A New York developer has to pay a number of graffiti artists, thanks to a jury hostile to property rights and the rarely applied Visual Artist Rights Act. The largest award of $80,000 went to Francisco Fernandez graffiti pictured above titled “Dreams of Oil.”
Damages were sought from the property owner after the developer whitewashed over the walls of his building. To establish the importance of the work and the extent of damages, the plaintiff brought in a number of art “experts” and an art buyer.
Other pieces of unwanted vandalism can be seen in this court document, Here
That is outragous! The VARA will be used to steal property if this is held up on appeal. It had to have been a bunch of broke artists and the homeless on that jury.
looks pretty good but not worth $80 thousand.
Why buy canvas and seek buyers and patrons for your art when you can paint on walls owned by other people and then force them to pay you if they don’t want your art?
I hope the legal fees are higher than gallery commissions so these ‘artists’ get a lesson in capitalism, even if it isn’t the one about property rights.
And some people think craping on the side of a cop car is artistic….. ‘beauty is in the eye of the heholder’ and stupidity is in the mind of a liberal.
So I guess if you pass out drunk somewhere (or are under anesthesia) and a tattoo artist comes along and puts some “artwork” on your body while you are unconscious, you have to leave it there?
Same principle, methinks.
“New York, New York, it’s a Democrat town,
Vandalism’s up and the morals are down.
Your money’s sucked down into a hole in the ground.
New York, New York, it’s a hole-sucking town!”
😉
I’d like to see the contract between the property owner and the artist. no contract, no payment, clean the crap up!
Counter sue for back space rental.
Maybe the property owner should hire an artist of his liking and have them paint over the graffiti.
What will they do? Sue him?
He would just use the same law they convoluted.
So hire some ‘taggers’ for a fraction of the cost.
In fact, hire talented taggers to cover up ghetto garbage with their stuff. Everyone wins.
Why would a developer whitewash over the walls of a building they didn’t own? Was there a work contract and the walls were not specified? Was this a neighboring building and whitewashed by accident?
I think the building owner has the right and control over garbage painted on his own walls.
Something is missing from the story.
I’ll bulldoze the building before I let some asshole artist lay claim to the exterior of my building.
A jury of your peers – did anyone on this jury own property?! And how do you come up with damages up to $80k?! What is the cost of some spray paint to re-do the ‘art’. That would be the damage not some BS valuation for something that had no monetary value.
‘A NY Developer’ — think Trump’s name was evoked in this trial? Just ratchet up hate on the developer who must be at fault because he is rich and thus needs to pay the poor artists.
thought art was only worth what a customer was willing to pay for it. When did courts get the power to value art?
What else would you expect from a city that elected a socialist/communist mayor (twice!)?
Shoot em all on sight! Have you seen a freight train lately? Almost every car is tagged and there are hundreds of thousands of them. Have you seen pictures from all the shitholes in europe? All tagged. The shitholes in the mid east? All tagged. What they are saying is “this isn’t yours, it is ours so eff you.” Shoot ’em. Shoot ’em all!
Hire this guy… https://imgc.allpostersimages.com/img/print/u-g-PGQMCK0.jpg?w=550&h=550&p=0
Just sneak out one night and spray paint something real big over their art. Like “Spacey f-cked me up the butt”. The neighborhood would force you to whitewash it the next day.
New Yawk values! Bwhahahaha!!!!!!!
I’d keep an eye on this through the appeals process. It strikes me that if the government passed a law handing rights on someone else’s property to artists, that could constitute a “taking” for which the government is liable to compensate the property owner.