Repainting Ruscha: No one has yet offered a good explanation why Los Angeles muralist Kent Twitchell’s personal “Mona Lisa,” a six-story likeness of Ed Ruscha, was abruptly painted over on Friday. A work that took the artist nine years to paint was converted into a bland, beige wall in a matter of hours, which apparently violates the federal Visual Artists Rights Act, a measure meant to give artists 90 days to respond to plans to destroy public works. [Via abLA.]
Dietz on San Jose’s digital art moment: Former Walker curator of New Media, Steve Dietz, interviewed on the exhibition of digital art he curated, ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge, on view August 7–13.
Portable Entryways: “German artist Martin Kippenberger once proposed a subway system for the entire world, connecting Los Angeles to Helsinki, Tokyo to Rome, Mnster to Dawson City. Greek islands, Canadian towns, Swiss lakes, pharaonic tombs – there would be entrances everywhere.” He started building these entranceways to nowhere, as BLDGBLOG illustrates. (It’s a bit reminiscent of this earlier post on Rebar’s Hidden Agenda.)
Utne sold: Utne magazine, our neighbor across the road (and sometimes Walker partner), has been sold to Topeka-based Ogden Publishing, after more than 20 years run by members of the Utne family. Ogden, publisher of Mother Earth News, Natural Home, and others, promises nothing will change in the publication’s content.
Free Youth: Sonic Youth offers a new single, “Incinerate,” for free, suggesting their newest offering is less knob-twiddling and more like old-school SY. From the forthcoming disk “Rather Ripped,” coming out June 13 (it’s streaming here).
[...] ll no news on who authorized the destruction of Kent Twitchell’s The Ed Ruscha Monument in Los Angeles, but LA Times staff writer Christopher Knight reports that Twitchell plans on suing the city for violating the 1990 Visual Artists Rights Act, which was enacted “to prevent any destruction of a work of recognized stature.” In 1986, Twitchell lost another mural to paint-wielding workers at a billboard company and sued under the California Art Preservation Act, a precursor to VARA; a $175,000 settlement was reached before the case went to trial. “The law can’t bring back his lost masterpiece, but maybe a judgment will temporarily jolt other indifferent oafs into paying attention,” muses Knight, who earlier described the importance of the Ruscha homage: By 1978, Ruscha’s stature was such that he was routinely identified as the quintessential L.A. artist. He actually was a Pop art giant, and Twitchell’s monumental mural represented him as one. [...]
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