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"Isn't that good?" art dealer Patricia Faure asks a gaggle of friends after telling a story about a day with Jackson Pollock.
Elegantly attired -- as usual -- she's standing outside the Santa Monica Museum of Art, not far from her gallery at Bergamot Station, where everyone in the L.A. art world has gathered to celebrate her 75th birthday. Photographs of Faure's many lives -- as a fashion model, photographer, mother, art entrepreneur and eternally radiant babe -- flash across a big screen on an exterior wall of the building.
No one doubts Faure had a rendezvous with the quintessential Abstract Expressionist in L.A. in the early 1950s or that they drove to Topanga Canyon and painted watercolors together. It's just one more vignette in the life of an art world eminence who seems to know everyone and have no enemies.
"Do you know anyone else in the contemporary art world about whom no bad word is spoken?" asks Elsa Longhauser, who directs the museum and helped Bergamot dealers stage the party. "She's a fusion of art and fashion and humor -- all the best qualities, all the essentials."
Beauty and wit have undoubtedly opened doors for her. But artists and her colleagues say integrity, independence and an adventurous eye are the keys to her professional stature. "She shows art she likes regardless of what people think," says Michael Asher, a Conceptual artist whose mother, Betty Asher, was Faure's business partner from 1978 to 1994. "She's very honest, sincere and dedicated."
"Her eye and spirit remain very young," says art consultant Tamara Thomas. "She doesn't just go with the latest breeze, yet she often shows edgy new things. The 40-ish young Turk dealers could take a lesson from her."
At her gallery, Faure often works in her office while visitors browse. But few acquaintances slip away without...