Los Angeles' War on Street Artists

"They have evolved their styles under pressure to distinguish themselves stylistically and, in terms of scale, from other people," Grody says. "The seeds of it are the tags. The tag grows into the 'throw-up'; the throw-up grows into the 'piece'; the piece grows into the mural."

Graffiti was honored as a respected urban art form last year in L.A., when the Museum of Contemporary Art hosted its controversial "Art in the Streets" exhibit, making global headlines. LAPD and sheriff's officials used the hubbub to publicize their own Koreatown tagging crackdown, claiming that vandals inspired by MOCA's show had gone on a destructive spree.

"The exhibit kind of glorifies graffiti," Sgt. Augie Pando, of the Special Problems Unit, told the L.A. Times. "It puts taggers on front street."

PHOTO BY NANETTE GONZALES

Sight: "I know I did a lot of damage, but I'm in a cell with a guy doing half the time for attempted murder. I'm like, 'Wow, I better be nice, or he'll try to kill me, too.' "

PHOTO BY NANETTE GONZALES

Vyal: "The cops have all of a sudden become art critics."

Details

See also:
How the City of Gardena Turns Every Piece of Graffiti Into a Felony Crime

The Secrets of L.A. Street Art: Bumblebee, Sharktoof and Linelinedot Discuss Their Work

Fuck New York: Street Art Began Here in L.A.

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More About

• Carmen Trutanich
• Metropolitan Transportation Authority
• Lee Baca
• Visual Arts
• Street Art

Many in law enforcement, watching graffiti move from the alleys to pop culture, see little good coming from this evolution. Ramona Findley, head of the LAPD's anti-graffiti unit, says it's feeding the city's graffiti epidemic. "Even Hello Kitty has a line of graffiti makeup," she says. "This makes kids think it's OK. Young children don't know the difference between art and vandalism."

Vyal, a seasoned L.A. graffer who runs youth workshops out of his East L.A. studio, and recently did graffiti-style works for Lexus and Neiman Marcus, says sheriff's deputies often pester him about his colorful walls, criticizing him for inspiring kids to illegally scar the city.

After the MOCA show, he says, they prodded him about an old bus that MSK artist Risk bought and painted, saying it encouraged kids to tag Metro property.

Trutanich snagged the crackdown's boldest headlines by serving multiple probation-violation arrest warrants against Revok, one of L.A.'s most internationally renowned graffiti talents, and Smear, whose raw, explosive gallery work was getting the attention of art critics. Metro's Transit Services Bureau, working with Trutanich, arrested Revok in 2011 at LAX as he headed to Ireland — where he's admired by many as an edgy, urban artist — to do a commission. Trutanich sought a steep bail, and a judge agreed to $300,000 — citing Revok's high risk of fleeing the country. The L.A. celebrity got 180 days in jail and later moved to Detroit in disgust.

Smear, who says he was only a member of Metro Transit Assassins for a year or two in the early aughts, was subjected to multiple sheriff's raids at his art studio. The more press he got — such as a sympathetic 2011 spread in the Los Angeles Times — the more he felt targeted by Trutanich and Metro.

On the L.A. Weekly ride-along, Sgt. Meadows of the Special Problems Unit gave his opinion of Smear: "He was part of MTA, so he was a bad guy."

More and more, police are furtively invading art galleries and shows. A spokesman at Known Gallery on Fairfax, one of the first to bring graffiti indoors, says openings are frequented by undercover cops, who ask "uncomfortable questions" about particular artists — such as whether they also create illegal outdoor art. Smear says MOCA's show also was "crawling with pigs."

Rime argues that by denying graffiti as a creative outlet and a form of art — by "making this clear black-or-white definition of it, that either you're a vandal or you're an artist that doesn't use spray paint" — city and county officials are revving up young people to defy them. "They think that if they can make an example out of Revok, they can discourage a new generation. But they're having the opposite effect: They're making [kids] act out."

For better or worse, a new generation loves this form of self-expression, and can't get enough of the spray. L.A. galleries such as Lab Art on La Brea Avenue and Hold Up in Little Tokyo almost exclusively show street artists, their crowded openings often spilling out onto the sidewalks.

In Los Angeles, which Councilman Huizar likes to boast is "the mural capital of the world," the painting of any mural on an outdoor wall, even with permission from that wall's owner, is illegal.

This, thanks to a 2002 billboard ban by the L.A. City Council, crafted to protect it from being sued by wealthy, multinational billboard companies. According to L.A. City Planner Thomas Rothman, billboard firms argued that one type of "speech," billboard advertising, could not be banned in L.A. if another type of "speech," outdoor art, was allowed.

Ironically, ever since, City Hall has been destroying public art but has given a free pass to illegal billboards. City officials believe at least 1,000 illegal billboards clutter the skyline. They are not being torn down. But hundreds of graffiti-style murals are being painted over — at taxpayer expense, on orders of the Department of Building and Safety and the Department of Public Works.

"There are a number of illegal billboards in Los Angeles, but no one at City Hall is calling them vandals," says Gwenaëlle Gobé, director of documentary This Space Available. "It is easy to demote graffiti art as a vulgar business practice, [but] to me it is a political act. They are there as a reminder that we have a voice in our spaces."