Controversial Art Disappears on Eve of Mardi Gras

The painted ladies missed Mardi Gras Tuesday at Orleans restaurant.

Three controversial semi-nudes, installed outside the Cajun-style restaurant as a Mardi Gras promotion, apparently were stolen over the weekend.

“What happened is a mystery,” said Mary Atkinson, owner of the eatery at National Boulevard and Barrington Avenue in West Los Angeles.

Restaurant workers discovered that the painted plywood celebrants were missing when staff reported for work at noon Sunday. The bare-breasted revelers were last seen on the site about 1 a.m. Sunday, when a private party of unusually festive lawyers climbed onto the balcony to drape the topless voluptuaries with Mardi Gras beads.

Atkinson, who estimates the worth of the missing art at $1,000, said she has no idea who took the controversial work. No one has been lurking around the restaurant with suspicious splinters. But she doubts that the piece was stolen by area residents who called the vice squad to protest the installation, the work of Venice-based artist Peter Walker.

“I imagine it was a frat house or something like that,” Atkinson said. “I can’t imagine the neighbors doing it.”

At first, Atkinson said, she thought someone would try to contact her about what she and Walker have termed “the abduction.”

“I was expecting someone to call, a ransom note or something by now,” she said Monday. But when there was no word by late Monday morning, Atkinson called police to report the theft, after questioning her staff and assuring herself that none of them were involved.

Police, she said, took the information over the phone and gave no indication they would visit the site to investigate.

Atkinson said she also called the vice squad and left a message explaining what had happened because she thought it would amuse them. The vice squad had come out and taken photos of the offending artwork after neighbors complained, singling out one especially lascivious redhead who seemed to be offering her bare breasts to passers-by.

The vice squad ultimately determined that the work was not obscene and could remain on display outside the Westside restaurant.

The purloined art includes three life-size women naked from the waist up, which Walker defended as an accurate reflection of the outrageous spirit of Mardi Gras, during which revelers run riot in anticipation of the austerity of Lent.

“Peter didn’t put feet on them,” Atkinson said of the painted partyers. The piece was attached to the building with screws, and Atkinson noted that “Peter said they took great care in taking it out.” The Mardi Gras tableau also shows a clothed male reveler and a figure Atkinson described as a magenta rhino troll. “He was connected, so he’s gone too,” she said.

Walker said he didn’t know who took the figures but “I know Mary wants them back, and I hope they’re returned unharmed.” He also said he was afraid at first that the public might think he and Atkinson had something to do with the disappearance, since the nudes have proved to be the kind of media attention-getter that businesses--and artists, for that matter--know money can’t buy.

Walker said he was heartened that the figures had been so carefully removed. “That gives me hope that wherever they are, they’re being well taken care of.”

Atkinson had said she would not press charges if the work was returned during Mardi Gras. But when the festival ended and Lent began at midnight Tuesday, the painted ladies were still missing.