California Mural Madness-Phil Lumbang on John Stossel

We happened to be in LA for the taping of this Fox News section and were on site when the neighbor across the street who initially complained, decided to weigh in on what he called a violent and obnoxious mural. Odd thing was the guy was sporting a t-shirt that read something about anarchy and was drinking tea out of a sex pistols God save the queen mug. How Bizarre!

Reader Post Comment Response or Why Advertising And Public Space Are Inherently At Odds With One Another

A PublicAdCampaign reader named Dennis made a wonderful comment regarding the Philip Lumbang cuddly bear disaster in LA and I wanted to respond. He writes...

"The bloggers and commenters shaking their heads over this story need to look beyond the obvious. This kind of situation was created by our friends in the outdoor advertising industry who have used every legal tactic to destroy the ability of cities to control billboards, supergraphic signs, and other conveyances of outdoor advertising. In a nutshell, they have argued in court that the city is guilty of unconstitutional discrimination if it treats a fine-art mural differently than a supergraphic sign. In other words, if it permits a mural on a wall, it can't prohibit a sign for Nike or McDonald's across the street. There is ongoing litigation about this, but as of now the city jeopardizes its sign regulations if it issues permits for murals, or fails to act on complaints about unpermitted murals.

Dennis makes an incredibly important point here which speaks to the fact that outdoor advertising and a healthy public space are two incompatible ideas. Advertising by its very nature must control public space, dominate it, in order to have the most influence over public thought in order to push commercial consumption. This control is not only seen in outdoor advertising language which often describes its presence as dominating, but also in its legal tactics which attempt to strip the city of its ability to protect itself from advertising's ravaging behavior. (as evidenced by Dennis' comment)

What is sacrificed in the wake of advertising's constant land grab and volatile tactics, is the public's ability to use its own judgment on how to curate our shared environments. If the permit issue was not at hand in this current LA mural atrocity, the issue of whether or not to let this mural stay up would be decided by a neighborhood board. The single resident that is taking issue with the mural, calling it "ghetto," would be out voted by the many residents who love the mural and it would be allowed to stay. The public ultimately should be responsible for the curation of our shared spaces and the fact that the city must enforce rulings which do not agree with public sentiment is the horrendous result of how advertising alters and controls our public spaces for the worst.

For this reason, outdoor advertising must not be allowed in public space. A good example of this is a story I come back to routinely. One of the problematic things that outdoor advertising does to our environment is that it assigns a monetary value to public walls, or rather private walls that face the public and therefore have a direct affect on public consciousness. Without a monetary value, public walls can be used for a myriad of things, the value of which is determined by the benefit that use brings to the property owner and the community as a whole.

Take for example a typical corner deli in New York City with an entrance on one side and a blank wall on the other. Now imagine this deli is in close proximity to a public school. This school might ask the deli owner or landlord to use the blank wall for a mural made by the students of one of the classes. Without monetary value, the landlord would be inclined to say yes, knowing that the mural will not only benefit the students, giving them a sense of self worth and physical investment in the neighborhood, but also attract the approval of the community which will then patronize the store.

A moral obstacle arises once this public wall has monetary value. The landlord or deli owner must now decide between receiving a small paycheck for the rental of this public wall, versus the benefits it might have for the community at large. I don't believe we can expect people to disregard the inherent value ascribed by outdoor advertising firms to public space. This would be expecting a self sacrifice for the greater good that simply does not agree with our ego centric capitalist societal values. The answer then is to simply eliminate the motivation to strip our communities of a valuable resource, public space, by preventing outdoor advertising from prescribing monetary value to our shared environment.

The Aesthetics Police

Seems like even Fox News agrees with us, and the residents of LA, on the recent proposal to remove Phil Lumbang's simply adorable street mural.

VIA John Stossel's Take

Phil Lumbang is an artist who creates charming drawings of bears, raccoons and other happy creatures; his work appealed to Amy Seidenwurm and Russell Bates. They commissioned Lumbang to paint a mural on the wall in front of their home. Everyone seems to love the mural; people stop to take pictures in front of it. Everyone was cool with it, it seems, except one neighbor who complained the mural made the street “seem ghetto.” [MORE HERE]

Philip Lumbang Commision To Be Removed By Los Angeles City

If you follow LA advertising issues, and you should if you enjoy this site, you know how insanely difficult it is to have illegal signage removed even after the city has deemed the advertisement in violation. As it turns out, getting art murals removed is a hell of a lot easier. Artist Philip Lumbang, a recent NYSAT participant, was commissioned to do this mural in a residential area of LA. According to him it is being slated for removal after a single resident complained about it. Now I'm sorry, but something is very very wrong when it takes the city less than a week to remove artwork and over a year to remove huge illegal supergraphics. It makes you want to go out and do what the city can't do for itself, tear these eyesores down with your bare hands. This is all on top of the fact that this mural is actually blocks from a preschool that you can be sure enjoys this neighborhood addition on a daily basis. God help us all when our public space becomes a venue for the sale of commercial items and cannot serve the actual people who live and breath in our cities. Asked to fill us in, the Philip explains the situation like this...

I'm a lil fuzzy on it myself but, I painted that in a residential neighborhood as a commission. And for the last year it has been riding high, but for some reason one of the neighbors decided to call the city about it to complain. And I guess the deal is you can't have a mural on private residential property or some bs like that. I guess it's on the same guide lines as shop keepers maintaining a clean facade with no graffiti. But it's pretty stupid because from what I understand is that pretty much everyone loves that mural except for that one person that called it in and to top it off it is right next door to a preschool. So no the kids are missing out. Oh and get this to even try a petition to keep the wall you have to pay like $1500 or some obscene amount so the city could even consider not taking it down.