Fare Includes Art and History

A subway trip in Los Angeles amounts to more than zipping through a tunnel from one part of town to another. The city’s newest form of public transportation is also a giant art show. And in five new Hollywood stations, to be unveiled Saturday, we’re not merely talking about murals. The art consists of everything from benches with backrests in the shape of flashy cars to fake boulders jutting out of ceilings and walls.

At the Hollywood / Vine station--home of the car-styled bench backs--Gilbert “Magu” Lujan has designed a brightly tiled environment inspired by Hollywood history, the film industry and L.A.’s car culture. Bus shelters on the street-level plaza are replicas of the Brown Derby restaurant, Grauman’s Chinese Theater and a stretch limousine. Red-tiled walls along the escalators and in the subterranean space are dotted with Lujan’s trademark anthropomorphic characters, in homage to the art of animation.

A yellow-brick-road motif, adapted from “The Wizard of Oz,” one of the artist’s favorite movies, decorates the station’s floor. Stairway railings reproduce the music of “Hooray for Hollywood.” Actual film reels cover curved ceilings, while borders around doorways are inspired by filmstrips. And, in an ode to L.A.’s most distinctive plant, columns are dressed up like glitzy palm trees.

The atmosphere is completely different--but no less surprising--at Vermont / Beverly, where George Stone designed massive rock formations based on the geology of his site. Fashioned of glass-reinforced concrete to resemble real rocks, the sculptural forms are set into walls and ceilings to remind subway riders of the station’s natural environment, but film buffs may liken them to realistic props.

At Vermont / Sunset, Michael Davis took his cues from three hospitals and the Griffith Park Observatory near his site and fashioned a symbolic merger of medicine and astronomy. Walking from the bottom of the escalator to the trains, subway riders first encounter granite medallions on the floor depicting microscopic life forms, then come face to face with the station’s focal point--a large metal wall piece that resembles a solar system but also contains symbols inspired by early pharmaceutical notations.

All these projects were produced by Metro Art, a department of the Metropolitan Transit Authority that’s empowered to spend one-half of 1% of MTA rail construction costs to enhance Los Angeles’ rail system through the arts.

Yes, that MTA--the one that is plagued by sinkholes, cost overruns and mad-as-hell voters and politicans. Despite the agency’s ongoing woes, its art program keeps chugging along. Metro Art has commissioned 175 artists to create works for rail stations and other transit-related projects during the past 10 years.

Metro Art’s budget has not been allowed to increase as the cost of the 59.4-mile Metro Rail system escalated to $6 billion. Nonetheless, with about $16 million allotted to art and related expenses on the Blue Line (downtown Los Angeles to downtown Long Beach), Green Line (Norwalk to Redondo Beach) and Red Line (downtown Los Angeles to Wilshire Center and North Hollywood), Los Angeles has the nation’s largest rail system with built-in art constructed during the last decade or so. New York’s subway system--by far the largest in the country--also has an art program, Arts for Transit, but it renovates old stations and has spent a comparatively much smaller sum, $9 million, on artworks alone over the last 14 years.

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In Los Angeles, 42 of the initial group of 50 art-enhanced stations are already operating; the last eight stations, on the Red Line, are being completed. Five of them, in Hollywood, will open next weekend with a celebration including free rides on Saturday and Sunday. The final three--Hollywood / Highland, Universal City and North Hollywood--are scheduled for completion next summer.

Budgets for individual art projects on the three rail lines range from $50,000 to $500,000, with the more richly endowed projects reaping the benefits of public and corporate contributions, said Maya Emsden, director of Metro Art. Artworks for the Gateway Transit Center at Union Station were funded separately with $3 million in federal, state and local money.

The average cost of the art components of the five new Red Line stations is $320,000. But the figures can be misleading because some art expenses are incorporated in construction budgets when artists are involved at an early stage of planning, she said. Furthermore, only 59% of the money in art budgets goes to the artists’ contracts; 16% is spent on architects, engineers and other consultants; 15% is used for administration, including Metro Art staff salaries and community outreach; 10% goes into a conservation fund for future repairs and upkeep.

Each station is the product of a collaboration between an artist and architect, and each structure is distinctive. “That was a conscious decision,” Emsden said. Unlike Washington, D.C.’s subway system, where all the stations look alike, Los Angeles has developed a huge collection of unique projects, she said.

