LAPD's public art has weathered storms

When I was writing the other day about Peter Shelton's sculptural ensemble for the new Los Angeles Police Department headquarters, I decided to stop by Parker Center, the old police HQ that sparked a huge firestorm over public art when it opened in 1955. (You can read about the earlier ruckus here.) The minute I got there I thought, “Distance lends enchantment to the view.”

Bernard “Tony” Rosenthal's abstract bronze wall relief just to the right of the entrance doors is a minor sculpture by a minor artist, produced at a time when painting is where most of postwar Modern art's adventurous action was in America. And at any rate, as I noted in my Shelton review, it wasn't the relative quality of the art that caused the uproar back then -- a dozen years would pass before another abstract sculpture would be commissioned for a downtown public space -- an uproar that seems quaint when faced with Rosenthal's sculpture today.

In fact, there's no getting around how great the ensemble of sculpture and building (by Welton Becket & Associates) looks now, more than 50 years on, especially at the glass-and-ceramic-tile entry. The original golden hue of Rosenthal's relief has gone dark, the shabby garden beneath it needs attention and subsequent construction around Parker Center has altered the light-filled transparency of the setting; but, although some have suggested tearing down the place now that the LAPD is moving out, as a midcentury Modern period piece it's smashing.

“Distance lends enchantment to the view.” The phrase comes from “The Pleasures of Hope” (1799), a long and sentimental Romantic poem in rhyming couplets -- lots of exclamation points and yearning question marks are scattered throughout -- by Scottish writer Thomas Campbell. He was no Wordsworth or Coleridge; but the sentiment expressed in perhaps his most well-known phrase is certainly apt:

At summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering bills below,
Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye,
Whose sunbright summit mingles with the sky?
Why do those clifts of shadowy tint appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near? —
'T is distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.

It's a long journey from here to there. Time's passage always softens perceptions.

A few more photos of the Parker Center ensemble are after the jump.

-- Christopher Knight

Photos: Parker Center. Credit: Christopher Knight / Los Angeles Times

Related:

Public art review: Peter Shelton's ''sixbeaststwomonkeys'

Sculptures at LAPD's new home likened to 'cow splat''

Peter Shelton's whimsy, all in a row, for the L.A. police HQ

Comments

[Donald Frazell]

No, CK. This is still hokie. Was then, is now, just a bad constructivist attempt to be emotional, look up Charles Alston for an excellent family group, or Tamayo, which this is a bad sculptural rendition of. Thats the only sentiment, it was "white washing" the police at a time when they were far from serving the entire community. Things change however, and Chief Bratton did an excelent job upgrading the atittud of the police, and the community's toward them.

And the new group is too, the only bruhaha coming from the incredible waste of monies involved. How can this cost half a mil? Absurd, did guys like Calder get that kind of money? Hell no! This is just a line of poop. Not irritating, just sitting there, and luckily not stinking, hopefully. It will be forgotten, already has been, except the horrifying price tag in a tiem of real human need.

And for those sily art school types who love to say things that "question" is art, need to go back and study. Socrates was against these very people, the sophists who asked relativist questions as much as the reactionary forces of power. He sought to ask questions that led to more, ones that constructed and arrived at truthful consclusions and shumility, hardly attributes of MFAs. These are childish statements, no questions involved, except cute baby ones. Sophists, who are more concerned wiht how they look than getting us ALL someplace better.

For there is no freedom without responsibility. Now THATs a theme for the Police Dept. Instead, just more boring barricades with huge wastes of energy and material for nothing, Again, did President Obama say it was time to put aside childish things?

art collegia delenda est

[Charles M. Weisenberg]

Reading about the police headquarters controversial sculptor by Bernard Rosenthal in the 1950s reminds me of the untold story of how that media created conroversy was ignighted. I write this from memory while traveling in Argentina.

By the time I became a City Hall reporter for City News Service in the late 1950s the sculpture controversy was already old news. Chatting with an old time reporter for the Los Angeles Examiner, one of two Hearst papers in L.A. at the time, I was told how the art controversy got started. I did not know it at the time but this was at the tail end of a newspaper era that would soon be revolutionized in Los Angeles by Otis Chandler.

The story begins with another Hearst reporter who worked for the Los Angeles Herald Express, the morning paper with a more tabloid approach to the news. To say this was a hard drinking reporter would put it mildly. Bill did not begin drinking until he arrived at the City Hall press room. It was always easy to tell when he had insulated himself for the day because he then walked around the building without his shoes. Bill had been a reporter in L.A. for ages and could originate more stories by simply answering his phone than I or others could by running from office to office all day long.

Bill got a call from someone who thought he should see the model of the Bernard Rosenthal sculpture for the new police headquarters. He went down to see it and found the modern abstract family without real faces silly and perhaps even offensive. In the story I was told he went to City Councilman Harold Harby with an offer the councilman could not refuse. Bill would give him an opportunity to get his picture in the paper.

Bill got a photographer and took the councilman down to see the model of the sculpture. I was told he had the councilman lean in close to the model holding his nose as if something smelled bad and sticking out his tongue in what a Bronx cheer. Several similar shots were taken that afternoon.

The next day the controversy got underway with other conservative council members leading the charge aginst these faceless monsters that would adorn the new police headquarters. Modern sculpture, then as now, was not always easy to accept. The reporter who told me the story said that Bill never cared one way or the other about the sculpture but that he simply saw it as a way to have some fun with the city. Many of those who picked up on the issue were, however, quite serious about attacking the Rosenthal sculpture.

[Dale Griner]

Ah the public art debate! It appears from time to time in order to remind us that art is a personal experience. When we try to select it for the masses, (usually by commission or committee) we invariably get loud voices in protest. The real problem, and reason for this, is that public art is so rarely included in building design or public works projects. The few times that it is included in the public realm means only a few artistic voices get heard and others are left out. The selection process isn't public and usually reflects the taste of one or two people who sit on a board or commission. What is needed is an investment in the artists of this great city. A mandate that art be part of the public life. We need more art adorning every neighborhood not less and perhaps then, everyone will have some piece of public art that gives them joy. Having only a handful of very expensive pieces invites scorn, protest and puts a damper on the future prospects of funding for public art. Shame on the city for not having a better public arts program.