Laguna’s City Hall Art Search: No Nudes Is Good Nudes, Some Believe

For generations, Laguna Beach has cultivated its reputation as an art colony. It hosts three major art festivals every year. Its streets are lined with studios and galleries. Even the mascot for the local high school -- at least until students voted to dump it three years ago-- was an artist.

But at a recent City Council meeting, officials did what some considered blasphemous in the town that hippie Timothy Leary once called home: They suggested nixing nudity from public art in front of City Hall.

For some, the mere mention of restricting art has ruffled feathers. Said former Arts Commissioner Bruce Hopping: “It’s certainly not representative of what an art colony should be.... It’s imprinting youngsters to think there’s something unnatural or nasty about nudity. If you’re going to go to extremes, we better start putting panties on dogs and cats and everything else.”

That may sound crazy, but when it comes to nudity, it’s entirely a matter of opinion. All over the nation, officials are debating what is appropriate for public art -- and what exactly constitutes nudity.

In New York, United Nations delegates were offended by a bronze sculpture of an elephant described by the New York Times as looking as though “it has an appointment with a lady elephant, and she’s just around the corner, with Sinatra on the boom box and a bucket of martinis.”

Some suggested it be castrated, but, in the end, officials blocked the offending view with well-placed shrubs and ficus trees during the 1998 dedication ceremony.

In 2002, former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft ordered seminude statues of the “Spirit of Justice” to be covered with $8,000 drapes. In Texas and Florida, replicas of Michelangelo’s famous David now don loincloths.

Even when a nude is not anatomically explicit, it can give rise to controversy, said Svetlana Mintcheva, arts director of the National Coalition Against Censorship.

Some politicians, for example, objected to an exhibit called Orthopaedics in Art slated for the U.S. Senate building. One piece of artwork, Mintcheva said, was a back view of a seated nude, with her back covered with hair.

“There was not even a breast, let alone genitals,” she said.

But for every example of censorship, there are places where nudity is on display. In Seattle, for example, an art lover bequeathed $1 million to the city -- with a caveat that officials commission a “fully realistic, articulated male nude” to be placed in a location of public prominence.

So far, the city hasn’t said no to the money and was negotiating a contract with an acclaimed New York artist.

Laguna Beach has traditionally embraced all things artistic. A mural of a whale was a longtime downtown fixture. A local character who would spend his days waving at passing cars was immortalized in a statue near the edge of town. And there are more than 30 pieces of public art installed around town.

But the question of nudity has struck a nerve. While city officials have taken no formal vote to ban nudity, Councilwoman Cheryl Kinsman, for one, has made her opinion clear. “I do not believe the front of City Hall is the place for nudes.”

The city is sponsoring an art competition to replace a bronze, steel and cement fountain called “Kinetic Falls” that had to be removed because it was rusting and leaking.

The local artist whose submission is selected for display at City Hall will have an $80,000 budget.

“I was surprised that she made it an issue,” said Jan Sattler, Arts Commission chairwoman, adding that it was just Kinsman’s opinion and the actual guidelines had not changed.

The guidelines do, however, require that the artwork be appropriate for the site. One of the other council members didn’t want anything too modern in front of the Spanish-style City Hall. No one, Sattler noted, is raising an issue about those comments.

“The whole nude vs. naked in the history of art goes through phases of appropriate and not appropriate,” she said. “I think people’s tastes vary tremendously.”

The city has other nude -- or at least seminude -- sculptures, Sattler noted. At Treasure Island Park, for example, there is “Voyager,” a sculpture of a woman’s body shaped by seaweed and other plant life. And at Jahraus Park, a sculpture called “Boy and Dog” features a chubby, naked boy with a Scottish terrier.

Kinsman said she does not object to nude art -- just not in front of City Hall.

“I want something classy there,” she said. “We already, in my opinion, made one mistake. Everybody made a mockery of [the fountain]. It was a joke.”

When Kinsman attended the all-girl Scripps College, she said there was a “nude statue, fully endowed” in front of her dorm.

“That poor lady,” Kinsman said. “She was always dressed in something. I don’t want that for in front of our City Hall, so if that’s censorship, then so be it.”

Local artist Peter Paul Ott said he would not enter the competition.

“You strangle the good artists,” said Ott, whose walls are adorned with pencil drawings of nudes and whose father was a noted artist who created several nude sculptures. “Before they have even made a proposal, you have restricted their ability to do good art.”

Ott agreed that public art pieces should be pleasing to view and fit into the environment. But he said the idea of regulating nudity raises issues of interpretation.

“Even the definition of art is rather nebulous,” he said. “Who can define it? Total nudity, if done tastefully, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it.”