Art Cries Out From the Streets--but Is Anyone Listening?

Say you wanted to shout at the top of your lungs about the malaise and apathy you believe are crippling American society.

If you were a visual artist, you’d probably lust to deliver your statement in clear public view at the center of one of the nation’s largest metropolises.

You’d be sure to make the message as forthright and colorful as possible. And for added attention, you might even hurl a political brickbat or two at power brokers passing by, not to mention your exhibition’s co-sponsor: the government.

But then, imagine you received virtually no public reaction to your artistic call to arms. Would you be satisfied that you had proved your theory about societal stupor? Or would your blood soar even closer to the boiling point?

“It tends to kind of stir the frustrations up even more,” reflected collage artist Steven M. Irvin the other day during a grapefruit soda and cheese reception for”Anthem,” a novel art show of his and other artists’window installations at 5th and Hill streets.

*

The centrally located 24-hour-a-day exhibition, which opened on the Fourth of July, graces four street-level plate glass windows of an old Art Deco building across from Pershing Square, halfway between blue-collar Broadway and starched-shirt Bunker Hill.

Sponsored by the Foundation for Art Resources Inc., a tax-exempt group that focuses on nontraditional work, the show aims to “explore feelings of dislocation and the lack of a unified identity” in America.

No question about that.

The corduroy-clad Irvin co-designed “Ant Hymn,” a piece that seeks to compare the social structures of ants and humans. In the eyes of the artists, the insects win, antennas down.

Around the corner on the 5th Street side is Pamela Bailey’s “Not”--three beige shirts behind glass printed with the phrases “Not interested,” “Not my kind of politics,” “Not my job,” “Not yet” and “Not my constituency.”

“Castles” is the political brickbat. Through text and photos, it posits that National Guard armories have for generations served to suppress the American working class. “Conditions [now] are the same as preceded the French Revolution, and unless a change is effected and that very soon, the result will be the same,” screams a quotation affixed to the window, taken from a populist Midwest newspaper of the 1890s.

Last Sunday, Bastille Day, 50 to 75 people attended a reception for the show, sponsored by the foundation in the windows of what was formerly a Thrifty drugstore. The series, called Full Moon Gallery because of its offbeat exhibit space, is co-sponsored by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency with a $23,650 grant.

(Additional funding sources for the foundation include the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council, foundation officials said.)

Standing at a pivotal street corner in the heart of the nation’s second-largest city, the artists mingled with the meager crowd consisting of their friends, art devotees and a smattering of hungry street people. That the current show opened on the Fourth of July and held its reception on Bastille Day was no coincidence, sponsors said. The aim of “Anthem,” they explained, is to provoke thought and dialogue--at the very least.

“I wouldn’t want the place to be vandalized. It would mean the aggression would be turned toward the artists’ work rather than mobilizing frustration and using it some other way,” said curator Monica Chau. “But if it happens, it happens.”

*

Thus far, little has happened.

Several artists report having heard shouts of approval or anger while they were installing their pieces. But there have been no letters or phone calls. And as for public officialdom, there has been nary a peep.

The CRA, which issues its arts grants with mandated funds from downtown developers, has made no inquiries. Nor have the elected officials at City Hall.

Nor, for that matter, have any of the conservative activist groups that have made such a ruckus nationally about the National Endowment for the Arts and its support of “subversive” or “anti-religious” artworks.

Does that mean there is a heightened degree of tolerance in Los Angeles? Not really, ventured Elizabeth Pulsinelli, project director for the Full Moon Gallery. “The response has been less critical than we expected, so far,” she said. “[But] I think it would be more a kind of disinterest than tolerance.”

On the street level Sunday, it seemed to be simply a matter of taking what you can get from art--just like anything else in life.

Kenneth, a homeless man who didn’t give his last name, was wandering by when the “Castles” photographs of armories caught his eye. Asked about the accompanying political statements, he said he hadn’t even noticed them but would vehemently disagree about the French Revolution. “Things are a whole lot better now,” bristled Kenneth. “I don’t see people walking around here with shotguns.” Moments later, he spied the reception table. There was no cake. But the chips looked inviting. He grabbed a plateful and began munching. “That’s wonderful art,” declared Kenneth, who proceeded to cross the roadway and disappear into Pershing Square.