If you’re interested in broadening your horizons in the art world or possibly thinking about starting or adding to your collection, a new gallery in Waikiki is a place to start.
Park West Fine Art Museum & Gallery, an offshoot from the Michigan-based art dealership Park West Gallery, opened its location in the Waikiki Beach Walk in May. The gallery features works by traditional masters, as well as works by modern and contemporary artists. It is currently hosting the exhibition “From Renoir to Kostabi,” featuring works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), Pablo Picasso (1881-1974), Marc Chagall (1887-1985), Marcel Mouly (1918-2008) and New York-based Mark Kostabi (born 1960).
“We’re kind of showing artists that were redefining art,” said Arturo Torrez, the art director of the gallery. “It’s about showcasing certain artworks that drastically changed the approach of art.”
As examples, Torrez pointed to lithographs by Renoir and Chagall. The Renoir work, “Le Chapeau Epingle” (“The Hat Secured with a Pin),” dates to 1898, when color lithography — a complicated printing process requiring the re-creation of an image on limestone several times to produce a multicolored work — was relatively new and just “beginning to show its abilities,” Torrez said, whereas lithographs from Chagall’s “Daphnis and Chloe” suite, created in the 1950s, represent the height of the technique.
“Color lithography, you normally have four to five different colors that could be applied,” Torrez said. “By the time (Chagall) completed this whole suite, up to 26 different colors were applied.”
There are several Picasso pieces, including prints, ceramics and signed “linocuts” — prints made by using images cut into linoleum as templates.
“Picasso was known for elevating every medium that he put his focus on,” Torrez said. “With linoleum cuts, the linoleum has to be cut every time an aspect of the piece is created, so what you’re actually doing as you’re creating these works is that you’re actually destroying the template. Therefore it can never be created again.”
The gallery also features a small room entirely dedicated to woodblock prints by Salvador Dali, including some from his massive, controversial project “The Divine Comedy,” based on Dante’s epic poem. The Italian government had originally asked Dali to illustrate the text, but was forced to drop it after some Italian people objected to a Spaniard illustrating the work. Dali continued the project on his own, which took 14 years, Torrez said, with some of its 100 images requiring up to 35 different woodblocks.
“You see the color shadowing, you see different aspects of the work, that means one different woodblock was applied,” Torrez said. “I don’t think we’ll ever see a work like this again in terms of the woodblock being at this level.”
Other noted masterworks on display at Park West are engravings by Albrecht Durer, a master from the German Renaissance, and an etching by Rembrandt known as the “100 guilder print.” The name was given to the image of Christ healing the sick because that was the sale price in the 17th century, which was then a considerable sum.
Park West’s Waikiki location is the latest venture by CEO Albert Scaglione, a former engineer who in 1969 turned his passion for art into a business by “loading art on the back of a truck and going to hotels countrywide and advertising, ‘We have an auction,’ ” Torrez said. “That’s how we started reaching out to our collectors.”
Scaglione also formed direct relationships with artists, such as the pop artist Peter Max, or, in the case of deceased artists, their estates and ateliers, to provide both artwork and expertise, Torres said.
Park West expanded dramatically when it started holding art auctions on cruise ships in the early 1970s, and while it is still best known for its cruise business — holding auctions on 95 ships prior to the pandemic — it’s recently started to establish land-based galleries, with locations at its headquarters in Southfield, Mich., Las Vegas and now Hawaii. The idea is to give people a chance to appreciate and possibly purchase a masterpiece without having to travel to major art centers like New York or Los Angeles or Chicago, Torrez said.
“There are people who have the means to travel the world and find that Dali, or go to Paris and find these works,” Torrez said, “but what we’re trying to do is cut that.”
Park West now bills itself as the largest art dealer in the world, with reported sales of $500 million annually prior to the pandemic, and boasts many satisfied customers. “We have collectors who have been collecting with us for 10, 20, 30 years,” Torrez said. “We have collectors who, as kids, they remember their parents buying art on the cruise ships, and guess what they’re doing now? They’re buying art.”
The Waikiki facility will differ from cruise-ship auctions in that the works will be sold at a set price, no bidding necessary. “Some Dalis will be at the $8,000 mark,” Torrez said. “We’ll have six-figure works, and we’ll have million-dollar works,” including four original paintings by Renoir.
Moreover, the gallery will offer an opportunity to learn to appreciate art and develop your own taste in a less-frenzied environment than an auction, he said. The gallery will hold regular seminars on its exhibits and plans to bring some of its artists in from overseas to meet with patrons, and also expects to feature Hawaii-based artists as well.
“We’re known as an auctioneer company, but here with the galleries what we’re doing is we’re actually giving people the opportunity to just walk in and be a collector,” Torrez said. “We try not to make it too intense. We try to take the elitist part out of it and just make it fun.”
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Park West Fine Art Museum & Gallery
226 Lewers St.
>> Hours: 10 a.m.-10 p.m. daily
>> Info: 859-4871 or parkwestgallery.com; kamaaina discount of 15% or a buyer’s credit of $250 (whichever is greater).
>> Current exhibition: “From Renoir to Kostabi,” through September
>> Free tours: 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Sundays to Thursdays
Free seminars
1 p.m. Sundays to Thursdays
>> Sundays: “The Visual Poetry of Marc Chagall”
>> Mondays: “The Transformative Art of Picasso”
>> Tuesdays: “The Surreal World of Dali”
>> Wednesdays: “Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light”
>> Thursdays: “30,000 Years of Art History in 30 Minutes,” from cave paintings to contemporary masters
