L.A.'S DISAPPEARING MURALS TAGGERS, TIME, CALTRANS COVER UP CITY'S HISTORIC STREETSIDE ART 'GALLERIES'.

Byline: SUSAN ABRAM and SUE DOYLE

Staff Writers

Tony Curtis' twinkling eyes have dimmed.

The Los Angeles Marathon runners have faded. And the faces of the Aztecs, the cowboys, the migrant workers and the neighborhood children are destined to be forgotten.

Los Angeles' iconic murals -- the larger-than-life painted stories of society, politics and culture that placed the city in a special class alongside Mexico City, Berlin and Paris -- are disappearing.

Once the mural capital of the world, Los Angeles has quietly surrendered that distinction to Philadelphia over the past five years. While the City of Brotherly Love spends $4.5 million to paint, restore and maintain its 2,700 murals, the City of Angels has just $20,000 to look after its documented murals, which once numbered 3,000.

Artists say 60 percent of them -- about 1,800 -- now are either gone for good or have been nearly obliterated by tagging and vandalism.

"We created the mural capital of the world," said Judy Baca, one of the nation's leading muralists, who designed and led the painting of the half-mile "Great Wall of Los Angeles" in the Tujunga Wash.

"Now the city is allowing these incredible works of diversity to disappear."

Taggers blamed

A growing number of taggers -- mostly teenage spray painters who leave their initials and monikers in highly visible areas of the city and go pretty much unpunished -- are to blame for the destruction, Baca and others say.

And artists -- required under their contracts to maintain the murals -- are not finding enough money to keep their treasures intact.

Baca and others say it's been five years since the city's Neighborhood Pride program, which commissioned murals, dissolved.

While Baca and others are trying to keep the tradition alive by training young muralists through digital technology, working more closely with the city and even starting Web sites to document the loss, some say it's time to say good-bye to public murals in Los Angeles.

"It has endured a drawn-out and indignant death," said Kent Twitchell, some of whose 30 giant works of the city's celebrities and artists can be found in downtown Los Angeles, visible from the Hollywood Freeway.

"It could still be revived, I suppose, but I don't see the resolve necessary to do it," he said.

Twitchell has lost several of his works, including the Freeway Lady on Temple Street, Steve McQueen on Union Street, and the Ed Ruscha Monument mural on Hill Street.

And he is witnessing the gradual destruction of his Los Angeles Marathon mural. Completed in 1990, the 4,300-square-foot, photo-realist painting of 26 runners was installed along the San Diego Freeway near Manchester Boulevard, but was moved to the Golden State Freeway near Dodger Stadium last year.

Its move and restoration was part of a $1.7 million grant received by Caltrans, then handed to the city's Cultural Affairs Department to help restore 17 freeway murals with protective coatings.

But parts of "L.A. Marathon" which was adopted by the Rotary Club of Vernon, already are covered in layers of spray paint. And although it's been coated in a protective wax, the spray paint has not been wiped off.

Other defaced murals such as Frank Romero's "Going to the Olympics," Willie Herron's "Luchas del Mundo," and Glenna Boltuch Avila's "L.A. Freeway Kids," have become so heavily tagged that they've simply been painted over.

Not our fault

But officials with the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs say that in recent years they have been unfairly portrayed as being lax for allowing the murals to decay.

They say funding for restoration has plunged in 10 years, from $400,000 in the late 1990s to $20,000 for 2007-08 -- only enough to restore two murals.

"The department has continually worked for restoration and conservation," said Will Caperton y Montoya, the department's marketing director.

"What we're attempting to do now is create a mural task force to look at ways to create a strategic plan to look at those 400 murals that are in the most need."

Recently, department officials were notified a day after Caltrans painted over three badly damaged murals.

"I can't speak on Caltrans' behalf because our responsibility ended with the end of that project," said Pat Gomez, who oversees the Cultural Affairs' public art division.

"We were surprised and disappointed."

The murals were in such bad shape and so badly damaged, that the decision was made to paint over them, said Jeanne Bonfilio, Caltrans spokeswoman.

"We had received so many calls about this," said Bonfilio. "And the murals were not representing Los Angeles and the downtown area in a positive way."

When a mural is defaced, the artist who painted it is required, as part of a permit, to do touch-up work.

But many muralists say they're not being notified in time or just can't find the funding. As a result, tagging can linger on murals longer than if it was sprayed on street signs or traffic signals -- which are city property and must be cleaned in two days, said Paul Racs, public works director of the office of community beautification.

In fact, taggers have realized that their work will stay on murals longer than on blank walls, so their canvas of choice is the mural.

"Murals used to be respected," said Racs. "Over time, the taggers have figured out that if they tag it, it's more time-consuming to remove the graffiti than just going out and painting out a wall."

Once restored, crews from the Department of Public Works slather on coats of protection over the older murals in case they are ever tagged again.

"Unfortunately, there are a lot more murals getting tagged now than there were four or five years ago," said Racs. "But there's a lot more of everything getting tagged."

With a $1.7 million state grant, Caltrans worked with the city's Cultural Affairs Department to add protective coating to 17 murals on freeways, said Daniel Freeman, Caltrans deputy district director of maintenance.

