Tweet
In Los Angeles, public art requires a city permit to be on private property. Local Los Angeles blog The Eastsider reports:
Silver Lake residents Amy Seidenwurm and Russell Bates were so charmed by the bears and other critters that they commissioned the artist, Phil Lumbang, to paint a mural on the approximately 30-foot long by 10-foot high wall in front of their home. Most people loved it, stopping to have their photos taken in front of the colorful scene painted last April. More than 35,000 people viewed a YouTube video Bates shot of Lumbang painting the happy forest creatures. But one neighbor objected, complaining that the mural would make their Silver Lake street "seem ghetto" and attract taggers and other street artists, Bates said.
Los Angeles Building and Safety ordered the mural painted over by March 1, but the couple have been granted a one month extension while city officials–prompted by Councilman Eric Garcetti–try to figure out if there is a legal way to keep the mural up.
Los Angeles City officials have decided Downtown LA has an arts district, and named it as such, but they are also fining the owner of the Down and Out Bar for a mural painted on the windows of his business because he and the artist Emmeric James Konrad did not go through the appropriate approval and permitting process.
But it doesn’t stop with murals. Private security are infringing and public right of away: On Thursday night, as part of the monthly Downtown Art Walk, Take My Picture Gary Leonard hosted an opening for political cartoonist Doug Davis. Local mobile noshery LaFuxion–a Latin-Asian taco truck–was parked out in front of the swanky new lofts/mixed use retail building in a legal parking space. Only the security guard for the loft-livers said there were complaints.
I watched as he had the private Business Improvement District patrol ask the truck to move. From a public street. Where they were attracting paying customers. During a neighborhood event designed to draw business to downtown, where gourmet food trucks selling everything from coffee to grilled cheese and bistro fare line the street outside galleries, along with Los Angeles’ ubiquitous bacon wrapped hotdog vendors.
So once again, Los Angeles mixes the concept of public and private. And art loses.
10 Comments
The City of LA has problems figuring out what it’s doing. And generally gets it wrong.
(That building they approved on the north side of Pershing Square, which was advertised as ‘moving the center of gravity east’ – it’s going nowhere, which I think is good because it’s planned to be an ugly 70 stories, in an area where most of the buildings are under 10, and it’s going to take out several hundred parking spaces, in an area that’s already short of parking. I wonder how much the planning commission costs?)
What is it with LA? They have to make up their mind: City or suburb?
They want all the cool things that go with being a city, but also the perceived white-bread safety of the ‘burbs — a perception of safety that’s apparently threatened by artists doing art.
Actually, if it isn’t visible from the street, it will probably stay up until the property owner paints over it or Someone Official notices. The backsides of buildings and fences, next to railroad tracks, are generally pretty well covered.
I have to admit that some of the people doing it have talent (although I wish that they could express themselves in more socially-acceptable ways), but most of them have as much artistic talent as a stray dog and are about as useful to society.
Socially acceptable ways? WTF? What kind of society are you talking about? The only two things that make it different from a legal billboard is that there are no Municipal fees levied and it doesn’t attempt to sell you something you don’t need. I’d favor more public art and making commercial billboards illegal.
They’ve got it all ass backwards in the City of Angels.
public side of a private property? So, how about if this piece of art was made of mosaic or had been painted as a monochrome field by Ad Reinhardt? Are they having a problem with art or representational art?
Bunny, Racoon, freindly Bear with the obligitory Honey bee hive (Wasp nest really) put it all together and it just screams Ghetto!
And note the equation at bottom right, which screams ghetto in a way that’s comprehensible to speakers of any language. These people are disgusting. /s
As someone who dabbled as a writer before I joined the military…that wall is just asking for a connect. They have a point. If I was still 16, I’d give those bears an upgrade.
This is the same Los Angeles where the city has been incredibly lax about the draping of 6-story-high advertising banner billboards on the sides of buildings.
The very same!