New Motion Seeks To Identify L.A.'s Murals As Art, Not Signs

 

 

     Homage to Starry Night by Cronk (1990) in Venice I Photo by Kevin McShane

This post is in support of Departures, KCET's oral history and interactive documentary project about Los Angeles neighborhoods. The series comments on cultural history and urban issues through the lens of community profiles, such as Venice. The art of large-scale storytelling is struggling in the very city that shaped the craft.
Cultural identity in Los Angeles was once about neighborhoods having a voice on walls. But those urban canvases have been shadowed by commercial media, and the decades-old imagery has faded under sun, painted over by red tape, or tagged into oblivion. All told, L.A. streets as a source and inspiration for outdoor murals is vanishing.

Now artistic and civic Angelenos want to restore the silent walls, despite being buried under ordinances that came from legal clutter interpreting free speech.
The current charge up the hill is led by City Councilmember Bill Rosendahl, whose District 11 includes Venice, home to the grand mural tradition with works from artists and institutions like Rip Cronk, Jane Golden, Los Angeles Fine Arts Squad, Emily Winters, and the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC).
On June 1, Rosendahl introduced a motion to have the city of Los Angeles develop a "legally-defensible method" that would encourage murals to be created; in part by defining mural content as art, separating it from commercial signage.
If the city departments of Planning, Building and Safety, Cultural Affairs, and the City Attorney come to a consensus on how outdoor images with commercial intent, "supergraphics" and billboards would not overlap with those containing artistic intent. As of now, the term mural is forced to share an identity with large-scale outdoor advertising, thanks to a 2002 ordinance that refers to the outdoor visual medium as "mural signs."