LACFPA.org

Each year, LACFPA recognizes one standout artist with an annual grant of $50,000 to support outstanding work in the field of public art.

This year’s grant goes to DANDELION CORP, a Southern California public art collective who have exploded onto Los Angeles’ streets this year with a powerful mix of cultural upheaval and urban beautification.

Their “LOST” series–a collection of transformed “Lost Dog” flyers aimed at lamenting our current cultural and political state–was hard to miss: an estimated 5,000 flyers were posted during each scheduled exhibition across the city of Los Angeles.

Also of note was the communal aspect of these works: instead of covertly papering the city under a cover of darkness, flyers were released ahead of time on their website and social media, and followers printed and posted them individually to increase their collective reach.

Sense of community notwithstanding, there were also numerous individual works that stood out, including transformed parking meters, fast food signs, fake movie flyers, and fake movie advertisements.

The Los Angeles Commission of Public Art will continue to support active and thoughtful artists in our local community throughout the coming year as well. We look forward to everything that 2018 holds in store for DANDELION CORP and the rest of our community.

-LACFPA

A jury has determined that by destroying the building that housed 50 colorful murals painted ‘illegally’ on its walls, Brooklyn real estate developer Jerry Wolkoff inadvertently defied the Visual Artists Rights Act, a 1990 federal law passed to protect artists’ works and copyrights in cases of ambiguous physical ownership.

Under the protection of this aggressive statute, an artist may sue the physical owner of a piece of art for destroying or altering the art, even if the owner has purchased and retains possession rights to the physical object.

In the case of Cohen v. G&M Realty L.P., Wolkoff discovered that these protections extended to building walls that he owned which were painted with graffiti.

In total, 21 artists filed a joint suit to bring Wolkoff to justice, who claims that he provided his clients with the 90-day notice required to destroy their works, which he then did by sending a team of workers to cover the murals with white paint at night.

Wolkoff’s lawyer David Ebert argued that although valid, VARA was intended to protect art, not his client’s building. He also maintained that the 21 artists who filed the suit had been aware of 5Pointz’ forthcoming demise and contended that they had also destroyed more graffiti themselves by constantly painting over existing works than Mr. Wolkoff would by demolishing the building. It was estimated that at least 10,000 murals had appeared and been destroyed during the last 8 years at 5Pointz.

The numbers were eventually rendered moot by the jury’s verdict, which will inevitably raise more questions for landlords and potentially erase them for budding street artists emboldened by the law’s now-affirmed support.