Los Angeles Street Art

Few cities around the world offer a landscape as sprawling, cultured and creative as the urban canvas of Los Angeles.

The dichotomy of LA’s artistic community is palpable, if not like the temperament of two siblings. The first, a vibrant film industry that commands global attention and admiration. The second, a discrete street art community defined through the subtlety of murals hidden within alleyway and on walls of corner shops. The latter is as unapologetic as it is boisterous in its display of intent and symbolism.

There’s intention in such discretion. The artists of La La Land grasp the virtue of subjectivity, and reflex against the mainstream. Their art is for those who seek to pause, reflect and learn — it demands time and interpretation. Each mural represents an individual, celebrates a moment and offers a purpose.

Or perhaps it’s that Los Angeles’ street art is as distinct and discretionary as the city itself. A culture seemingly painted with the composite of humanity — blended, molded, melted and re-purposed with new meaning and inherent pride.

“Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.” — Frank Lloyd Wright

Perhaps the art community’s biggest contribution is that it calibrates an artistic spectrum, and balances the city. While Hollywood captures hearts and lives digitally for eternity, street art is ephemeral and inevitably forgotten, or worse, replaced.

Stoically framed, the art is no different from society itself — hoping to never be forgotten, always appreciated and never misunderstood.

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See the hidden street art of San Francisco here.