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ROMERO’S “GOING TO THE OLYMPICS” TO GO BACK UP

by Bill Lasarow

Frank Romero, "Going to the Olympics," 1984. The artist at work on the original mural, now to be repainted.

After CalTrans painted over the lower third of Frank Romero’s celebratory “Going to the Olympics” mural (one of the 1984 Olympic Mural Project murals) last year--in order to save it from graffiti taggers--an old conversation came up. Romero had it for years in the back of his mind a desire to revisit this mural if the opportunity presented itself. Recently that is just what happened, when the Los Angeles Amateur Athletic Foundation (LAAAF), a remaining byproduct of those 1984 Olympic Games, contacted MCLA to look into sponsoring the restoration and preservation of one of the Olympic murals.

A process of reviewing all of the candidate murals took into account a rough budget LAAAF proposed. In previous years the Foundation had been adding stretches of empty wall space to an inventory of graffiti prevention grants. This year, for the first time, it was decided that protecting a wall on which there was existing public art would be a more exciting prospect--and as an organization borne out of the 1984 Olympic Games it would be logical to provide support for the group of official Olympic murals, most of which remain intact. Romero’s mural not only met the quality and approximate budget criteria quite well, but it had been the subject of recent controversy after CalTrans painted over the lower third of the image in order to eradicate graffiti tags. The media had a good time poking fun at the agency’s effort, which effectively destroyed the mural in order to save it. As noted, the artist himself had expressed interest in one day repainting “Going to the Olympics” years before the CalTrans snafu. He was never happy with the paints he had originally used and that their color had faded. Given an opportunity, he said, he would like to improve the quality of media and preparation. Then the Mural Conservancy could provide coating protection to insure taggers’ efforts to deface the work would no longer succeed. The key to LAAAF’s support is that it permits Romero to, in fact, completely repaint the mural. From a conservation point of view, this is the best way possible to provide the longest possible lifespan to the work: the protective coating will be applied to the mural immediately after it is finished. The rare opportunity for the artist is that the original image of cars riding alongside their real world counterparts under a sky loaded with symbols of the city and the Games may be modified in ways yet to be known.. Now that the support has been made official by LAAAF, Romero, as we go to press, is working on the advance preparation. By his rekoning he expects to begin repainting the freeway wall before the end of June, and (weather permitting) expects to complete the new painting over the course of the summer. Will he use the same broom technique to achieve the effect of studio brushwork as in the original? Will the wrestlers and the Goodyear blimp remain in place? Will there be images that appear to reflect events of the last sixteen years added in? All of these questions and more will be answered as we drive along the Hollywood Freeway this summer.

PROFILE OF MURALIST ELLIOTT PINKNEY by Robin J. Dunitz

Soft-spoken, lanky Elliott Pinkney has been uplifting spirits in the Los Angeles area with his murals for more than 30 years. Originally from Georgia, he first came to California while in the Air Force at age 24. After his discharge he attended college at Woodbury University in L.A. He is also a poet, printmaker and fiberglass sculptor. Elliott did his first mural in the mid to late 1960s inside a neighborhood arts center in Compton, called the Communicative Arts Academy. Among the center’s driving forces were John Outterbridge and Noah Purifoy. “The mural was a bootstrap thing,” Elliott remembers. “ about how a man can come up from the ground level and elevate himself. I enjoyed the freedom of working large like that.” The center was closed and the building demolished in the early 1970s. In those early days Elliott went to see the murals being done in East L.A. as there weren’t many in the African American community. He also did, and continues to do, a lot of study of the Mexican muralists.

Elliott Pinkney, "Community Heroes," 2015 E. Hatchway St., Compton, 1990. Pinkney recently painted this mural over with the new Getting to Know You, 1999.

Elliot Pinkney, Los Angeles "Community Anti-Smoking Mural," Watts Towers Art Center, 1727 E. 107th St., Watts, 1991.

In 1977 he received a grant from the California Arts Council to do 11 murals in Compton. Most of them were commemorative, honoring heroic figures. Only a few of them are still up as buildings got torn down or new owners had them painted out. Spirits of America is a 41’ by 12’ interior mural inside a conference room at Dollarhide Neighborhood Center at 1108 North Oleander. It features portraits of Cesar Chavez, Abraham Lincoln, Mary McLeod Bethune, Martin Luther King Jr. Louis Armstrong and Albert Einstein. Medicare 78 is a tribute to health care professionals and is painted on a communty health clinic at 920 South Alameda. Elliott repainted this mural in the early 1990s. In 1991, the state of California commissioned him to do a mural targeted at African American youth against cigarette smoking. His dramatic painting filled with skeletons, gravestones and other graphic symbols has become a landmark outside the Watts Towers Arts Center. Over the years Elliott has done a number of murals in