Distinctive L.A. Art Legacy Under Siege

The night of his brother’s stabbing will forever burn in the mind of artist Willie Herron. He wanted the world to remember too--to have the image of his 15-year-old brother, John, stabbed by gang members, permanently inscribed on the wall of the Eastside alley behind his family’s home.

So on that night in June 1972, after taking his brother to the hospital and saying a quick prayer, he painted a mural, guided by friends holding flashlights, on a building owned by his uncle.

“The Wall That Cracked Open,” an expressionist rendering of the event, became one of Herron’s most noted works, recognized immediately by scholars, art critics, historians and Chicano rights activists as a transcendent piece that spoke to the physical and psychic violence surrounding many disenfranchised youth. It became a crucial piece of Los Angeles’ cultural history.

John survived the stabbing, but Willie Herron’s mural has nearly disappeared. Sometime in recent months, without the artist’s knowledge, the mural was virtually painted over in a flat, gray color. Herron, 47, believes that Los Angeles County’s zero-tolerance anti-graffiti program is responsible for the damage.

County officials deny Herron’s accusation. However, a few neighbors, who say they witnessed the destruction, have pointed to county contractors, and Supervisor Gloria Molina, who represents the area, is holding the graffiti abatement department responsible.

Herron’s homage to his brother is just one of a long list of murals that have been damaged or destroyed over the last five years, first by taggers, then either by contractors hired by the county, California Department of Transportation workers or property owners.

Among the victims: portions of Herron’s 1984 Olympics mural “Las Luchas del Mundo” on the Hollywood Freeway; the middle column of Judy Baca’s 1984 “Hitting the Wall” on the Harbor Freeway; and the bottom third of Frank Romero’s “Going to the Olympics” on the Hollywood Freeway downtown. Kent Twitchell’s “Freeway Lady” in Echo Park was painted over in 1986 by an outdoor advertising company but is being restored.

Herron’s “Plumed Serpent” along the same alley as “The Wall” is also partially whitewashed, and a mural he painted in 1973 with fellow artist Gronk in Hazard Park is gone. Two large Asian American murals created by four artists in Koreatown have been wiped out by property owners.

Since the 1960s, Los Angeles has been widely considered a major center for muralists. Currently, about 2,500 public murals throughout the county illustrate everything from Chicano politics to community issues, or feature more playful or decorative images, such as those commemorating the 1984 Olympics.

Art experts fear that some of the area’s most important and oldest murals, painted on both publicly and privately owned walls, are at risk. Weather and pollution wreak havoc with the artworks’ surfaces, but equally hazardous is the fact that ever-changing communities often lose their connection with the highly indigenous pieces. Both factors make the murals more susceptible to taggers.

Although some damage to important murals has been done by taggers, the worst harm has come, the muralists contend, when anti-graffiti forces from the county, Caltrans and private sources have attempted to cover over the tags.

State and federal laws restrict any defacement of artworks, but even some government officials are not aware of the regulations. Los Angeles does not have a comprehensive government program to protect and restore the images, and has relied on nonprofit agencies or individuals to maintain and conserve the works.

For the last 25 years, the Social and Public Art Resource Center in Venice has been the primary agency in charge of creating and restoring murals, but it is struggling financially. Another, the Los Angeles-based Mural Conservancy, is a bare-bones nonprofit agency run by volunteers. By contrast, Philadelphia, a city with 1,800 murals, has established a mural preservation agency with a $700,000 annual budget that works in tandem with the city’s anti-graffiti program to protect and create murals.

“Los Angeles deserves to maintain its murals,” said Adolfo Nodal, head of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department. “Right now we sort of have our finger in the dam here, trying to keep this all from falling apart.”

In response to the defacing of Herron’s mural, Molina said Wednesday that she plans to present a motion before the supervisors Tuesday to ensure that murals countywide will be protected. In addition, she will ask the board to commission Herron to fully restore “The Wall.”

“I thought we had an informal process in place” to protect murals, Molina said. “But obviously, unless we hold people accountable, the process goes by the wayside.”

Her alarm is shared by art experts.

“As far as murals are concerned, [Herron’s ‘Wall’] was a landmark art piece in Los Angeles,” said Max Benavidez, a vice chancellor at UCLA and an art historian and critic. “This was the great signifier of Chicano art, and the fact that it has been destroyed is a great tragedy for the art world and our community.”

Many Works Are in Need of Restoration

Part of the problem stems from the fact that in some minds, the murals are not art. Benavidez said many people harbor negative perceptions about murals, which are often political in content.

“If people were to go into a museum and throw acid on a painting, that would be considered an attack,” Benavidez said. “What has been done in [Herron’s] case--with this piece being so symbolic--is a cultural rape.”

But more than legal protection, many of the county’s most important murals are in need of restoration, artists and mural preservationists say.

Such repairs are costly, however. Cultural Affairs chief Nodal says it could cost as much as $1 million a year to restore and preserve murals throughout the city. He said that he has proposed gathering funds from the city’s Cultural Affairs, Public Works and Probation departments to create a mural restoration program but that his proposal has not received much support.

The Chicano mural movement of the 1970s began as a grass-roots effort to beautify the Eastside of Los Angeles--an area hedged by four freeways where nondescript housing projects and chain-link fences set the tone for a neglected and segregated community.

Chicano artists were heavily influenced by the Mexican muralists of the 1930s, such as Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, the latter of whom painted three murals in Los Angeles. Murals of the 1970s depict events pivotal to the Chicano rights movement, including Cesar Chavez’s farm labor campaign, the 1970 Chicano Moratorium and the 1968 “Blowouts,” in which thousands of students walked out of their high schools protesting inferior educational conditions.

