TURNING A PARK INTO A PARK OF ART

The major phase of the MacArthur Park Public Art Program got under way Thursday and Friday when artists’ proposals were unveiled at the Park Plaza Hotel. When complete, the project will integrate ambitious art projects with park grounds.

Earlier phases of the MacArthur program, launched last year by Al Nodal, Otis/Parsons’ director of exhibitions, consisted of the installation of five works for public sites in and around the gallery as well as the selection of 12 artists--from various parts of the United States--who would create works for the park grounds.

Eleven of the 12 were present Thursday. Their plans indicate that MacArthur Park--for many years an emblem of urban deterioration in Los Angeles--will be the site of sculptural installations, which will encompass the grounds, the band shell and the lake without interfering with park activities. To fulfill this third phase of the program, slated for completion in December 1985, Otis/Parsons has gathered public and private donations, grants, cash and in-kind, of $110,900.

Some of the artists will strive for spectacular effects. Eric Orr, who has often worked with light and interior space, plans to contrive a jet in the center of the park lake that will create an ongoing rainbow above its surface. Close by, George Herms, a highly acclaimed practitioner of assemblage, anticipates constructing a three-part tower, about 30 feet high, that will rise up out of the waters.

There are more modestly scaled pieces in the works, too--the kind of things parkgoers might simply happen upon. Alexis Smith has long done mixed-media works that cull writings and images from detective novels, film noir movies and other popular culture sources that gaze at the history of Los Angeles ironically and humorously.

“Unlike standard monuments, my pieces will commemorate the losers, not the winners in our culture,” she explained at the Thursday gathering, characterized by informal discussion. “I’ve been irreverent with the idea of monuments.”

For instance, she will place a small bronze plaque on an installed park bench, with the words “He had a jaw like a park bench”--borrowed from a Raymond Chandler novel and accompanied by a small, bust-like image of MacArthur with pipe. This piece, like others Smith will do, is keyed to its specific locale within the park.

All of the artists depart from the conventional notion of a public monument as well as rejecting a recent trend to place a work of art in an unrelated site--a phenomena that has acquired the name “plop art.” Ron Fisher offered plans for a gate to adorn the Parkview entrance only after scrutinizing photographs of it. Richard Turner and Doug Hollis will install a sculptural sound bench that quietly broadcasts poetry in the various languages of the park’s constituency: Spanish, Korean, Yiddish, Mayan and others. (Other participating artists are: Willie Herron, Luis Jimenez, Ana Mendieta and Judith Simonian.)

“Plop art” is precisely what Nodal has aimed to avoid. As he explained after Thursday’s meeting, “We have focused our efforts on having each of the artists become fluent with the site--not just its physical surroundings, but its social and cultural dimensions too. This project places nationally renowned artists in a community context. We have tried to demystify the process of making public art--and show, we hope, that Los Angeles can create a successful project of this kind.”