What do you see when you look at this image? The muralist, Beau Stanton, who painted it on a building owned by the Los Angeles Unified School District meant you to see a representation of screen legend Ava Gardner and some details evoking one of her haunts, the Cocoanut Grove nightclub. Others see different things.
Among them is Chan Yong “Jake” Jeong, a local attorney and president of the Wilshire Community Coalition, who sent a letter to the school district that resulted in Roberto Martinez, the senior school district administrator for the area, ordering the application of whitewash to obscure forever the mural. Jeong's objection to it was its supposed resemblance to the Japanese battle flag of WWII.
WWII Japanese flag.Hard to tell the difference.
Arizona state flag.
Silly as this is, it's spawned some retaliation. Artist Shepard Fairey had painted a likeness of Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated at the site before it was acquired by the school district. He insisted that he would remove his own work if Stanton's was painted over.
That threat was sufficient to restore sanity. The mural stays.
Actually, Ava Gardner probably had a bigger influence on America than Robert Kennedy did.
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