Monday, April 26, 2010

Painted Bridges - Los Angeles River Bridge

An under-appreciated class of painted bridges are structures covered with graffiti. In fact, bridge owners often pay to have graffiti removed! That's unfortunate since the best graffiti is a highly accomplished and beautiful folk art that enhances a bridge's appearance.

Few graffiti artists have the resources to cover an entire bridge with a single painting. Therefore, graffiti-embellished bridges have two appearances. From a distance we get a pointillistic impression of patterns and colors that remain indistinct while a closer look reveals individual works of art. For instance, looking at this railroad bridge across the Los Angeles River, we get an impression of a variety of colors representing a kind of collage on the steel through girder.

It's amazing how these artists manage to put their paintings on the outside of bridges. On this bridge they might have stood on the deck and painted their image while bending upside down over the girder. On taller structures they might have used rope climbing gear!

Please feel free to send your own favorite photos of graffiti-embellished bridges or your comments on the controversy of allowing graffiti to remain on bridges. Tomorrow, we'll take a closer look at individual works of bridge graffiti.
Creative Commons License

Painted Bridges - Los Angeles River Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

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