Underground Art : RTD Will Pay $535,000 for Professional Decorative Work in Some Stations of Proposed Metro Rail Line

Long before graffiti practitioners get their chance, Los Angeles plans to have real artists decorating its subway.

Eleven professional artists, ranging from muralists and painters to sculptors and collagists, have been hired by the Southern California Rapid Transit District at a cost of $535,000 to leave their mark on the first five stations of the proposed Metro Rail system.

The Art-in-Transit program, as it is called, is intended to offer riders such sights as two Art Deco-style benches (seating capacity: six per bench), a sculpture titled “Eccentric Emblem of L.A.” (by a New York artist) and a concrete floor design depicting ocean waves washing across a station and crashing against a retaining wall.

This assumes, of course, that the initial 4.4-mile, $1.25-billion leg of Metro Rail is built.

Actual work on the art pieces will not begin until the first, “shell” phase of the subway construction is completed. While it once seemed possible that that day might not fall within the lifetime of some of the artists, it is now seen as perhaps two to three years off, since the recent announcement that the Reagan Administration will release federal funds for the project. Service could begin by 1992.

The subway art program, which will offer various interpretations of Los Angeles, has encountered a few other bumps along the way, too.

One sculptor, Robert Irwin of Las Vegas, withdrew for “personal reasons.” No decision on a replacement has been made.

New York artist Christopher Sproat’s $25,000 contract to fashion two Deco-style benches drew criticism from RTD board member John Day, who questioned whether they would revive memories of the Defense Department paying $600 for toilet seats.

Sproat pointed out that the benches would be “sculptural objects” that would serve “aesthetic as well as functional needs.” Besides, he added, plain concrete benches would cost about $10,000.

The board of RTD, which will build and operate Metro Rail, overruled Day’s objection and approved funding of the benches and other proposed works.

Meanwhile, Venice artist Billy Al Bengston complained last week: “I don’t have any idea what I’m supposed to do. They (the RTD) have changed their minds three times.”

Asked to describe his original proposal, Bengston, considered among the top contemporary West Coast artists, said: “I can’t even remember, I made it so long ago.”

Douglas Low, coordinator of the Art-in-Transit program, conceded that Bengston’s “concern is valid” since there have been changes in the design of the proposed 7th Street/Flower Street Station, where Bengston’s painted murals would appear.

Low said that the problem will be worked out and that, overall, with so much time left to finish the artwork, the program is moving on schedule and will prove a great benefit to the community.

“We feel it will be a vital part of Metro Rail from a design point of view,” Low said. “In a situation where you have people standing on platforms and traveling through mezzanines, the art will provide a stimulating atmosphere.”

He pointed out that the $535,000 cost is a tiny fraction of the total Metro Rail tab, and is generally in keeping with the price of transit art projects in cities such as Boston, Atlanta and San Francisco.

Metro Rail’s underground artists are being paid in stages. If the project moves no further than the current stage--preliminary design work--they will receive about 10% of their contract pay.

They were chosen last year as part of a nationwide competition from among 638 entrants by a committee that included John Gordon, dean of the School of Fine Arts at USC; Julia Brown Turrell, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and former state Sen. Alan Sieroty, president of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission.

“The opportunity to make something permanent and public appeals to me very much,” said Santa Monica artist Tony Berlant, who will construct an artwork made out of tin for the Wilshire/Alvarado Station.

“It’ll be called, ‘The History of Los Angeles,’ or rather, ‘The History of L.A.,’ ” he said.

Berlant, described by one critic as “the art world’s pre-eminent tin man,” fashions collages out of sections of thin metal nailed to a wood backing and has had several one-man shows around the nation.

“TV trays, waste-paper baskets, tin cans, I use any thin metal I can find in the environment,” he said the other day, as he hammered away in his studio, a converted, turn-of-the-century grocery store. Behind him sat several piles of discarded tin.

Preliminary Model

Berlant, who has already made a preliminary model tracing the era of the saber-tooth tiger to the era of the MGM lion, hopes to construct a much larger one across two 17-foot-high by 40-foot-wide spaces in the subway station.

“My hope is that people making the same escalator ride every day for 30 years will constantly find something new to look at,” he said.

Aside from Berlant and Bengston, well-known local artists participating include Terry Schoonhaven, a muralist whose outdoor paintings have decorated Venice buildings and Los Angeles freeways; sculptor Therman Statom, whose glass pieces were on exhibition earlier this year at the L.A. Institute of Contemporary Art, and George Legrady, whose photographic exhibitions have been praised for their “peculiar blend of audacity, simplicity and conceptual complexity.”

Four other New York artists were also selected: Sculptors Cynthia Carlson, Aleksandra Kasuba and Stephan Antonakos as well as muralist Joyce Kozloff.

Los Angeles shouldn’t take it personally. Low said government projects that depend on federal money must be open to participants nationwide.

Salute to Films on L.A.

But the theme of the subway art will not be New York, but Los Angeles. Kozloff is planning a salute to movies about Los Angeles, although the inclusion of “War of the Worlds” in which City Hall is destroyed has not yet been decided upon.

Carlson will construct the “Eccentric Emblem of L.A.,” which she says will reflect “the landmarks and (the) vernacular, popular imagery of the city.” While New York artists don’t always hold Los Angeles in high regard, she promises that hers will be an “affectionate homage.”

Given the ups and downs of Metro Rail in recent years, the artists realize the possibility still exists that their projects could be derailed.

But, as Berlant cheerfully points out, “in the history of art, a lot of important works are preliminary designs that never become reality, works of artists such as Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright.”

Added Sproat: “With government projects, you have to be patient. I’ve been waiting nine years to do a piece for a subway station in Boston that’s supposed to be modernized.”