’s Who in American Art, wrote to 8,000 names, outlining the Pochapin plan: artists were to send him pictures on a consignment basis; Art Movement, Inc. would insure, frame, advertise, exhibit and sell the pictures in its Manhattan showrooms and in outlets (mostly department stores) throughout the U.S. Pochapin’s commission: a walloping 50% (the usual dealer’s commission is 33⅓%).

Pochapin fortified himself with a selective jury, headed by veteran Artist John Sloan, assisted by Critic-Painter Walter Pach, Painter Howard Patterson, Academician Alphaeus Philemon Cole. Pochapin’s jurymen share his crusading zeal.

Wrote Sloan in a Hall of Art newspaper ad: “I’m chairman of the Board of Judges of the Hall of Art. I take a lot of pride in that title—for it means I’m actively helping the American public to secure good American paintings—and at the same time I’m helping my fellow artists to get their work distributed to a big audience.”

Pochapin first tried out his sales plan in Baltimore. (“If a product goes over in Baltimore, it will go over anywhere.”) He sold over 225 paintings in a one-week stand, but lost money through heavy promotional expenses. He also discovered that people do not want to buy art from a transient art dealer. So Pochapin rented his Manhattan Hall of Art.

In addition, there are twelve Halls of Art now operating throughout the U.S. and about 150 stores have bid for the privilege of opening others. Next fortnight a Hall of Art will open in Gimbel’s department store in Philadelphia, the following week in Pittsburgh. Future Pochapin plans: 1) to furnish artists with materials, deducting such costs when paintings are sold; 2) to turn Art Movement into a nonprofit organization.

So far Pochapin’s artists have received some $100,000 from Hall of Art sales. Most of them have not known anything like it in recent years. Last year, one 63-year-old painter, who had seldom sold a painting, sold $700 worth in one day. Stunned, he announced he was “now going to paint with all the fire Toscanini uses to conduct,” rushed home, dropped dead.