The great wall of los angeles ENG
So today let’s talk about The Great Wall of Los Angeles, one public art project which has an important relationship with theurban space where it is and which could be considered as a good example of what can be a part of that big ensemble called as public art: something which is installed in public,
something which is publicly funded, something which is community based.
The Great Wall Of Los Angeles is a project conceived by Judith Baca28, a Californian based artist
who is the artistic director of the SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center). She created a
painted mural which is a representation of the history of ethnic peoples and racial conflicts of
California from prehistoric times to the 1950’s. The Great Wall can be considered as a work in
progress due to the fact that it took five summers from 1976 to 1983 and, because of its constant
restoration, it is still going on. The artists and the SPARC indeed are thinking about other histories
to paint about the 1960’s 1970’s and 1980’s, so they are planning to continue the project.
This artwork is also particularly important because it is linked with the architecture of the wall and
the course of the river which was nearby. In 1974 the Army Corps of Engineers contacted J. Baca
about the possibility of creating a mural in the flood control channel as a part of a beautification
project that included a mini park and the bicycle park. The idea of creating this painting mural
was therefore connected with the urbanization of the place and was thought as a place of medium
inside the city, in the particular site of the Tujunga Flood Control Channel of the San Francisco
Valley. This fact means that the artwork rises to fit that particular place, therefore it is about the
history of the place and also it can be considered as a community based project because it involved
lots of people from there, this artwork holds inside itself the definition of community based public
art and site-specificity too.
She involved the community of Los Angeles in this project which is supported by the governmental
juvenile justice funding, which gave to the project a great deal of support. The theme of social and
civic education is an important issue to understand the importance of this community-based
artwork, because the SPARC involved students and youths referred by the criminal justice
department and teenagers from difficult situations who were mostly from low income families and
were paid through the Summer Youth Employment Program. From the point of view of the
education these students received art instruction, attended lectures from historians specializing in
ethnic history and learning to work together in the diversity of their cultures of belonging.
The particular idea of the artist is that this project is also community-based because it is made by
the work of scholar students and historians who decided to study and make research about the real
local history, about what doesn’t appear in the books as opposed to a written accepted history, that
is to say the story that was left outside the history books, with also Latinos Mexicanos
contributions. The involvement of hundreds historians and ethnographic gave the possibility to
study more the documentations of the city and also the stories told by the community, rewriting in
this way the history of the racial conflict. During this research they discovered for example that
many of the trees thought to be as Californian like the Eucaliptus and Pepper were brought by
settlers and also that it is commonly believed that the founders of Los Angeles were Spanish, in fact
only one of the 22 of the expedition was Spanish, the rest were Indian Black,or Mestizo30.
The last part is dedicated to the 1950’s and the 1960’s, which were one of the most violent time of
social unrest related to the Civil Right Movement. The Jim Crow Laws named also as the “white
only law” introduced in the 1870’s said that the black and with people were separated in every
aspect of the public life, public school, public place including the public transportation were black
people were obliged to seat in the behind part of the bus. During the 1950’s and the 1960’s there
have been the period of the civil rights movement, were people with a non-violence way defeated
their right to be like others even in California, with the example of Martin Luther King jr. and Rosa
Parks. She gave rise to what is called as the “Montgomery Bus Boicott”, which consists in the fact
that she refused to leave her seat to a white person. It is also the period of the beginning of the gay
movement in California. With the 1964 Civil Right Act the Jim Crow law failed.
This project could be an example of what is meant for community-based public art and youth
education, and it is also linked with the city itself because of its history and the architecture.
The Great Wall from a historical point of view reminds the Mexican important murals for example
those ones of Rivera, Siquerios and Orozco. It can also be connected with the street art and be seen
as a link between the street art and the mechanisms of public art, arises in this case lots of
considerations and issues about the relationship and similarities which can be found between these
two types or “currents” of art.
The Great Wall of Los Angeles has to be crossed in order to be totally lived and experienced. The
poetry of this work consisted, therefore, in the relation with the architecture around of it and the
architecture of the wall, by generating in this way a work of accompaniment, which is totally bound
with the architecture by becoming a part of it.
So this is site-specific public art, intended as something conceived for the place where it is, and also
conceived for people who spend time there. The artwork and the wall itself should be considered as
a sequential space, generating what could be called urban public art, because of its physical,
historical and community relation to that urban space, that is the one of the city of Los Angeles, and
amplifying it with the California.
We can considered this work as an architecturalisation of art, in which a place near a river becomes
a space of flow and movement of people and it creates a real space of art, where the work is alive.
Giada Pellicari
