Across town, gallery operators shook their heads.
"I don't see a problem with a large number of galleries," said Terry Trotter, who owns a gallery that bears his name. "It's what's drawing people here. . . . You want to preserve what is the draw for the community."
Zantman Art Galleries is one of more than 100 galleries in the chic beachfront enclave of Carmel, whose city council has moved to restrict new ones on an "urgency" basis.
(Amy Argetsinger -- The Washington Post)
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Trotter was sitting behind a desk in front of a $285,000 expressionist oil painting by Franz Bischoff of a wind-ravaged tree on an oceanfront bluff. The pleasant sound of classical guitar music filled his otherwise quiet gallery. He argued that market forces would have eventually taken care of the gallery glut. And he worried that the publicity surrounding the new ordinance will hurt Carmel's reputation.
Artists and buyers "may not give Carmel a chance," he said. "They may go to La Jolla or Taos."
Across town, Barbara Jones dismissed the notion that the galleries had put vital services out of reach. Carmel residents, she said, "shop like anyone anywhere else -- we shop in the mall. With the [shortage of] parking we have here, a local wouldn't drive into town to have shoes repaired." Meanwhile, she said that the collectors who flock to Carmel from near and far propel the local economy by eating in the restaurants and staying in the hotels.
Jones paused to greet a customer, a casually dressed man who had quietly entered the gallery to stroll yearningly among her vivid neoclassical canvases. The man, Russ Ziebell of Novato, Calif., said that Carmel had changed since he began his collecting habit here in the 1970s with a $65 painting.
"Back then, the artists were painting in their galleries," he said, but not so much anymore. And European names have moved in to compete with the Californians. But while he insisted that he no longer buys -- "I've got paintings in closets now" -- he said he can never drive past Carmel without stopping in to browse.
Jones smiled and leaned forward. "He'll end up buying something," she whispered.
