Plain Brown Wrapper Greets LAX Terminal’s New Artwork

When artist Susan Narduli designed images for the granite floor of the American Airlines terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, she hoped to evoke humankind’s yearning to transcend earthly bounds and soar toward the heavens.

But when Narduli’s artwork was unveiled, a few airport employees saw only depictions of naked men. And they complained that naked men, even artful ones, might offend the sensibilities of visitors to the world’s third-busiest airport.

So for now, the life-size images are covered with brown paper, while the airline and two city agencies try to sort out what’s appropriate for public consumption at a gateway to one of the world’s largest cities.

What thousands of travelers can’t see under the paper shroud, adjacent to a security checkpoint, are the likenesses of muscular men sandblasted into oval granite slabs. They are posed as if in flight, their genitals obscured by subtle shading.

The images are hardly the Virgin Mary smeared in elephant dung--a work that threw New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani into a protracted feud with the Brooklyn Museum of Art. But the LAX artwork, nonetheless, has prompted the agency that runs the airport and the city’s Cultural Affairs Commission to launch a review.

The figures were unveiled a few weeks ago as part of a $245-million renovation project by American at Terminal No. 4. But the airport agency ordered the airline to cover the floor just a few hours later, saying that the artwork hadn’t been properly submitted for approval.

The Cultural Affairs Commission will review the case today. But even if the panel decides that Narduli’s soaring nudes are appropriate, airport officials said they will have the final say over the artwork’s future.

The case represents one of the dilemmas of public art. Scores of city laws across the country require companies to set aside a portion of construction costs at major developments for public art. But critics charge that these programs, and the commissions put in place to approve public art projects, invite censorship.

“It’s a bad idea for individuals to try to pick and choose what the public is or isn’t going to be offended by--they usually get it wrong,” said David Halle, a professor of sociology at UCLA and director of the LeRoy Neiman Center for the Study of American Society and Culture.

The permit that American Airlines obtained in 1998 for its renovation activities at the airport required it to spend a small percentage, about $1 million, on art, said Al Becker, a spokesman for the carrier.

American gave Narduli the commission for “The Wonders of the Heavens and Flying.” Other art elements in the renovated terminal include a representation of the solar system embedded in the floor.

Narduli said she didn’t intend for the images to be controversial.

“As an artist, I do feel I’m put in a position where my rights have been violated,” she said. “It’s crazy to think that a world-class organization like American Airlines is going to want to put something sexually inappropriate on the floor of their terminal.”

Narduli, whose commissions include the Santa Monica Museum of Art and the Rhino Chasers restaurant in Terminal No. 1, said her work has much higher aspirations.

“I stumbled upon some documentation from early times where men, in their desire to fly, would find the highest place in the village and strap on some kind of flying machine and jump,” Narduli said. “Ninety-nine percent of them died. I was so moved by this that, even though this figurative element was difficult to develop, it’s something I felt was critical to the overall project.”

The artist believes her work is also significant for the pioneering technique used to imprint figures onto stone.

Narduli’s team photographed models, scanned the pictures into a computer and digitized them to make full-scale films. Then they transferred the images onto the stone and sandblasted them into the material.

The controversy has raised questions about just how public art at the airport should be approved.

American and Narduli provided conceptual drawings of the figures to the city’s Cultural Affairs Commission in 1999. The commission approved the drawings.

The airline didn’t submit the drawings to Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency that operates LAX, because it was not required to do so, Becker said.

“Our attorneys say the Cultural Affairs Commission has the sole responsibility for all fine art that gets displayed in public buildings and public places in the city of Los Angeles,” he said.

The airline even posted a $1-million bond as an assurance that the artwork would be executed as it approved by the commission, Becker said.

But the city agency that operates the airport says it has the right to review all artwork installed at LAX, because it’s being displayed on agency land.

“There’s a very big difference between public art and art in public places,” said Kim Day, a deputy executive director at the city airport agency. “We are a public place and we have an obligation not to offend people.”

Day said the figures don’t offend her personally, but added, “What I really care about is what my father thinks, or my niece thinks, or the Amish couple from Des Moines thinks.”

The airport agency asked the airline to resubmit the finished product to the Cultural Affairs Commission. Airport officials would like the cultural panel to review the work again, because they believe the final design doesn’t match what the artist originally submitted, Day said. She said the initial design was “much more abstract” than the final work.

Narduli says her concept is “absolutely intact” from the early drawings presented to the city.

Even if the commission approves the final product and the figures are uncovered, the airport agency will reserve judgment until it sees how the art plays with the public, Day said.

“If two months or three months go by and no one objects, I suppose we’ll give it our blessing,” she said.

Officials at the city’s Cultural Affairs Department said they see their role as mediating between the airport, the artist and the airline to determine whether the figures are appropriate for LAX.

“Art in public places is a very lively conversation that goes on in every major city in this country,” said Margie Reese, general manager for the Cultural Affairs Department. “On one hand, you don’t want to shut the artist’s creativity down; on the other hand, you have to have some sensibility about appropriate art for appropriate spaces, whether it’s a baseball arena or a public sidewalk.”

The airline said it will comply with whatever the airport agency or the city asks it to do with the artwork. Narduli seemed hopeful that her work won’t be disturbed. She said American Airlines representatives agreed that “we will do nothing that will diminish the integrity of the piece.”

But in the end, it may be passengers who decide if the nude flying men are deemed offensive.

When the images were briefly unveiled Wednesday for a Times photographer, most airport patrons seemed sanguine.

Most visitors walked nonchalantly over the figures, not even giving them a second glance. Pilots and other employees seemed to pay the most attention, perhaps because they know the artwork is the subject of an ongoing debate.

But for American Airlines passenger Marshall Izen, who walked slowly over the figures as he exited the security checkpoint and headed toward his gate, the work belongs right where it is.

“I found them fascinating,” Izen said. “They’re not nude by my criteria. There aren’t any genitals showing. It’s subtle.”