Half-Nude Artwork Stirs Protest : Mardi Gras: A Cajun-style restaurant’s depiction of bare-breasted revelers results in phone calls and vice squad interest.

Ah, Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Merrymakers fill the streets, parties last all night and men and women go topless.

Ah, Mardi Gras on the Westside. A restaurant puts up a painting of bare-breasted revelers, and somebody calls the vice squad.

To promote its Mardi Gras activities, the Cajun-style restaurant Orleans in West Los Angeles recently installed an artwork on its balcony featuring three half-nude women.

Owner Mary Atkinson says her phone has been ringing ever since.

Atkinson said she has received 30 or 40 calls of complaint from neighbors as well as calls from the police. Although the vice squad, in consultation with the city attorney’s office, concluded last week that the artwork is not obscene, Atkinson is considering covering the offending nipples with the kind of pasties worn by strippers in some fainthearted communities.

Atkinson said most of the neighbors’ calls have been from women who object to the fact that children can see the topless women, one of whom is depicted holding her breasts.

“I have a feeling it’s the same little clique of people,” Atkinson said.

Initially, Atkinson said she was told by the vice squad that she must take the work down or she would be cited for displaying material that is harmful to children. She called her attorney and the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU advised her that she did not have to remove the offending promotion without a court order.

Atkinson said she does not think the work is obscene or she would never have put it up. But she said she will probably modify the work in some way to appease her neighbors. “I really don’t want to offend anybody,” she said.

Sgt. Howard Irvin of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Pacific Vice unit said his office has received three complaints about the installation. Irvin said vice unit representatives took pictures of the offending art and sought advice from higher up before deciding the work could remain.

Venice-based artist Peter Walker, who created the work, said he wanted the piece to reflect the outrageousness of Mardi Gras.

Virtually every photo of the annual New Orleans festival (which takes place this year on Feb. 23) includes bare-breasted revelers, he said.

Walker said he knows there are some people who object to nudity despite its time-honored place in the arts. “There are probably people out there who would say of the Venus de Milo, ‘What you’ve got here is a naked amputee.’ ”

Walker also noted that the stripping off of T-shirts is a standard feature of many wilder American celebrations. “It’s a heartland American tradition for nipples to be exposed on festival occasions,” he said.

The artist said he and Atkinson talked about the possibility that the piece would cause a stir. “We didn’t expect the vice squad, but we knew some people wouldn’t like it,” he said.

Walker said he was not surprised that some people have complained. In his experience, public art often sparks an outcry.

“You can put mini-malls from one end of America to the next, and you get no reaction,” he said. “But you put up one piece of innovative public art, and somebody’s going to scream.”

Atkinson said many of her customers and a number of passersby have told her they like the Mardi Gras art. She has also received a number of supportive phone calls. She said Walker is still adding to the installation, both inside and outside the restaurant at National Boulevard and Barrington Avenue. So far, she has paid Walker $2,000 for the project.

Walker is now working on an enormous cow--a traditional feature of the New Orleans event--to add to the installation, and he is also considering artistically interesting ways to make his painted revelers less provocative. Stick-on bows in Mardi Gras colors of green, gold and purple might work, he said.