Art fans and alternative rock fans banded together to save a huge mural in Los Angeles this week. The mural in question, which also happens to be the commissioned album art for Foster The People's Supermodel album, was set to be painted over as of Tuesday before Mayor Eric Garcetti stepped in.
The Los Angeles Times was on it last week, running a story July 11 dealing with the forthcoming paint job, and that inspired fan Johanna Maria to open a petition on Change.org requesting that the mural be spared. The pitch gathered more than 12,000 signatures over the weekend, made its way to Garcetti's desk, and the painting found itself a pardon.
The band invited fans down to the mural for a celebration and handed out limited editions prints of the "Supermodel" piece to attendees. Fans were interviewed by a camera crew about the mural although there's no word where that footage might end up.
"Supermodel" is one of the nation's largest murals, taking up the side of a seven-story building. The wall features the same painting from the cover of 2014's Supermodel album, a design thought up by Foster frontman Mark Foster and street artists Daniel Lahoda, Leba and Vyal. It features a psychedelic woman on a pillar, seemingly vomiting a stream of words in front of some gangly paparazzi (it sounds gross but it doesn't look that bad). The mural version doesn't feature the band's title.
The destruction of "Supermodel" would have been the second assault on urban album art in recent months. Kurt Vile's album Walkin' On A Pretty Daze was also celebrated with a building-side mural, this time in Philadelphia, before some jerk started painting over it for no reason during June. Fortunately the aggressor in that case has agreed to compensate the artist to repaint the piece.
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