Anti-Censorship Billboard Makes Its Point--Too Well

An anti-censorship artwork on a West Hollywood billboard by artist Robbie Conal was removed Wednesday by 3M National Advertising Co., which called it “too controversial.”

The 19-by-48-foot billboard, which superimposed a sardonic portrait of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) on a painter’s palette, had been on display one week. It depicted the senator, who has been at the center of a national controversy over federal funding of art, with a caption that read: “Artificial Art Official.”

The structure where the billboard was hung is owned by a subsidiary of the huge 3M Corp. based in St. Paul, Minn.

Conal, a guerrilla artist well known for plastering sarcastic broadsides of political figures throughout Los Angeles, said he paid three months’ rent for the display space near Santa Monica and La Cienega boulevards. The artist said he was not contacted in advance about the removal of his artwork.

“I think this is a perfect example of the exact problem that I was trying to address in the billboard,” Conal said. “The conservative cultural agenda spearheaded by Jesse Helms has created an intense climate of fear in this nation, one which apparently has even seeped over into corporate America.”

Removal of the billboard was ordered by Jim Shaheen, the national marketing director of 3M National in Chicago. He learned of it from a newspaper story.

Shaheen was unavailable for comment, but Peter D. Bear, manager of government and community affairs at the Chicago headquarters of 3M National, said the decision was made because the billboard was considered to be “too controversial.”

“I guess there is a certain amount of subjectivity involved here, but the national marketing director felt that having a portrait of a public official displayed in that fashion displayed on one of our boards was not appropriate,” Bear said in a telephone interview. “This decision does not express an opinion about the public official one way or the other.”