Mural on Fairfax “Accidentally” Buffed

Image via Melrose & Fairfax

Twitter was abuzz when news were spread that a mural done by celebrated artists Retna, Rime, Revok, Norm, Saber, and Os Gêmeos was partially painted over by workers from Graffiti Control Systems. Fortunately the process was stopped by the owner of the building before the piece was covered completely. The whitewash was stripped and the piece can be restored.

Graffiti and Street Art are probably the most controversial forms of art with artists being in conflict with the governments constantly. Many incredible pieces by exceptional artists have already been buffed, one of the most famous being Sabers LA River piece. It’s time that the authorities realise how valuable those art works are and thank the artists instead of constantly destroying their work!

Saber has posted a very interesting blog post written by Piper Severance about the incident:

This Is Only The Beginning

My commute down Fairfax Avenue has pretty heavy street art traffic. One of the recent gems of this stretch of our pot-hole ridden streets is the mural on Fairfax and Rosewood by Retna, Rime, Revok, Norm, Saber, and Os Gêmeos. I was horrified to see an orange Graffiti Control Systems van parked in front of the wall on my way to work Thursday morning. It was being BUFFED! They had just started rolling over Rime’s characters as I drove past. I resisted every impulse to turn back and wrote the tweet in the car when I got to LACMA. I hit “send” the moment I emerged from the underground parking and by the time I got to my desk Saber had hit the timeline with a flood of comments including:

The wall was painted in July 2010, and I remember it was an exciting production. Besides Os Gêmeos being in LA from Brazil, Jeffrey Deitch stopped by and had everyone buzzing about the MoCA show. Almost a year later, LA Taco’s headline pointed out One Week From “Art in the Streets” and Someone is Destroying Art by Famous Artists.

Melrose & Fairfax were the first on the scene and posted the buffing in action. LA Taco looked into Who is Graffiti Control Systems? and posted their Facebook and Yelp pages. It soon became clear that the company had pulled the locked gate off it’s hinges to get to the mural. The buffing was stopped before it covered the whole wall by the outraged owner of the building, actress Julie Newmar. In a comment on the LA Weekly art news blog she said “Trust me, I will get to the bottom of this. The crime will not go unpunished.”

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