Banksy “Art” Should be Listed

August 23, 2011 Longrider Civil Liberties, General News, General Rants, misanthropy 25

I’ve made my views on Banksy’s daubs often enough here that no one should be in any doubt that I do not regard graffiti as art. That said, some do and want to retain such work in all its glory.

This is a simple property rights issue. If the property owner wants to keep the painting on his wall, so be it. If he wants to paint over it, he should be free to do so. Not everyone agrees, however.

Graffiti by street artist Banksy should be given better protection according to new research from Bristol University.

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Now researchers at the city’s university are arguing that his work should be protected as a listed asset.

So, this vandal sprays his daubs over your property and you want to remove it. These folk, however, believe that you should have to put up with it even if it is an eyesore to you on your property.

So, no, it shouldn’t be listed. The decision to keep or remove the graffiti should remain with the property owner and no one else –  certainly not those who don’t have to live with it splattered all over their walls. After all, the original painting is an invasion of property rights in the first place, which is bad enough, the researchers would compound the offence.

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25 Comments

  1. I love the way it is described as “research” to give, what is actually simply an opinion, faux gravitas.

  2. It’s hard to get through the standard BBC ‘journalist’ story garbling, but I get the impression his point is that even if the owner wants to keep it there, the council can demand its removal. Listing would prevent that.

    (Not in any way advocating the idea, just saying)

  3. Agreed, but the article seems to suggest it cuts both ways.

    “Even if the owner of a wall wishes the graffiti to stay, the local authority could still serve a notice if in the authority’s opinion it is detrimental to the amenity of an area,” [researcher John Webster] said.

    The bottom line is that it should be up to the owner, and no-one else, whether a supposedly valuable (something I have trouble with even though personally I quite like a lot of his stuff) Banksy is painted over or not. But because modern Britain seems to have only the most tenuous grasp on the idea of property rights we have a bunch of pricks in one corner arguing that it must stay regardless of an owner’s desire to get rid of it and a different bunch of pricks in the opposite corner arguing that they should have the power to paint over it even if it the owner liked it. Either way the owner doesn’t get the final say, and no matter what I think of a Banksy I reckon that’s wrong.

  4. That was a quote from a planning lawyer and that is the inverse of the same argument – it should be a matter for the property owner if they want to keep it, not the local authority forcing them to remove it. But, then, listing is pretty repressive anyway, so I tend to be opposed in principle.

  6. Ciaran, I thought so too. Longrider, agreed about listing. I have something on the backburner about a particularly egregious use of the Aussie equivalent.

  8. The planning lawyer and the “researcher” are one and the same person aren’t they?

    So it would seem – well, one of them, anyway. While I agree that the property owner should be allowed to keep the mural if that is what they want, I do not see listing, which is equally authoritarian being the answer. Merely a removal of any laws relating to the matter. Let the owner decide.

  11. Voyager, I’d say yes. I might be appalled by it and I might try to talk them round, but if I absolutely want to insist that it stays exactly as it is there’s only one fair way to go about it – put my hand in my pocket and make them an offer. If I can’t or won’t, or if the offer’s not enough and my attempts to persuade them were unsuccessful then that’s that. The only options left all involve forcing them against their will.

  12. Ok, so say you live in a terrace house and your neighbour wants to rebuild his house, that is knock it down and build another. Still fine?

    What if that terraced house is part of The Royal Crescent in Bath? If paying people is a way to preserve murals do you think rich people should be paid NOT to change their houses?

  13. Ok, so say you live in a terrace house and your neighbour wants to rebuild his house, that is knock it down and build another. Still fine?

    If the actions have a direct adverse effect on the property of another, then no.

  14. What Longrider said, but with the addition that if the neighbour is prepared to compensate those adjoining properties for any adverse effects then yes. As for what if it’s in the Royal Crescent, I’d say so what if it’s in the Royal Crescent.

    If paying people is a way to preserve murals do you think rich people should be paid NOT to change their houses?

    I don’t think I made it clear what I meant when I said make them an offer. I didn’t mean pay them to preserve the mural, though that’s a possible option I hadn’t considered. I meant offer to buy the house from them. You don’t have to necessarily be super-rich and have the budget to afford anything you feel should be preserved. There’s no reason why people who care about old buildings couldn’t form preservation societies along the lines of the National Trust, which could then buy properties that its members had collectively decided worth preserving. They could be small and formed to preserve one specific building or they could be NT sized (or even the NT) and have ownership of a hell of a lot of land and property. All this is fine, but what’s not fine is the ability of the state to wreck the value of someone’s property because someone else has decided that it’s a wonderful example of yadda yadda yadda and so no changes should be allowed.

  15. Well, although I think the planning laws in this country are rather draconian, I’d rather we had some than building anarchy that you and Longrider seem to prefer.

    If graffiti is seen as desirable to an area then to remove it is as ugly as the grim tagging of the backs of garages by children.

    That a property owner thinks they know better than others and can do whatever they like is not always the best way to live together.

  17. “That a property owner thinks they know better than others and can do whatever they like is not always the best way to live together.”

    It is irrelevant whether or not they know better, what counts is that it is their property and they should be able to decide what to do with it. The caveat is always that what one does with one’s property should not harm one’s neighbours but the caveat should not stretch to destroying something that the neighbour thinks looks nice, we’re talking more along the lines of running a noisy business 24/7.

