Florida-based artist Robert Wyland – he’s almost always referred to as simply “Wyland” – was busy in his studio in the Florida Keys a few weeks ago doing what he always does: painting or sculpting vibrant, vivid scenes of aquatic life. Then his assistant walked in.
Wyland, 69, has earned international acclaim for his “whaling walls,” a series of larger-than-life murals across the United States and abroad, many which have become iconic parts of the fabric of American cities. Peacefully depicting the largest mammals on earth on warehouses and office buildings, the murals’ whales lumber along gracefully, offering city goers a moment or two of tranquillity amid chaos.
In the late 90s, Wyland threw one such mural, dubbed Ocean Life, up in Dallas, Texas. At 82 feet tall, it was among his favorites. Over the ensuing thirty years, folks in the city grew attached to it. And like everything else around it, the mural started to age a little bit, too – the blues and blacks started to fade, and cracks began to show in the paint.
Wyland frequently touches up his work, and doing so to Ocean Life had long been on his list of future projects. At least it was, until Wyland’s assistant delivered him the bad news.
“She told me someone had called and told her that they were whitewashing the wall, or blue-washing it, I guess,” Wyland told the Guardian. “I was shocked. It really caught me off guard.”
Sure enough, photos of the wall soon cropped up on social media, and on Wyland’s phone. At first, it was unclear why this longstanding piece of public art had been painted over. Wyland, along with others at his foundation, struggled to get their bearings. Some of the artist’s work has disappeared over the years – usually when a building gets torn down – but neither Wyland or anybody around him had been consulted or even warned that this was coming.
What has ensued has thrust the artist into a battle with the most powerful sporting organization in the world, a local organizing committee, and has sparked a long-needed debate about the ownership and importance of public art.
In time, Wyland learned that his work had been entirely erased to make way for a new mural promoting the upcoming Fifa World Cup. Almost immediately, Wyland’s team filed a cease and desist. Days later, they filed a lawsuit against Fifa seeking $25m in damages.
“This is a David and Goliath thing for sure,” said Wyland. “They are a multi-billion dollar [organization], and I am a single artist with a small foundation, But I tell you, they picked the wrong artist and the wrong artwork. I am not going to stand by and let them get away with this.”
Wyland’s fascination with ocean life began at age 14 on a family trip to California. His exposure to it was understandably limited in Detroit, his home town, but the vacation took him to Laguna Beach, where a pod of grey whales were undertaking their yearly migration journey – a 12,000-mile, round-trip swim from the Arctic to warmer waters in Mexico. When a young Wyland saw them breaching in the distance, he was hooked, growing up to idolize famed oceanographer and film-maker Jacques Cousteau.
About a year later, he tried his hand at painting a mural for the first time. He’d long been obsessed with art, but when one of his teachers wanted a snowy mountain scene painted on the side of the ice cream and burger shack he owned, Wyland took the assignment. It paid $100. For the next few years, he took any work he could find, eventually moving to California to try to hack it full-time. Things were so lean at one point, Wyland will tell you, that he was subsisting on a single Snickers bar a day.
Over the ensuing half-century, Wyland honed in on an almost singular purpose: ocean conservation. His life’s work are the whaling walls. He painted his first one in 1981, in Laguna Beach, not far from where he’d fallen in love with whales in the first place. The scene – a California grey whale with her calf swimming alongside her – was an instant hit. Inspired by the response, Wyland decided then and there to set out to paint a hundred of them. 26 years, 11 months and five days later, Wyland achieved the feat. Many of the walls have been painted in the United States, but his work spans the globe, dotting 17 different countries.
The destruction of his mural in Dallas has sparked widespread outcry. Because of the varied parties involved – the North Texas World Cup Organizing Committee, the city of Dallas and its local economic development agency, Fifa, and the building’s managers and owners – assigning blame has been tricky. Very few of the involved parties have offered any comment. The city of Dallas claimed that Wyland was contacted about the mural, something the artist calls a “blatant lie.”
Wyland feels he knows who to blame, and says his lawsuit was filed in part to expose just who made the decision to replace his work.
“[Fifa] needs to come clean,” says Wyland. “They’re responsible. They are saying they’re not. Does that pass the smell test to you? It’s their event.”
Wyland’s lawsuit cites the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) of 1990, which affords artists of “recognized stature” protection against the intentional or negligent destruction of their work. The $25m that Wyland is asking for would be far and away the largest award claimed in a VARA lawsuit. The artist says he’ll donate any proceeds from the lawsuit to charity.
“Sometimes, [money] is the only thing people understand,” said Wyland. “The number had to be big enough to where it’s a wake-up call to people who come into a community and just destroy a piece of art that’s part of the fabric of it. Artist’s rights aren’t just about the artist. They’re also about the public art that gives the people who live in a given city so much joy.”
Work has stopped on the mural for now, and every party involved is passing the blame. The building’s owners made it clear they simply donated the space for a public art project, and that they’re not making a dime off of it. Fifa, meanwhile, told the Guardian that they have “no involvement in this whatsoever,” referring all inquiries to the host city committee.
The local organizing committee has acknowledged shortcomings in communication (and absolved Fifa of blame), while Downtown Dallas, Inc (DDI), the local economic development agency, has done their best to distance themselves from the controversy, saying they were only involved in early discussions about Fifa’s incoming mural.
Emails obtained by the Dallas Morning News last week paint a different picture. They quote one DDI employee pointing to Wyland’s work as an ideal landing spot for a World Cup mural.
“The current mural there is over 30 years old and past its useful life,” the employee wrote.
“Is the Mona Lisa beyond its usable life?” said Wyland. “Would you say a Van Gogh is beyond its usable life? [My murals] have been around a long time. And maybe it’s faded a little bit, or cracking. That’s bull – what one person makes that judgement on behalf of all of the people of Dallas? They’ll try and spin everything.”
There are other questions which remain unanswered, including maybe the most obvious one of all: if Fifa, or the organizing committee, simply wanted to promote the World Cup, why wouldn’t they have simply plastered the side of the building with a temporary solution? There’s precedent for that: for eight years, Wyland’s work in Dallas was covered up by ads on banners before re-emerging during the pandemic.
Wyland hopes to get some clarity in court, where his legal representation can “follow the money,” he says. Even if given the opportunity, the artist has said, he likely wouldn’t repaint the wall. Some thirty years after its creation, recreating the massive mural would be a significant undertaking for a man nearing 70.
The local organizing committee has yet to reveal any details as to the specifics of what they’d planned to replace Wyland’s work with, though it’s legitimately questionable at this point whether that artwork will ever go up, given the backlash.
None of it matters much to Wyland. Speaking with him, one gets the sense he is still grappling with the loss of something significant.
“These walls are like my kids,” said Wyland. “This is really, really personal.”
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