Ocean art destroyed to make way for football advertising? There will be consequences, warns this celebrity diver-artist. JOHN CHRISTOPHER FINE reports
The International Federation of Association Football, better known as FIFA, has Dallas, Texas slated to host nine matches over 59 days during this summer’s World Cup. Football is big business, which means big money – and big money swings action.
In this case it is “Whaling Wall” painter Wyland who is being kicked around. His magnificent 25m-high mural depicting ocean life on the side of a building at 505 North Akard has been painted over in blue, and the next step is for FIFA to erect signage promoting the World Cup.
“Dallas is landlocked. The mural of humpback whales and dolphins that I painted in 1999 makes people think about connection with the oceans. This is about saving art in America,” Wyland told me from his studio in Islamorada in the Florida Keys.
Wyland is one of the world’s best-known marine-life artists, celebrated for his vivid paintings of whales, dolphins, turtles and coral-reef ecosystems. Born far from any coast, in Michigan in 1956, he developed an early fascination with the ocean and, after moving to California in the 1970s, became a dedicated scuba diver.
Frequent encounters with marine mammals inspired him to dedicate his career to ocean-themed art and conservation, and led to his monumental public artworks depicting life-sized whales and other marine creatures – there are now 103 on buildings all over the world.
A longtime advocate for ocean conservation through the Wyland Foundation, which promotes clean water and marine-ecosystem protection, Wyland has spent much of his life diving and working in California, Florida and Hawaii, while his underwater experiences in locations such as Mexico, Fiji, Australia and the Caribbean have also informed his art.
No room for debate
The latest of his many books is dedicated to the need to save art education in America. “The heroes are teachers and kids,” he said. “Who thinks it’s OK to take art and music out of our schools?”
In his view there is no room for debate on that issue – nor does he have any time for excuses for the painting over of his Dallas mural, a story that has made national news in the USA.
“The previous owner of the building was offered $250,000 a month to allow advertisers to paint on the wall,” Wyland told me. “He refused, said his children had watched me paint it. That’s a man of integrity,”
The artist pulls no punches. A legal battle is to be fought, bring to bear the Visual Arts Rights Act, a 1990 amendment to copyright law intended to protect artists and visual works of art of “recognised stature” against mutilation or destruction.
The act is supposed to provide protection throughout the life of an artist, and it is the artist alone who can waive these rights, in writing (17 US Code 106 A).
No notification
Herschel Walker of American football team the Dallas Cowboys took part in the 1999 Whaling Wall project and cut the ribbon when the wall was unveiled. The mural is Dallas and for Dallas, art that its citizens take pride in. Questions raised by media concern the price Americans everywhere will pay to have this mural, or any public art, when it is defaced or destroyed.
“They didn’t notify me, nor the Wyland Foundation,” said Wyland. That’s the fight right now, I have to win. Lose this and all artists lose. This is about all artists and public art. ”
What will happen next? Wyland has estimated the value of the destroyed mural at around $15 million, and has engaged the services of a Dallas law firm to pursue his rights. He has declared that any money recovered as a result will be given to charities to fund conservation efforts.
What is evident in all of this is a lack of respect for art. Art is essential to the human soul. It brings peace, solace and enjoyment, depicts nature, history and strategic events in human development. Once a work of art is lost, it is gone forever.
“I will not re-paint it – never,” Wyland told me, his angst apparent. The same emotion any artist or art-lover feels when art is destroyed.
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