The Story Of "The Pink Lady of Malibu"

Wooster Collective ("a celebration of street art") has an article about "The Pink Lady of Malibu," which appeared over a tunnel in Malibu Canyon Road in 1966.

One Saturday morning, on October 29, 1966, a massive 60-foot-tall painting of a nude pink lady holding flowers suddenly appeared as you headed into the tunnel on Malibu Canyon Road.
As word of the massive pink lady spread, and the traffic on the highway grew to a halt, city officials decided "The Pink Lady" had to be removed. Firefighters were called to hosing her off the rocks. It didn't work. Buckets of paint thinner were thrown on the rocks. It only made her pink skin pinker.
As county officials worked on figuring out a way to remove The Pink Lady, a 31-year-old paralegal from Northridge, a woman named Lynne Seemayer, suddenly showed up on the road and admitted that she was the artist who did the piece.
Seemayer said that she was annoyed by the graffiti that was all over the canyon wall ("Valley Go Home" was a memorable slogan) and so, over a 10 month period, she started to secretly climb up under the moonlight and suspended herself by ropes to remove the graffiti.
At 8 P. M. on October 28 Seemayer painted the Pink Lady using ordinary house paint. By dawn it was done.

Snopes has more about the story.

The Story Of "The Pink Lady of Malibu" (Via Little Hokum Rag)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Marcelo

Hee, I thought this was an article about Angelyne. Still pretty amazing stuff.
Marshall

One of my favourite LA stories. I love the fact that it wasn’t done by some desperate for attention MFA or some “art as marketing” “street artist”.
anansi133

I like to imagine that the artwork is still somehow safe underneath all that brown paint, and in a more enlightened time, it could be recovered.

Still kind of a bummer, though, to be reminded that while garden variety graffiti is too common for the authorities to bother with, something with some artistic merit has got to be erased *immediately*. If she’d chosen a bird instead, would it have been allowed to stay?
Anonymous

Was this as you headed towards Malibu or coming back towards the Valley?
Anonymous

Lynne Seemayer would be 76 y.o. now, and I wonder if she is still alive and how cool it would be to restore her work and make it a landmark. it so symbolized the 1960′s sexual revolution and was done with such an adventurous spirit, very symbolic of the American spirit! I applaud anyone who rebels against the norm, especially artist!
Hell’s Donut House

I’m just wondering where Jeff was in all this.
Anonymous

I remember seeing this amazing sight when I was 11 years old. My father worked in Malibu at Hughes Research Labs and told our family about the crazy traffic jam the Pink Lady was causing, so of course we had to drive there ourselves. It’s funny though – in my memory it was so much larger!

You can still see a faint outline of the lady today.
wrybread

dragonfrog/#6 wins the thread.
wispsmoke

This story is awesome, glad to see Wooster getting boinged again. Too bad it was painted over; this could easily have become a landmark.
- mechko
  
  but its nekkid! Seeing nekkid womans is a sin! you know how many children would be corrupted if they saw boobs?!
dragonfrog

Five comments, and no one has declared how much they hate graffiti, used scare quotes around the term street art (or just the word art), or been shocked that all-sacred, all-holy property rights should be violated.
cstatman

I “interesting” public arts. Sanctioned or not.

I mindless tagging. Heck, I cannot even understand it, chicken scratchins? feh. No art, no meaning, nothing but “here is my mark, feh, I spit on you” It is the exact opposite of art.

Would be so so pleasant if more nekkid women, birds, even kilroy was here arts popped up.

And LESS Tags. just my thought
- earbox
  
  I think your comment is missing a few verbs.
Gloria

The chronicle of the repercussions afterwards for Ms. Seemayer/Westmore are kind of sad — with the death threat, scary, and with the unsolicited photos, extremely creepy.