"[Abstract artist Sean] Scully... fumed over what he called 'Pottery Barn' tastes among the locals who spurned Gold Zinger."

I'm reading a NYT article about conflicts between people who want sedate colors in their neighborhood and people like Scully who want to flaunt their boldness and creativity as they paint the exterior of their house. It bothers me that the NYT didn't allow comments on this article, because a bigger deal needs to be made out of this:

In an oversight, his team did not file for paint color approval permits required by the local government’s Historical Areas Board of Review. At the board’s December meeting, some emotions ran high as the public debated whether Gold Zinger should be allowed to remain on the house.

In an oversight?! How does the NYT know this was an oversight (as opposed to an easier-to-ask-forgiveness-than-permission strategy)? And what "team"? Did Scully have professional painters — is that the "team" — and somehow they didn't know about the required permits? I'm not a professional journalist like the folks at the New York Times, but my sense of journalistic professionalism is that the NYT ought to have written something like, Mr. Scully maintains that he did not understand that the law in his historic district required a permit approving of his house color.

So people in the town had to get upset and devote time and energy to fighting Scully:

Opponents deemed the color “over the top and jarring.” Mr. Scully’s team defended it as “bold, beautiful and uplifting,” suited to a woodsy neighborhood known as “eclectic, unique, artsy and individualistic.”

What "team"?!

The board nonetheless concluded that Gold Zinger had to go. This spring, it will yield to Semolina, a creamier yellow from Benjamin Moore.... [H]e accepted Semolina as a compromise: “I don’t want war.”

He doesn't want war, but he broke the rules, fought his neighbors who had a right under the existing rules, and when he lost, he went to the press and insulted the neighbors for their restrained taste and vaunted himself as "bold... uplifting... artsy and individualistic."

If you want to argue for brighter colored houses, go ahead. Get the rules changed. But don't move into a neighborhood and just start breaking the rules. Talk to people. Try to understand them. Maybe they have good reasons for believing in quiet colors and neutrality. Maybe you'd get your mind changed — you who are supposedly so open-minded.

ADDED: People who live in a "woodsy neighborhood" may like to look out their windows and see woods, not the other houses. They may want the buildings to recede and not pop. This is a perfectly legitimate preference. It's a taste for nature and visual quiet over noisy self-expression.