The Cultural Affairs Department opted to shield the murals in wax so if tagged again, a mural can be blasted with hot water.

Hot wax lessons

Still, despite advances in technology, the transportation agency has been unable to find a method to remove graffiti that does not damage the murals, Freeman said.

The wax shield can also remove pieces of the art work -- a lesson Caltrans workers, artists and city officials recently learned when three murals made for the 1984 Olympics on the Hollywood Freeway downtown were damaged during a cleanup.

As a result, Caltrans painted over the colorful murals near Broadway and Spring streets in a drab shade of gray to match the concrete freeway walls after they could not reach two of the artists to restore them.

Under city permits, Caltrans has the right to paint over the murals if artists don't maintain them.

"We don't have a good way of removing the graffiti without damaging the mural," Freeman said. "If we give a permit to artists ... part of the contract we require is for them to maintain it for just that reason."

But Freeman said the murals still lie beneath the gray paint and can be restored.

A proud tradition

Los Angeles' mural movement dates back to the 1960s and '70s, when youths were being politicized by the civil-rights movement, anti-Vietnam War activism and Chicano- and black-pride movements.

Artists like Baca, Twitchell, David Botello and Wayne Healy, among others, emerged as the city's visual storytellers, recording Angelenos and their stories in a way that would send a positive message and beautify neighborhoods.

"It happened naturally during the hippie '60s and early '70s," Twitchell said. "We influenced the world."

For Latino artists, the murals depicted their history and their influence on the development of Los Angeles. Miles of bare concrete walls provided a place where they could express their struggles and successes.

Healy, along with Botello, co-founded what became the mural team known as East Los Streetscapers, which created dozens of murals including the "Chicano Time Trip" in Lincoln Heights.

Painted across five panels, the mural was completed in 1977 and depicts hundreds of years of Chicano history -- from pre-Columbian society to colonialism to Mexican independence.

Art to the masses

The idea of bringing art to the masses to share cultural history in public brings people together in unsuspecting ways, Baca said.

"We drive in cars, in metal boxes, down these concrete roads at massive speeds, but the murals are there for all of us," Baca said.

Those growing up and watching their histories emerge on concrete walls were inspired, said Los Angeles Councilman Ed Reyes, whose district features 151 murals, including "Chicano Time Trip."

"These were windows to history we otherwise weren't exposed to at the time," Reyes said. "It was a great source of pride."

Time and taggers, however, conquered the bottom half of "Chicano Time Trip." Reyes secured $25,000 to restore it in 2005, but both Healy and Reyes are discouraged by the ongoing tagging.

"It's a very frustrating feeling," Healy said. "It's counteractive negative imagery. The first thing I want to do is blame these kids, but you have to step back and ask, why are they doing this?"

Police have said the increase in spray-paint vandalism is evidence of escalating rivalry among Los Angeles' tagging crews.

But Baca said there are deeper reasons.

"I'm not at all surprised by the destruction caused by youth," Baca said.

Every piece of public space in Los Angeles is now corporatized, leaving few places for young artists to express themselves, she said.

"We received an e-mail from one tagger who said: "The only place that's left that's mine is a wall,'" Baca said.

Some hope

Despite the losses, members of the Social and Public Art Resource Center are working to restore and even bring back muralism to Los Angeles.

Co-founded by Baca 30 years ago and housed in an old police station in Venice, SPARC produces, preserves and conducts educational programs about public art.

The organization recently submitted a proposal to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called Murals for a New Los Angeles. It also has a Web site -- www.savelamurals.org -- where residents can report damage or the disappearance of the works.

And next month, a forum called "Resistance and Respect" will include a panel of muralists, graffiti artists and taggers talking about how to stop the destruction of public art.

"We can't just sit back and think the problem is insurmountable because then we won't do anything," said Debra Padilla, executive director for SPARC.

"We still want to come back. I feel a great responsibility to the legacy of these murals."

susan.abram(at)dailynews.com

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CAPTION(S):

6 photos, 2 boxes, map

Photo:

(1 -- color) A pedestrian strolls past "You are the Star," a 1983 mural at Hollywood Boulevard and Wilcox Avenue in Hollywood featuring scads of movie stars.

(2 -- color) Artist Judy Baca stands at "The Great Wall of Los Angeles," painted from 1976 to 1984 and tracing California's history, in the Tujunga Wash.

(3) A pedestrian passes in front of a mural on Dell Street near Venice Boulevard in Venice that shows children playing as adults work in an agricultural setting.

(4) Here is another view of "The Great Wall of Los Angeles." This segment along Coldwater Canyon between Oxnard Street and Burbank Boulevard in North Hollywood.

Andy Holzman/Staff Photographer

(5) The "L.A. Marathon" mural is painted on the west wall of the southbound Golden State Freeway near Dodger Stadium. Murals around Los Angeles are in various states of decay and damage.

(6 -- color) "Chicano Time Trip" by Wayne Healy and David Botello is painted on the side of the East West Bank on North Broadway.

John McCoy/Staff Photographer

Box:

Graffiti by the numbers

Box/Map:

Murals in the Valley

SOURCES: The Social and Public Art Resource and Daily News research