Recession? What recession?

That’s the overwhelming impression to be gleaned from “The L.A. Art Boom”, Wall Street Journal reporter Lauren A. E. Schuker‘s examination of the ways three-comma movers and shakers are re-framing the west coast art scene.

From the hint of art dealer Larry Gagosian‘s Oscar party next spring at a home once owned by Gary Cooper, to staggering donation amounts, to the fact that consignments from Christies’ Los Angeles have tripled in the past year, Schuker compellingly captures the very (Eli) broad flavors of a movement decades in the making. She also sources a quote that is sure to have Woody Allen rethinking his east coast arrogance.

“L.A. is more than catching up to New York – in some ways, it’s moving past it,” says Agnes Gund, a prominent New York-based art collector who used to run the board of trustees at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and served on the board of Los Angeles’s J. Paul Getty Trust for 12 years until 2006.

It’s enough to make The Woodman turn right at a red light… in Manhattan.