‘When artists were just tolerated’

In San Francisco in the late 1970s you could cover the entire modern art gallery scene, both commercial galleries and temporary exhibitions in museums or other public institutions, between a leisurely Saturday breakfast in Sausalito on the far side of Golden Gate Bridge – eggs Benedict and coffee perhaps – and a late lunch in the centre. Anyone who lived in London in the 1930s could have done something similar. Today, Galleries Magazine lists some 250 galleries which spread from Teddington to Hampstead and from Hammersmith to Hoxton. In 1935, there were fewer than a dozen dealers’ galleries focusing on contemporary art and they were all within walking distance of each other. Everyone knew that if you wanted to find out what was really going on you had to go to Paris. Similarly in 1975, Californians knew that, although Los Angeles was less parochial than San Francisco, the phrase ‘where it’s at’ applied only to New York.