Unusual as Metro Art may appear, it is actually one of about 30 similar programs nationwide that are reviving a formerly moribund tradition of combining fine art with public transportation, funded by up to 2% of construction costs. From Boston to Seattle, in St. Louis’ art-enhanced light rail system, Miami’s revitalization of rail station neighborhoods and Corpus Christi, Texas’ decorative bus transfer centers, public art programs seem to be reinventing an idea that Americans generally associate with other countries.

Historical precedents include turn-of-the-century Paris Metro stations designed by French architect Hector Guimard with Art Nouveau railings and arched entryways. Moscow’s first Metro line opened in 1935 with palatial stations decorated with chandeliers, marble, mosaics, precious metals and stained glass. The ornate stations continue to be a major tourist attraction. In Mexico City’s subway system, constructed in the late 1960s and opened in 1970, built-in artworks depict nearby landmarks and cultural attractions.

Ceramic and mosaic ornamentation was integral to the design of New York’s subway in the early 1900s as well, but until quite recently art has not been integrated into American transportation systems. In 1988, when Sandra Bloodworth became director of New York’s Arts for Transit program, which was established in 1985, “putting art in subways was an amazing thing,” she said. “Now it’s fairly routine. We are reaching a point where people are becoming much more aware of it.”

Still, public art specialists say the Metro Art program is distinctive, and not just because of its youth and big budget. “Los Angeles may have some of the most innovative integration of art and architecture in the country. The stations are identified with their locations in very interesting ways,” said Wendy Feuer, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based consultant in public art and urban design who has compiled two studies of art in public transportation published by the Federal Transit Administration.

“The most amazing thing is that Los Angeles is finally building a subway,” Bloodworth said. But she also praised the art, noting that she had only seen proposals for the five new projects, not the finished work. “I thought the concept of exposed rocks was just terrific,” she said, commenting on George Stone’s work. “One of the things public art should do is to keep people guessing. It’s really wonderful when you are able to stretch the subway rider’s imagination. His proposal was extremely successful at doing that. I can’t wait to see the finished work.”

It hasn’t been easy to design, fabricate and install the ambitious, multifaceted works. Public art programs are almost inevitably fraught with frustrating delays, bureaucratic obstacles and aesthetic compromises. Many artists commissioned by Metro Art say they have been forced to acquire new levels of patience and tenacity to keep their projects on track over a period of nine or 10 years while trying to make the most of a fabulous but often exasperating opportunity.

“I was a Zen Buddhist for many years, and that teaches you to just breathe deeply while everything turns out the way it does,” Lujan said. Working with a team and adapting artistic ideas to engineering realities was “part of the learning curve,” he added, recalling ideas that were scaled down or completely rejected because they were too “grandiose” or expensive.

“It was a lot of fun--and 10 years of hassle,” Davis said of his project. “It was wonderful to develop a team and kick a whole bunch of ideas back and forth, but there’s always a certain amount of tension in these projects. I’ve been to the site hundreds of times because I wanted it to be built the way I wanted it built.”

And these artists are among the lucky ones. Projects planned for rail stations in Pasadena and East Los Angeles are on hold. A light rail system to be built by the recently established Pasadena Metro Blue Line Construction Authority awaits approval by the California Transportation Commission. Subway plans in East L.A. were halted in November by passage of a referendum prohibiting further use of Los Angeles County MTA funds for underground projects, but the construction might be financed with federal money.

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The fact that Metro Art has survived amid all these upsets will come into focus next weekend when the public will finally have an opportunity to see Robert Millar’s walls of philosophical questions at Vermont / Santa Monica and May Sun’s homage to local immigrant history at Hollywood / Western, as well as the work of Lujan, Davis and Stone.

Another notable feature of the program is community outreach, Emsden said. The artists were selected by five-member panels of three art professionals and two community representatives. The commissioned artists, who were encouraged to relate their designs to the sites, were given neighborhood profiles and invited to meet with community groups.

Sun, who designed the Hollywood / Western station with Escudero-Fribourg Architects, seized an opportunity to recognize several generations of immigrants who have populated the area, and to highlight other historical aspects of her site. Her work often involves doing a great deal of research on “untold histories” of sites, and she continued that pattern in her Metro Art project, she said.

