In honor of this spring’s massive Art in the Streets exhibition, MoCA director Jeffrey Deitch commissioned a piece from street artist Blu to be painted directly on the museum’s wall. The mural — a series of giant coffins wrapped in dollar bills — went up on Wednesday. And then yesterday, it was already being painted over. So what do you think: Was this just a publicity stunt? Or was it some kind of performance art? Regardless of the reason, we’d hate to be the guy in the photo above blotting out Blu’s work. And we can’t believe that Deitch, a longtime street art champion, would let it happen.
Update: The official explanation from MoCA over the weekend:
“MOCA commissioned Blu, one of the world’s most outstanding street artists to create a work for the north wall of The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. “The Geffen Contemporary building is located on a special, historic site. Directly in front the north wall is the Go For Broke monument, which commemorates the heroic roles of Japanese American soldiers, who served in Europe and the Pacific during World War II, and opposite the wall is the LA Veterans’ Affairs Hospital. The museum’s director explained to Blu that in this context, where MOCA is a guest among this historic Japanese American community, the work was inappropriate. MOCA has invited Blu to return to Los Angeles to paint another mural.”
And here’s what Blu told ANIMAL:
“sad story but watching the reactions is much more interesting than giving my personal opinion the facts are known: Blu is asked by Moca to paint a wall the wall is painted (not completely finished unfortunately) Moca decides to erase the wall the wall is now white the images are already public everyone can make his own idea about the event for everything else time will tell…”
[via GOOD]