Not Everybody Loved Snyder's Response - What Are the New Rules of the Streets?

Last month, Anthony Lister came to Los Angeles to paint a commission wall on Melrose for Plant of the Apes. While in LA, Lister also painted some unsanctioned walls, including a piece further down Melrose where he went placed one of his faces over the bottom half of Snyder's Rocket Boy. (You can see the original Lister piece HERE)

It kind of seemed like a compliment at first to M&F to have a big name artist incorporate a piece into his, but the community did not feel this way and spoke out strongly against what they felt was disrespect being shown towards one of LA's own favorite street artists.

Snyder said that he was a fan of Lister's, but he also wasn't thrilled with the interaction, and in a clever piece that did not necessarily cap Lister's piece as much as it threw bananas at it, Snyder came back to the spot and painted a monkey throwing a banana that is going 'splat!' on the face of Lister's character. LA's street art community rallied behind Snyder, and the feature was the most popular feature of that week.

Snyder's use of the monkey was also a clear commentary of the corporate Planet of the Apes mural for Fox that Lister had been hired to paint. (You can see Snyder's response HERE)

Well, not everyone in LA enjoyed Snyder's response. A few weeks after Snyder's monkey went up, the monkey got painted over with pink paint. It was the same time that Dame painted some new graffiti down below along with another piece from unknown artist (with sick style). There was pink in the pieces and Dame had been involved with taking Lister around on a previous visit to Los Angeles, so it most likely seems that the cap back was a retaliation by Dame on behalf of Lister.

On a related note, the previous mural that was here went up after M&F broke a story about rave dance posters going up over graffiti at this spot. After a lot of backlash, the owner of the poster company apologized, said it would never happen again, and bought paint for artists to come back and paint it. Some artists did paint a new mural for Iggy Azalea--at the time M&F thought those were the artist's names, but it turns out it was a commissioned wall that was an advertisement for a musical artist named Iggy Azalea. (You can see the Iggy Azalea piece HERE).

There is a line of gold paint through the new Dame piece, but the gold paint was over a lot of stuff in the area so it seems that it was just some asshole with a spray can and not directed at anyone in particular.

Before people get all heated, the bigger questions are that these situations seem to raise some really interesting questions about the developing relationship between active street artists, and commission walls, not necessarily by corporations, but by true street and graffiti artists paid by corporations to use their art to promote something.

What are the new rules of the streets?