The street artist threw his weight behind a fight to preserve a famed Long Island City graffiti mecca – but a Brooklyn federal judge said Friday that the building is “coming down.”
Banksy’s work became a central topic in the court battle over 5 Pointz, an otherwise derelict warehouse used by the biggest names in aerosol art that draws gawkers from around the world.
Attorneys for the artists cited a law that prohibits the destruction of art to block the demolition while property owner lawyers said the colorful pieces don’t qualify.
5 Pointz lawyers repeatedly pointed to the massive popularity and notoriety of Banksy’s temporary installations as proof that longevity and permanence are not required to qualify something as legitimate art.
The artist personally weighed in on the controversy on his Web site just before he concluded his New York residency. “Save 5 Pointz,’ he wrote.
The shadowy stencil king’s name was frequently broached in court to help win over Judge Frederic Block – but the jurist flatly stated that property rights trump artist rights in this instance.
“The building, unfortunately, is going to have to come down,” he said Friday in front of deflated 5 Pointz defenders.
Despite that conclusion, Block lamented the inevitable loss of the exisitng 5 Pointz pieces and argued with a bespectacled art professor who dismissed them as legitimate works.
Block invoked Banksy’s mushrooming notoriety in suggesting to John Jay assistant professor Erin Thompson that permanence doesn’t equate to legitimacy.
Thompson countered that she couldn’t find a single Google reference to the individual pieces currently on display at the site – a clear sign that they didn’t qualify as the type art that is protected by law.
Graffiti artists have been freely applying their paint to the building’s exterior since the 1990s without interference from building owners Jerry and David Wolkoff.
But the pair want now to demolish to building to develop high end condos in the rapidly gentriying section of Queens.