Public Art

The painter was the first artist to move to the downtown corner. His neighbors included a strip club, the Little White Wedding Chapel, a Thai barbecue joint and red neon heralding the Tod Motor Motel. Others might have shunned the gritty storefront near Las Vegas' embryonic arts district, but here, Ezequiel Lee Orona could grasp a decades-old dream for $900 a month.

Some of Kent Twitchell's murals are best known because they no longer exist. His "The Old Lady of the Freeway" greeted travelers along the Hollywood Freeway from 1974 until it was painted out by a billboard company in 1986. More recently, "Ed Ruscha Monument," a six-story portrait of artist Ruscha on the side of a government-owned building in downtown L.A., was painted over, in June 2006.

A battle over what constitutes "overtly sexual" art unfolded on Long Beach's trendy main thoroughfare on Monday, with an artist demanding that two of her abstract nudes be put back up on the walls of a public exhibition organized by a program that deemed them offensive.

The Pasadena City Council has voted to reject a recommendation by the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission to install controversial public artworks of light tubes and giant caps on the plaza in front of the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. At a meeting earlier this week, the City Council voted instead to accept a recommendation by Pasadena City Manager Michael Beck to seek alternatives for the space. The proposed "Light Field" by German artist Hans Peter Kuhn consists of light tubes 6 feet, 8 inches high on a base that is 15 feet by 38 feet.

Though every artist's death diminishes us, Robert Graham's loss impoverishes Los Angeles in a deep and particular way. Graham, who died last Saturday at the age of 70 after a serious illness, was not simply the city's premier public artist, he was a sculptor whose works reflected the subtle spirit of Los Angeles itself.

Brea's name (Spanish for "tar") befits a place where wildcatters struck it rich and oil seeps from the rolling hills. These days, the northern Orange County city is more renowned for shoppers fossicking for bargains at the large Brea Mall. Shoppers will discover some pleasant surprises, however, including an innovative city art program, which has become a model and inspiration for public art programs nationwide.

Two works of public art proposed for the front of the Pasadena Civic Auditorium have drawn complaints from some residents and preservationists. The sculptures, mixed-media contemporary pieces, are being criticized not so much for their artistic expression, but because of their prospective size and location.

They are the sullen architecture of the "surge," gray armies shrinking the horizon. Baghdad is a city of blast walls, towering maze-like from the Tigris to the battered, seething neighborhoods of Shula and Sadr City. Concrete sentinels of last year's troop buildup, they seal and sequester. They absorb explosions from car bombs, they bottle up bad guys.

The sculpture shows a man about to fall under a subway car driven by a Grim Reaper figure. Its creator says it was a tribute to train drivers and the fears they face. But the work's planned home, a London railway station, said Monday that it had canceled plans to put it on display after complaints by railway unions and the families of suicide victims. Officials at St. Pancras station, the hub for Eurostar high-speed shuttle services to France and Belgium, said the carving by sculptor Paul Day was inappropriate.