Suggesting various nationalities that have had a local presence over the years, granite pavers at the station bear Mayan, Chinese and Armenian symbols. Some wall panels contain images from historic photographs, while others picture workers who constructed the subway. Two replicas of the Pacific Electric Red Cars that once operated in Hollywood appear on one wall. On another are panels depicting bones of animals excavated from the subway grounds.

In contrast to site-related themes developed by the other artists, Millar’s project is primarily concerned with art issues. Working with Ellerbe-Becket Inc. at Vermont / Santa Monica, Millar created a relatively austere, formal space beneath a stainless steel canopy designed by the architects. Riders descend into the station on escalators surrounded by concrete walls stenciled with 10,000 questions. The queries--such as “Do we value beauty?” and “What do I believe might be true but is not?”--overlap or fade out in veil-like washes, so they are not fully legible.

“I didn’t intend that you would read every word,” Millar said. “I wanted this to be a dynamic environment that suggests the process of intellectual inquiry. It’s a dialogue of art history, about the importance of seeing and questioning.”

Some MTA officials and workers have been critical of this piece, but that’s OK, Millar said. “The art I like and the art I like to create often makes me uncomfortable and makes other people uncomfortable. It’s the explanation of why it does that is valuable. I’m comfortable with the fact that my work makes government officials uncomfortable. There’s a difference between what I value as important public art and art that is simply marketing or PR.”

Reflecting on the evolution of his project, Lujan--who collaborated with the architectural firm of Miralles Associates Inc.--said he was “biting at the bit” much of the time as his work unfolded over nine years. “Private commissions are real easy; I just go and get them done,” he said. “In projects like this, with the checks and balances that I know are necessary, the bureaucracy gets in the way.”

His greatest fear was that his plans would turn into “milquetoast,” Lujan said. And indeed, some of his concepts were diluted. The solid yellow brick road he envisioned became a yellow-checkered path, and he wasn’t able to finish the stretch limo in the style he had planned because of budgetary and time constraints. But the Metro Art process hasn’t soured him on public art. “I just have a little more experience now,” he said.

Stone, who worked with Anil Verma Associates Inc., said he enjoyed much of the process and is pleased with the results, but he had to force himself not to make changes as the years passed and his artistic interests evolved. “I had to accept this project as part of my own history and see that the MTA got what it bought, when they bought it,” he said.

Davis said he was surprised and elated that his partner, Diedrich Architects & Associates Inc., allowed him to take the lead on its project. MTA officials “just give you a box and they would really like for you not to touch it,” he said. “But we really pushed the envelope, not just in terms of the aesthetics but the engineering. We opened up the plaza so that the station wouldn’t be so claustrophobic and people would have a view from the bottom as well as from the top.”

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Like the other artists, Davis didn’t get everything he wanted, however. “One thing we lost, and I know why, was a cone-shaped skylight that reached from the plaza 83 feet down into the rotunda,” he said. “Needless to say, that was not only an engineering nightmare but an incredible expense.”

Taking stock of Metro Art on the eve of the five-station debut, Emsden said she has had her share of challenges as well. On the job since 1991, when she resigned from her former administrative position with Arts for Transit in New York, she has weathered various MTA storms. “In one period of five years, I had 13 different bosses,” she said.

Emsden succeeded Jessica Cusick as director of a program called Art for Rail Transit, established in 1989 by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission. “I was just blown away by the potential of the program,” she said. “Jessica had put something together that was really exciting and flexible. Also, Neil Peterson was head of LACTC at that point and he was such a passionate enthusiast and so supportive of the program that it was just seemed like an incredible opportunity.”

The climate changed abruptly in 1992, when the MTA was created by a state-mandated merger of the LACTC, which was building the light-rail system, and the Southern California Rapid Transit District, which ran the bus system and was building the Red Line subway. The forced marriage was intended to stop disputes between the two agencies, which had wrangled for years over control of local mass transit services. Nevertheless, the MTA has been the source of perpetual controversy.

Meanwhile, Metro Art has gone about its business with Emsden at the helm. “When people think of public art, they expect an artist to come in to paint a mural. This program has been an art history lesson for everyone involved,” she said.

“I’ve always been interested in the role the arts can play in cross-cultural arenas. Also, I always wanted a job that is different every day and involves lots of issues, so I feel like this is it. I’ve learned a lot about engineering, transportation, architecture, public speaking and politics. And I’ve certainly met my goal of different every day.”