Painted into a corner

The property owner who tore down a derelict Long Island City building is guilty, says a jury whose verdict will serve as a recommendation to the judge, of breaking federal law. This is madness that, if broadly applied, risks conflating vandalism — which is willful defacement of property, and should as a rule be removed — with public art to be protected.

The building at the center of the case is 5Pointz, owned by Jerry Wolkoff. For two decades as it sat vacant, graffiti artists, with Wolkoff’s permission, paid pilgrimage there and put their skills to work.

In so doing, they turned the site into something whimsical, colorful, surprising, even joyous — an outdoor gallery.

It was pretty great while it lasted. But the taggers and painters knew all along that Wolkoff’s plans were to tear the building down, as was his right — which he did, after whitewashing the walls one night in 2014.

Enter a federal law called the Visual Artists Right Act. Passed in 1990, its purpose is to enshrine protections for artwork of “recognized stature” — against distortion or other actions that might damage the artist’s reputation.

Under the statute, before altering or destroying a work, a creator is supposed to get 90 days notice, or be forced to pay damages.

Feel free to consider the graffiti vandals who tagged 5Pointz to high heaven, often painting over (“destroying”) one another’s work in the process, artists. Feel free to call their work significant.

They never owned it. Their work was attached to — indeed was an inextricable part of — someone else’s private property. Graffiti, even when beautiful, is still graffiti.