Over time, however, murals became so identified with an L.A. aesthetic that they were officially sanctioned to celebrate events. For the 1984 Summer Games, the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee commissioned 11 murals as a way of showing the world Los Angeles’ uniqueness and vibrant ethnicities.

“The murals are not only about ethnic identification but also a dialogue between groups and neighborhoods,” said muralist Baca. But when the works cease to have relevance to the community, they become endangered, Nodal said.

Indeed, that was the case with “The Wall That Cracked Open,” which had been covered with graffiti and clearly needed repair. To those who painted it over, however, it apparently was just another eyesore.

Valerie Hill, supervisor of the county’s graffiti abatement program, had never heard of Herron or his work.

She said she did not know the specifics of Herron’s situation but defended the practice of covering graffiti on painted walls.

“What I consider a mural may be different to what someone else considers a mural,” said Hill. “When I see something covered with graffiti, the historical value is gone to me.”

Herron, however, felt that the marks of the taggers had enhanced, not hurt, his artwork. Graffiti--known as placas by some Chicanos--are a form of community expression, he said.

“Who is to judge? What if the artist says it’s OK that a mural has graffiti because it’s a part of the urban landscape?” he asked. He and fellow muralist Romero say they prefer graffiti to whitewash.

Officials Pressured to Remove Graffiti

But anti-graffiti agencies are under constant pressure from residents to rid their communities of the scrawls. Molina said the No. 1 complaint from residents in her district is graffiti. Her office logs dozens of calls daily from irate residents complaining about taggers defacing their property.

Officials at Caltrans face the same problem.

“We are interested in preserving the integrity of the artwork where we can. However we also have to respond to community concerns regarding graffiti,” said Margie Tiritilli, spokeswoman for Caltrans in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

According to the Federal Visual Rights Act, an artist must receive written notice of expected alterations to a work and is entitled to a 90-day waiting period before the work is removed. California’s law has similar provisions.

“The law is not about who paid for [the artwork] or who owns it,” said Brooke Oliver, a private attorney based in San Francisco who represents several artists on issues of intellectual property rights. “The law is about the artist’s moral rights and the integrity of the work as a whole.”

Neither Hill nor her superior, Harry Stone, head of the county Public Works Department, was aware of the state or federal law. Molina’s motion would ensure that the county complies with the law.

Caltrans officials say they contacted the artists about the murals the agency has painted over. “We made every attempt to call them by phone, because we are interested in preserving the integrity of the artwork where we can,” Tiritilli said.

But the artists say they were never notified, and Tiritilli admits that she has no record of a written notice.

“I was not advised,” Romero said. “We were in the midst of trying to raise the money to try to fix the mural, and Caltrans just ignored what we were doing and went in there and destroyed it.”

Some anti-graffiti agencies in Los Angeles take extra steps to ensure murals’ integrity. Delphia Jones, director of the city of Los Angeles’ Operation Clean Sweep anti-graffiti program, said: “Our people have very clear instructions not to paint over any murals. We find the artist and then we have the mural restored.”

Jones’ contractors also coat the murals with a protective layer so graffiti can easily be wiped away with a mild solvent.

But neither the county nor Caltrans has such a policy. Cities such as Santa Monica and Long Beach have their own arts and mural restoration programs independent of the county.

Baca, director of the Social and Public Art Resource Center, said there are more than a dozen murals throughout the county that desperately need restoration, including the San Fernando Valley’s “Great Wall of Los Angeles,” which critics have hailed as one of the city’s greatest pieces of public art.

“You don’t maintain works only because they are beautiful pieces of art,” Baca said. “They are important cultural sites or mark the early works of an artist. It might be an important marker of a particular incident. Or it might be a historically significant work because it challenged the idea of fine art at the time. We were the leaders in mural programs, and now the world is watching us. “

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Vanishing Artworks

A number of murals have been entirely or partially painted out by the California Department of Transportation, contractors hired by the county or property owners.

* Willie Herron’s 1972 “The Wall That Cracked Open,” on the side of a bakery in an alley off Carmelita Avenue and City Terrace Drive in City Terrace, is 75% gone.

* Herron’s 1972 “Plumed Serpent” in the same alley, across from his mother’s house behind a neighborhood pharmacy, is more than 50% whitewashed.

* Herron’s 1973 “City Terrace Park Pavilion,” depicting smiling faces with graffiti incorporated into the painting, done with fellow Chicano artist Gronk at Hazard Park, is gone.

* Herron’s 1984 “Las Luchas del Mundo,” showing computer-generated images of Olympic sports, on the side of the Hollywood Freeway at Alameda Street, is partially whitewashed.

* The middle column of Judy Baca’s 1984 “Hitting the Wall,” showing scenes from the Olympics, on the Harbor Freeway at the 3rd Street exit, is gone.

* The bottom third of Frank Romero’s 1984 “Going to the Olympics,” on the Hollywood Freeway between Alameda and Los Angeles streets, showing a line of colorful cars and hearts, was painted out.

* Kent Twitchell’s 1976 “Freeway Lady,” on a building on West Temple Street in Echo Park, was painted over but is being restored.

* Twitchell’s “Gary Lloyd Monument,” painted in 1982 at 5th Street and Towne Avenue downtown, is gone.

* “Remember Your Roots,” painted by Kathryne Cho, Darryl Mar and Tony Osumi in 1994 on Western Avenue in Koreatown, is gone.

* Sonia Hahn’s 1990 “Madame Shing Saim-Dong,” also on Western in Koreatown, is gone.