Thursday, April 28, 2011

Richard Phillips: the Surfing Madonna is graffiti



Only our government masters are allowed to decide what is art. And they do such a wonderful job with it: the Cardiff Kook, the Carlsbad Jail Bars, the Scripps Turd (OK, that last one's not technically government, but still a government-like bureaucratic board of trustees).

Our own Richard Phillips laying down his Authoritah in the North County Times:
A couple of art-loving residents urged the Encinitas City Council on Wednesday to grant amnesty to a surfing Madonna mosaic secretly installed under a railroad trestle along one of the town's busiest roadways.

But a city official, speaking to a reporter during a break in the council meeting, said that the mosaic must go, and the key question for the city is whether it can come down without sustaining significant damage.

Although the mosaic may be pretty, it "fits the definition of graffiti," said Richard Phillips, Encinitas assistant city manager. Phillips added that city's anti-graffiti ordinance is broad enough to include far more than just someone spray-painting a wall. It's written that way to cover everything from advertising stickers to messages scratched into surfaces, he added.

9 comments:

  1. what was the process used for the Tiki head approval?

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  2. Arts Commission approved it. I would link to the minutes but the City website sucks.

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  3. Recall any city official that has it removed.

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  4. Remove it or have a symbolic Muslim and Jewish Mosaic put up on the other side paid for by all the Citizens who want to keep this graffiti

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  5. 4:36,

    You do know that Muslims want to kill anyone who depicts Mohammed, right?

    Are you volunteering to paint Mohammed on the south side?

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  6. It's actually felony vandalism. If someone came along and broke it could you vandalize vandalism? It's costing the city $ to take this piece of stuff down. No one seems to care about that. If you want to have it removed in one piece I would do it with donations and not use the city's cash to preserve something that was illegal in the first place.

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  9. As much as I love the Surfing Madonna, I have to agree with Anonymous.

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