Some shots here of various Melrose paste-ups, many by MBW. The Ray Charles and Britney ones are gone by now.

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Just half a block away from the oil hyenas on Melrose is Bicycle Kitchen. Across from that gathering place for cyclists is this mural:

We think the artists' names are Cache and Makatron, but if we're wrong, I'm sure you will let us know. More after the jump.

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The wall full of Hyenas wearing oil company bling was previously a Seventh Letter wall covered in a lot of complex, almost dizzying, writing.

These pictures are from September 2007 on Santa Monica near Heliotrope. I checked back several times to see if maybe there might be a time with no cars parked in front of it, but being a laundry parking lot, it always had cars - and vans.

It was difficult to get any half decent shots of the entire wall, so it's mostly just close ups of the individual writers' work, which is why these didn't get posted before now. More after the jump.

All photos by Mark Mauer.

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This has to be the most directly political wall mural I've seen. Near the intersection of Heliotrope and Melrose on the wall of a laundry, is this excellent send-up of the major oil companies and Disney to boot.

Up until recently this wall had a kind of outer space feel to it and, and was mostly made up of MSK tags. I have pictures of it and will post those later this week (Done: here they are), but I'm definitely digging this new version more.

All photos by Mark Mauer. More after the jump.

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The wall that went up a couple of weeks ago on Virgil a few blocks south of Santa Monica is looking beautiful. Here are some sections that weren't finished during our last visit.

All photos by Mark Mauer. More after the jump.
The words Retna painted going across the piece are lyrics from a Manu Chao song.

You can see more of this piece in our earlier post here.

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Somehow, I doubt that Paul Thomas Anderson is going to love this so much that he'll grab it to hang in his house the way Murakmai did with Augor and Revok's piece a couple of weeks ago.

Shelley Leopold got this picture of an excellent billboard liberation project done by Augor at Melrose and Mansfield. The There Will Be Blood imagery just barely survives with the logo, fire and Daniel Day-Lewis facing away, watching Augor's letters come to life.

If you want to see it in person, better get there fast. With the Oscars coming up, the studios probably won't find this in the least bit amusing.

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This is simply one of my favorite street art wall murals in Los Angeles. Done by MarkA27

The face of César Chávez has gotten some ugly tags all over it. But I love the way the painted plants flow right into the real ones growing against the wall. And the pickers are working right in the thick of them.

Marka27 sent me a note explaining some of his thoughts behind the mural:

The mural is about progress and the power that we graffiti artist have in the streets. We can make a difference in communities by the message we choose to paint. Pancho Villa in the center has spray paint cans on his vest and the people farming are planting spraypaint. This is symbolic to me meaning that I hope other graffiti writers choose to use there skills to uplift and educate by planting seeds through graffiti for the urban youth. After all graffiti murals are the museums of the streets.

The mural is located on the 100 N. block of Glendale Blvd. and Colton in the area between Echo Park and downtown L.A.

Hey - it's Leon Trotsky! (thanks to Jonathan Gold for the I.D.). Trotsky spent the last couple years of his life in Mexico and was assassinated there by Ramón Mercader, who drove an icepick into his skull.

Many thanks to Kelly Trull who corrected me on the identity. This is José Clemente Orozco, a contemporary of Kahlo and Diego Rivera who was also a part of the "Mexican Mural Renaissance."

Frida Kahlo needs no introduction.

All photos by Mark Mauer. Some detail shots after the jump.

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I got lucky Saturday when just a few blocks from my apartment I came across Retna and Dame working on a new wall on Virgil.

Above, Dame working on his part of the wall.

Lots of skating near the painting. Here's what the wall had looked like before it's rehabilitation.

More after the jump. All photos by Mark Mauer

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Bobby S. saw and snapped this on Melrose near the New Beverly on the site of a previous Banksy piece. Check out his bigger picture and write-up here on his blog kitsunenoir.com

Photo property of kitsunenoir.com

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Above and below in Silver Lake on Sunset Blvd.

Below, found in West Hollywood on Santa Monica Blvd.

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By Shelley Leopold

n the early morning hours in mid-December, an amazing masterpiece of epic pink proportions appeared above the Melrose strip. Not MOCA's Murakami billboard itself, but rather a young curator's fantasy art show: "Murakami/AUGER/REVOK." The spectacle lasted two days, and then it was gone. For most of us who missed it entirely, the billboard became art-opening gossip - already a mythic achievement - and yet another coup pulled off by a couple of L.A.'s most prolific and talented AWR/MSK writers.

Luckily, REVOK carried his camera that day, and L.A. Weekly received the photo; we were wowed. So, it turns out, was Murakami, whose Kaikai Kiki studio found the evidence via the Internet and had the billboard surreptitiously removed. Murakami buffing billboards all the way from Japan? On the contrary, according to his representatives, he found it "so wonderful, he had to have it for his collection." Our billboard is now on its way to Tokyo.

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