It's great to see a spirited community discussion about public art. It's sad when vandals decide to add their "voice" in a way that damages the art in question.
According to an article on The Bee's website:
A controversial mural being painted in the Tower District was vandalized with splatters of blue paint this morning.The mural, on the side of the recently opened Neighborhood Thrift Store at Olive and Wilson avenues, has been a topic of debate by neighbors and the Fresno art community.
Photo by Eric Paul Zamora/The Fresno Bee
While the vandal or vandals should be apprehended and prosecuted, as a practical matter, the mural is no more dreadful after the fact than it was before.
Thank you for the comments. I do wonder which one of the upset neighbors did the deed?
The critics profess they're concerned about lowered property values. Before they complain about a mural, they need to look inward. That block is filled with rundown, overgrown properties and the commercial development along that stretch of Olive is equally seedy.
The now-thrift store building sat empty for years while the owner did nothing to maintain it. Tagged windows and walls, and broken doors and glass were the norm. The office building across Wilson hosted a tattoo business that attracted all kinds of problems--including street robberies and assaults. Nary a complaint from the "concerned neighbors" could be heard.
Perhaps, before they complain about art, they need to clean up their own swamp.
Dan,
How do you know it was one of the neighbors?
Jen--think. Be logical. The mural wasn't going away on its own. So, some unhappy soul decided to insure that it would.
Perhaps. Or perhaps it was just a random act of vandalism. Vandals don't always think and have logical reasons for their acts of destruction.
A "random act of vandalism?" Right. With all this controversy going on, the person that did it is a person that doesn't like the art -- i think it is too soon to start accusing the surrounding neighbors, but it definitely wasn't "random."
Art is lost on most of the people in this town anyway. They buy paintings for the living room based on whether or not the colors match the couch.
It may be art. But not to my personal taste. Am I glad it's not on my street? Definitely Yes! Do I condone vandalizing it? Definitely No!
Okay, maybe it wasn't random. Maybe it was a deliberate act on the part of the artists to create this controversy. If someone hated the mural badly enough to deface it, I would think they would have done a more deliberate, thorough job of it. Now The Well is backing off their decision to paint over the mural today; mission accomplished, perhaps?
Where is the concern for liberty, which is based upon property rights? This wall does not belong to the community. It belongs to the owner of the building. It is their right to do with it as they please.
Scotty...the only way I can figure that someone can make a statement like yours is that you must be peeking in windows or your just arrogant...which is it?
Mostly arrogance I guess. I was raised in a family of artists, some have earned art degrees. One is a showing artist and another is a respected fine art dealer who travels the world. I took the road of photography, graphic design and creative video and film production.
Isabelle has the right attitude. "It may be art, but it's not my personal taste." That's fine. Art is a lot of things, and one person's taste doesn't always match another's. And just because one person or a group of people don't like an artist's work doesn't mean they have the right to deface it. Art is expression and the viewer is left to interpret that expression. Some art is made to please, some is made to create controversy, some is made to break new ground down an untraveled path and some is just created to provoke thought. All art has a place in this world, although the "place" is what the debate is about. This town seems to be full of people who want to remove the "expressions" of those they don't like or agree with. And that's why my comment above.
So then the question comes up: who would the people of this town like? If there were a show in this town featuring the works of Willem De Kooning, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Paul Cezanne, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenberg, Christo, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein or David Hockney would anyone go? Would very many people know who they are and what their influences were or are on art in the 20th century? How many people in this town went to see Christo's umbrellas installed through the grapevine simultaneously with those in Japan?
I imagine most people in this town would rather complain about the works of Diego Rivera and his relationship with the Rockefellers.
As for the "colors matching the couch," I actually heard a lady say that in a gallery one day. My thought was, "what are you doing here? You should go to the giant 2-day sale at the Radisson Hotel where you can buy seascapes or a still life for twenty bucks."
Let's take a poll in here. Who thinks that mural should go and who thinks it should stay? A lot of you haven't said.
Personally, it's not the best mural I've ever seen, but I appreciate the artists' interpretation of Fresno, and think it's fine and should stay.
First, I don't know of anyone who thinks that the vandal had the right to deface the mural.
Second, the elitist attitude about art is getting tired.
Third, I could care less whether the mural goes or stays, but I sure as heck wouldn't want to live across the street from it!!
Scotty...Thank you for your honesty and a little background info.I'm learning a little here and there about the blogging family members and as I do I find you all to be closer to being an acquaintance rather than an adversary and to me that is better and makes me more of a happier person so again,Thanks.To answer your poll question...I am not a fan of murals as they are observation without choice and more and more seem to become statements rather than a landscape or a whale...but I do not go to the Tower District so in this case it does not affect me but,...put it on the wall next to the Shaver Hardware Store and I may be arrested for urinating in public.
Amen Jen!!!! Especially your second point related to the empty-headed elitism that seems to permeate the "arts and croissant crowd".
re: Brian Murray; 10.26. 1:41 PM.
We cannot accuse him of proliferating belles-let-tres.
You're quite welcome Brian, and thanks for [i]your[/i] honestly...if you don't mind a little gratitude from the empty headed elitist. Oh well, we are all often quick to judge, aren't we? It gives us a sense of superiority.
(Scot)
-finally... somebody got the obvious parallel between Diego Rivera's Rock Centre mural and the present disputed mural.
The sad part?
So few people actually know what that was about, (I'd recommend renting 'Cradle Will Rock' as an intro/brush up.)
Sadder?
-Even if history on a minor scale were to faithfully replicate (which it probably won't)
-and be completely documented on film? (which it will be,)
Locally (at least,) folks still 'aren't gonna get it.'
And the moral?
I walk around inside the demolished/painted over/re-done Rock Center, and am taken by it's beauty and effectiveness.
It's gorgeous.
Even as a painter myself, I don't know if I would have felt the same about Rivera's work... (jussayin')
The irony of Diego Rivera and the anti-capitalist mural he painted at the Rockefeller Center is that capitalist profit from the ultimate capitalist family paid the fee he charged to paint the mural. Likewise, the Tower District mural moralizes about greed and opression, though without the incentive to profit from corporate farming, this Valley would be a barren wasteland. In fact, the arts, classical music and theater would greatly suffer without corporations and wealthy individuals enriched by capitalism. Speaking of parallels, the parallel I find amusing is that Rivera's Rockefeller mural, and the central figure and system it celebrated - Vladimir Lenin and Marxism - are all in the ash heap of history.