Venice: Too Clothes-Minded for a Nude Public Artwork?

In some small, conservative town, it might not be surprising to find concerned citizens debating plans to erect a nude sculpture by a local artist in the town square.

But this is Venice, a freewheeling Los Angeles coastal community of street performers, Muscle Beach bodybuilders and skaters in thong bikinis and an artists’ haven for decades. The sculptor is no would-be Michelangelo but renowned Venice artist Robert Graham.

And the neighborhood in a tizzy over his stainless-steel female torso was home to the most popular bare-it-all beach in the county until public nudity was banned in the mid-’70s.

Now, 30 years later, some vocal Venice residents want a new ban on public nudity -- and this time the naked offender is a sculpture.

The Los Angeles City Council approved the yet-to-be completed artwork, a gift to the city from the artist and Venice donor Roy Doumani, last June.

But earlier this month a handful of Venice residents filed appeals with the city to block the sculpture’s placement in Windward Circle, a traffic circle ringed with funky eateries, wacky gift shops and chic boutiques.

Although only six appeals were filed, they could hold up the project for months or scrap it altogether.

In keeping with the community’s contrarian reputation, unexpected alliances have formed on both sides: Conservative church leaders have joined with staunch feminists in opposition; some old-guard activists have connected with ambitious developers to defend the torso.

Real estate agent Sylviane Dungan is among those seeking to block the sculpture.

“I have owned my house in Venice, a block from the Windward Circle, for 24 years, and I lived in it for 14 years,” Dungan writes in her appeal to the city. “I deplore the representation of a woman as a headless bust, a shiny sexual object.”

Last month, both sides were out in force at a hip sushi restaurant, where several dozen residents engaged in a heated discussion.

The meeting included some of the town’s most colorful regulars: homeless activist “Dr. John” Michel with his long white beard and a hatband printed with marijuana leaves; Cal State Long Beach history professor Arnold Springer, who has worn women’s clothing since the mid-1980s as a challenge to the “taboos of gender and fashion.”

One attendee pleaded with the group to wear business clothes to an upcoming public hearing about the project “so we don’t look like a bunch of Venice bohemians.”

The discussion zeroed in on indecent exposure. But some residents worry that something more serious is at stake: They say intolerance toward a sculpture by Graham -- creator of such high-profile public art pieces as the doors of downtown’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and the nude torsos outside the Memorial Coliseum -- may have broader implications for the future of public art in their community.

“While Venice has been famous for many years for the artists it has nurtured, almost none of their art is on public display in our community,” said Mark Ryavec, a member of the Venice Forum neighborhood group. “We need to support these cutting-edge artists; it is a palpable visual statement about what Venice has been for so many years -- an artist’s community.”

Two of Venice’s most visible pieces of public art -- Jonathan Borofsky’s bearded “Ballerina Clown” and Claes Oldenburg’s giant binoculars -- are on private buildings. Mark di Suvero’s 60-foot-tall sculpture “Declaration,” also known as the “V,” was installed in 2001, but on the boardwalk, not in the town center.

Esquire Jauchem, a 20-year Venice resident and producer of the annual street festival Venice Beach Carnevale, says banning any artwork in Venice would set a dangerous precedent. “I happen to think that ‘V’ thing is butt-ugly, but you don’t see me marching in the streets,” he said. “I think the torso is beautiful, but I would fight just as hard if I found it unattractive.”

Some community leaders hoped the Graham piece would be in place for Venice’s Fourth of July centennial celebrations. Entrepreneur Abbot Kinney established “Venice of America” on that date in 1905.

But on April 1, Pastor Steven Weller of the evangelical Venice Foursquare Church and members of the congregation gathered at Windward Circle to pray for the project to be canceled.

The day also marked the deadline to file appeals with the city, and, in a move that wields more political clout than prayer does, Weller and five others not affiliated with the church filed letters asking the city Department of Public Works to deny the request for the required coastal development permit.

The idea of placing public art in Windward Circle dates back about two years. It was the dream of the late Diane Bush, a founder of the Venice Action Committee, launched in the 1970s. She died in January.