    If you buy a listed building you clearly accept any restrictions but to have someone come and slap a listing on your building without your permission is just plain wrong. If society values something then it should come along and say “we’d like you to preserve that which you consider utter crap, will you do it for x thousand quid?” The answer could be no, and that would be the end of it, no but I would for y thousand quid, or okay, nice doing business with you.”

  18. So if this vandal defaces my property and my neighbours happen to like his infantile daubs, I have to put up with it? I don’t think so

    Actually I don’t think you do have to put up with it. Paint it over the next day.

    BUT if you have had it on ‘your property’ for some time and others like it that is the reason for considering the graffiti for ‘listed’ status, just as demolishing a section of John Wood The Younger’s Royal Crescent is not your prerogative, no matter if you are the property owner.

  19. If society values something then it should come along and say “we’d like you to preserve that which you consider utter crap, will you do it for x thousand quid?” The answer could be no, and that would be the end of it, no but I would for y thousand quid, or okay, nice doing business with you.”

    Why should we have to bribe people to do something for the good of others?

    Listing building status IS slapped on buildings without the owners consent. It is arguable that this happens rather arbitrarily and is often seen as ‘unfair’ by the property owner who wishes to develop the property, but that is no worse then paying rich people to keep things as they are.

  20. I don’t see the time-scale as having any relevance. The one that caused ructions recently was a consequence of a new owner. As it was, he didn’t realise that this mural had any significance and painted over it as was his right. I would have done likewise. Listing graffiti is taking things way too far.

  21. Nobody is being bribed to do something for the perceived good of others. Those who value something should be be prepared to pay for it. Why should someone’s property be devalued at the whim of others?

    “Listing building status IS slapped on buildings without the owners consent.” I know, and it is an absolutely disgraceful state of affairs.

    “but that is no worse then paying rich people to keep things as they are.” Now we’re getting to the nub of it, those rich people, they’ve got enough so they should be compelled to give away something they own (even if it is in the form of a devaluing of property) to the rest of society.

  23. … just as demolishing a section of John Wood The Younger’s Royal Crescent is not your prerogative, no matter if you are the property owner.

    Clearly it isn’t (though I argue it bloody should be) because in Britain, and here in Oz for that matter, freeholders do not really own the property for which they’ve paid. How can they truly said to own it when they can arbitrarily and retrospectively be prevented from modifying or improving it as they wish, and even have it taken away from them without them having any say in the matter? As things stand right now landowners do not really own any land as the state has the final say over the whole lot. And if it wanted to redirect the M5 through the middle of the Royal Crescent it’s perfectly at liberty to do so, the wishes of the people who actually own it notwithstanding. Not real likely, perhaps, and no doubt there are various rules, laws and regulations which currently stand in the way, but if it wanted to it could be done. Amend or repeal the necessary regs and laws, let it be known that a section of motorway is likely to go through the Royal Crescent, watch the values fall as properties even possibly affected by planning blight tend to (though heritage protection is also a blight that reduces market value) and snap it up cheap later with a compulsory acquisition order.

    Now consider that in terms of what you call building anarchy and what Longrider and I probably both think of as true property rights. Under that system all it takes is for just one single owner to say he’s not prepared to sell at any price and what happens? The whole plan is banjaxed, the motorway has to go elsewhere and the Crescent is preserved. At the very least anyone who wants to develop land has to pay a true market rate when buying properties that are already on it since the whisper of possible compulsory acquisition would not exist to bring down values. And isn’t that fairer than a system that on the one hand preserves, though on its own whim, but can use the same power to force people to sell leaving them tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands out of pocket. There’s a good Aussie film called The Castle that demonstrates this. It’s fiction and a comedy, though admittedly I didn’t get all the jokes until after I’d lived here a couple of years (actually if I’d moved to Sydney rather than Melbourne I probably still wouldn’t get a couple of them), but when the family realise they’re going to lose their home – crappy, naff and tasteless as it is – and won’t get enough from the compulsory acquisition to be able to buy anything else it echoes something that could happen to any homeowner in Oz. And the UK too. And this is possible because the state can tell people what to do with their property, making the state itself the ultimate owner of everything.

    The alternative is true property rights. You do what you like with what you own, fairly compensating anyone else who can show a loss as a result of something you’ve done, but accept that you have no claim over anything you don’t actually have a financial interest in – it’s the only genuinely fair system possible. Otherwise we stay as we are now, accepting that the state, that entity so many people accept as being hopelessly inefficient, frequently incompetent, and probably corrupt, can by dint of its self-granted powers over the poor bastards who’ve paid a lot of money for the deeds to ban them from doing X, compel them to do Y, or to buy the whole thing A-Z at bad mate’s rates. True property rights might lose a few buildings that many of us would wish preserved (though as I said before there’d still be nothing to stop us joining the NT and lobbying for it to buy them up), but frankly it’s the lesser evil. I’d rather accept that the owners of the Royal Crescent theoretically could get together and sell it for multi-storey parking if it meant me, you and Joe Bloggs can all tell the state to go fuck itself when it wants to take our 80s semis away for half price and stick a railway through ’em.

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