When art and politics collided on the Sunset Strip

With Pacific Standard Time recreating the Tower of Protest on Sunset Strip, historian Jon Wiener op-eds in the Los Angeles Times about the original 1966 installation that became a controversial statement against the Vietnam War. The artwork on Sunset near La Cienega was divisive from the start, beginning when a billboard with 3-foot-tall letters announced "Artists' Protest Tower to Be Erected Here." Wiener explains:

The very night the sign went up, vandals knocked it down. The artists put up a new one, which was knocked down again, and this time the attackers tried to burn it. A months-long battle had begun.

The original plan had been to hang antiwar paintings and graphics from the tower, but in the final work it stood alone, a four-story construction of geometric shapes by abstract sculptor Mark di Suvero. Around it, forming a U-shaped wall of art, were 418 2-foot-square panels by individual artists, placed four high. A huge sign declared, "Artists Protest Vietnam War."

Night after night, would-be saboteurs came hoping to destroy the Tower of Protest, some of them active-duty soldiers and Marines from nearby military bases. And night after night, the artists defended the structure, and the antiwar art that surrounded it, with their own security patrols. The security detail established its headquarters in a rented room in an apartment next door to the site, with a bathroom window overlooking the structure.

Also known as the Artists' Peace Tower, the work was constructed in part by the future Judy Chicago with contributions from artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Larry Rivers, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella, Claes Oldenburg, Leon Golub and Elaine de Kooning. Writer Susan Sontag spoke at the dedication: "We're here to bear witness to our sorrow and anxiety and revulsion at the American war on Vietnam." There's lots more local history tied up in the episode that Wiener covers.

Sunset Strip historical note: Later in 1966, the riots over aggressive curfew enforcement by the sheriff's and the closure of the Pandora's Box rocked the strip again — commemorated in the Buffalo Springfield song For What It's Worth.

1966 photo: Charles Brittin/Getty Research Institute