Bush approached entrepreneur Doumani, an art collector as well as her beachfront neighbor. He had wanted to donate a piece of art to his neighborhood, and Graham was a natural choice: Not only does Doumani collect the sculptor’s work, but his house was also designed by the artist. And Doumani had already given several Graham sculptures to UCLA and has bequeathed his Venice home to the university.

The trio tapped architect Michael King, a 20-year Venice resident and member of the Venice Action Committee, to work with Bush.

King was consulting on a different project with the Windward Improvement District Assn., headed by Mark Sokol. Sokol became enthusiastic about the Windward Circle project and, under the auspices of his organization, an application was made to the city Department of Cultural Affairs on behalf of Doumani to donate the sculpture to Venice.

Doumani offered to pay the approximate $100,000 cost to forge the 3,500-pound stainless steel torso, and the artist would donate his time to design the 4-foot-tall sculpture, which would stand on an 8-foot base. Because the piece would be comparable to similar Graham torsos that had sold for as much, the work was valued at about $350,000. The city would pay installation costs, estimated at $75,000.

Several public meetings were held in Venice, and the Cultural Affairs Commission approved the project before it went before the City Council, which approved the sculpture June 15.

Doumani seems undisturbed that the proposed work is dividing opinions. “It sounds like art to me,” he said. Through a spokeswoman, Graham declined to comment.

Pat Gomez, who oversees public art for the city Cultural Affairs Department, said the project met with no resistance at her agency. She said the two public meetings proved to the commission that there had been adequate opportunity for neighborhood input. “There are other Robert Graham nude sculptures around the city. If you look at the ... Coliseum, those are very nude sculptures,” she added. “They had community notice, it seemed. I’m kind of surprised there would be a question.”

But Lisa Ezell was among the many Venice residents complaining that they had not heard about the sculpture until after the city approved it. She said she found out at a March 6 lecture she attended through a local organization that offers “courses that encourage community involvement.”

Three days later, Ezell began circulating a petition against the sculpture to various churches, including Foursquare. The petition drew enough community concern that the March 12 sushi restaurant meeting was schedule, with architect King, Graham’s son Steven and Graham’s studio director, Noriko Fujinami, on hand to answer questions.

The discussion took on a feminist slant. Several vocal objectors complained that the proposed headless, armless woman represented a misogynistic symbol of anonymity, as well as violence against women.

The objectors are not the first to charge Graham with degrading women. In 1994, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker was awarded a Graham-designed statuette of a nude female torso for being a California “state treasure.”

Walker, who had just completed a book and a film about female genital mutilation, was outraged. “Imagine my horror when ... I was presented with a decapitated, armless, legless woman on which my name hung from a chain,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Regina Weller, Venice Foursquare Church administrator and the pastor’s wife, complained that from the office window of the church on Riviera Avenue “we would see her backside. I work with women in recovery, and no matter what, it’s a naked torso of a woman.”

For some, the fact that Graham and his wife, actress Anjelica Huston, are longtime Venice residents is not enough to make the work “Venice art.” Some think the shiny torso looks too glitzy for laid-back Venice and too much like a Graham sculpture on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

Instead of the torso, some would prefer a piece of art that represented an aspect of Venice history, such as a statue of founder Kinney. Others would like to go back even further with a sculpture that would represents the art of the area’s original denizens, the Gabrielino Indians.

Arnold Springer defied the request for conservative attire for the public hearing -- showing up, as usual, in a dress. But this Venice bohemian urges residents to accept the inevitability of change.

“I’ve lived here since 1963,” he said. “Sure, there’s new building, new kinds of people who have more money, less minorities and poor people. But Venice still attracts eccentrics and radicals and free thinkers and intellects and powerful, articulate people, though they come from different social strata than before.”

Despite delays and controversy, Doumani and Graham have no intention of withdrawing their donation. “Venice is Venice. It’s one of the most outspoken communities anywhere,” Doumani said wryly. “I’ve never had so much trouble giving anything in my life.”