Public Art That Provokes : Censorship Was the Topic at the Irvine Fine Arts Center, and Sculptor George Herms Gave a Personal Example of the Protests Over His ‘Moon Dial’ in Beverly Hills

Sculptor George Herms brought a personal perspective to the issue of censorship in public art, the hot topic at a panel discussion Thursday night at the Irvine Fine Arts Center.

Herms has been embroiled in controversy over his sculpture “Moon Dial,” installed last April in Beverly Gardens Park in Beverly Hills. The work, which consists of five rusted buoys surrounding a rusted window frame and a winch, immediately provoked a much-publicized storm of public protest when it went up at a prominent spot at the end of Beverly Boulevard.

A petition with nearly 350 signatures of people objecting to the piece was submitted to the City Council, but Herms rejected a city proposal to move the sculpture to a less conspicuous location. The artist created the work under a loan agreement, in which the city agreed to display the piece in the park for at least 18 months.

Thursday, Herms called the work “a salute to the Beverly Hills I know” and added that he hopes that “Moon Dial” will become a permanent fixture on the site. The sculpture was created specifically for the site, he said, and underwent a design process in which Herms submitted a model, scale drawings and actual photographs of the buoys to the city.

And still, it provoked controversy--a recurring theme in public art projects, Herms said. Even attempts to get the public involved in the selection process have failed, he added. “They flip out,” as he put it.

The general public, said panelist Josine Ianco-Starrels, “ will flip out if an artist is any artist at all because an artist must present ideas that the public is not used to.”

Ianco-Starrels, curator of the Long Beach Museum of Art, said the issue of public art is problematical because it “pits the fairly elitist art establishment against the ordinary citizen.” The result, she said, is work that is either “hopelessly mediocre” or “hated until it is loved.”

Corporate public art projects are especially likely to feature bland, uninteresting work--”visual Muzak,” she called it--because companies are particularly keen to avoid any hint of controversy. “Most corporate collections are the result of heavy, heavy censorship,” Ianco-Starrels said.

Public art was just one of the areas covered in Thursday’s discussion, “Censorship and Selectivity in the Art World.” Censorship in varying guises affects all areas of an artist’s freedom of expression, according to panelist Patrick Mohr.

“We live, as artists, under an illusion of rights that we don’t really have,” the sculptor said. In general, he said, the visual arts have not been granted the same sorts of protection (from censorship) extended to literature and other forms of expression.

“Probably, the First Amendment isn’t going to help you out much,” Mohr said, speaking to artists in the audience.

“Every generation has to kick open the doors of repression, but they’re like saloon doors--they swing closed again,” Herms said.

Forces of repression range from social to religious to economic--the pressure to conform to the marketplace--Herms continued. One of the goals of the panel was to explore the idea that the very process of selection in galleries and museums is, in effect, a form of censorship.

“I always wanted to open a gallery and call it ‘Favoritism,’ ” Herms said.

“It never would have occurred to me to think of selectivity in terms of censorship,” Ianco-Starrels said. “It is my job to select to the best of my ability. . . . You can’t put every work up.”

Later, though, she amended her stand to allow that there is “a very slender link” between censorship and selectivity. If, in curating an exhibit, she must decide whether to include a work that may incite public controversy, she said her criterion is whether the particular work “is integral to the show.

“I have to weigh the size of the battle,” she explained. If she feels that including the work would jeopardize the exhibit, “then I would plead guilty and not include it in the show.”

Carla Fantozzi, education coordinator for the L.A. Municipal Gallery, told the audience that a current exhibit of billboard art at the gallery does not include any tobacco or alcohol advertising--arguably the most effective kind, she said--for fear of provoking complaints from vocal anti-smoking and anti-alcohol activists.

That type of self-censorship, Mohr argued, “is the most insidious type of censorship.”

One audience member asked Herms if the type of publicity he has received as a result of the furor over “Moon Dial” hasn’t actually been beneficial, and whether such controversy could be orchestrated as a marketing tool.

Herms replied that such notoriety is usually short-lived and is actually counter-productive to the creative process.

“I’ve been told that I have made $2.5 million in publicity off ‘Moon Dial,’ ” the artist said. “I haven’t seen it.”