Article via Hyperallergic - Some clear answers are finally surfacing after a week of the LA MOCA controversy. Recently an email between the censored street artist Blu and renowned graffiti photographer Henry Chalfant has been posted online.
Blu has confirmed to me via email that the text is real, and Chalfant has said he will provide his comments on the situation this afternoon.
The email reveals that MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch did not request or see any preliminary sketches for Blu’s mural, and that when Blu arrived in LA almost “everyone” was in Miami during the annual art fairs.
After Deitch decided to erase the mural, the two met for dinner and:
had a very gentle conversation in wich [sic] he asked me to paint another piece on the same wall, suggesting he would have preferred a piece that ‘invites people to come in the museum’. I told him that i will not to do that, for obvious reasons, and that probably I was not the artist best suited for this task.
