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Artistic expression
a criminal offence?

NY Times on street artists,
Intro # 160 8/4/02

by Robert Lederman
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net
September 4, 2002

To the Editor,
The legal argument behind artists having the right to more than one vending display is that the First Amendment protects the communication and full distribution of ideas. No one would suggest that the NY Times should be limited to just one newspaper vending box or that a political candidate can have only one table on the street where voters are given information about their record. That many of the City's multiple art vendors are more focused on commerce than ideology does not justify abridging every New Yorkers speech rights. The City has an obvious double standard. Mayor Bloomberg became a billionaire by putting his ad-saturated computer terminals on millions of tables but he wants to limit First Amendment-protected artists to a lottery where they get to compete for the right to have one table. His free use of the public broadcasting spectrum is no different than our free use of the public forum of the street to sell art. The Parks Department thinks 100 art displays around all of Central Park is rampant commercialism but it's fine to let Disney, Nike, Chase Bank and anyone else with the right political connections and a million dollar "donation" take over the entire park. It is the City and the Parks Department, not artists or art vendors, who are commercializing the parks.

Robert Lederman,
President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)

NY Times 9/4/02
By MICHAEL WILSON

Commerce Rushes in Where Art Once Ruled

They have been at war since brush first touched canvas on a busy sidewalk: The artist, narrow shoulders flaring beneath a beret, and the police officer, all brass buttons and nightstick and move-it-along-pal.

But as sidewalk artists and city officials prepare for the next fight over regulating art vendors in and around Central Park, both sides find themselves bumping against a third group: the grinning salesmen hawking similar mass-produced pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge and the World Trade Center and the financial district's bronze bull.

No one really wants these vendors around - except the people spending money.

"It's not yet Wal-Mart, but it's following that model," said Jack T. Linn, assistant commissioner of the New York City Parks and Recreation Department, as he strolled past booth after booth of photographs near the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The artists - an organized team that a year ago logged the last major legal victory in the dispute - said the city exaggerates the presence of these vendors to make its case for regulation. They argue that the sidewalks are not that crowded and that parks officials are being hypocritical.

"The Parks Department is at the absolute forefront of commercialization of the parks," said Robert Lederman, an artist and a leader of the artists' group. "They grant permits for huge activities that affect the wildlife, destroy the fields."

Until August 2001, vendors needed a permit from the Parks Department to sell on the sidewalks in and around the parks, with winners chosen by lottery every three months. (Different vending permits apply to sidewalks elsewhere in the city.)

The artists' group challenged the park permit system, first on the sidewalk, where they were arrested for illegal selling - one time, protesting artists lay in the street in front of the squad car that held Mr. Lederman - and then in court. They won last summer, when a judge ruled that the permits violated the city code. The state's highest court upheld that decision in December. But the permits had played another role: they limited the spaces to artists selling their own work. Without them, capitalism flourished - for good and bad.

"We are being killed," one artist said. "Really crucified. There is no space. There are maybe six real artists, and the rest are vendors." The artist asked not to be named for fear of retaliation - not from the vendors but from other artists who want to present a unified front to the city. "Nobody makes any money because they're all selling the same thing, for $14 in a frame. Real artists cannot compete with that."

Mitchell Balmuth, part vendor for his artist wife, Soo Balmuth, part sidewalk peacekeeper and elder, and part plaintiff in vendor litigation, used to make secret videotapes of booths selling copies of someone else's photographs, to prove the city's fallibility in granting sidewalk permits. Now he defends the vendors. "They have a First Amendment right to be here," he said, pausing to scold a newcomer to a corner of the park who had taped copies of souvenir watercolors to the park wall - a no-no. "We police ourselves," he said.

Some of the vendors who sell mass-produced pictures at multiple booths were once scraping by themselves with single tables.

George Kunze, 50, recalls fondly the days he sold his pictures in the park. "It was fun, I have to admit," he said. "With the permit system, sometimes you won, sometimes you didn't, whatever, but when you won you were the only guy on the corner. Then a judge decided to throw the whole thing out. That was the beginning of the end."

Suddenly he was just one of many photographers in front of the museum. "There was this Russian kid selling next to me. He was selling garbage, but he could sell. I was amazed he could sell as much as he did." So Mr. Kunze hired him. He recalled the young man asking, "You want me to tell them I'm the photographer, or I'm the assistant?"

Now Mr. Kunze's work can be found at three stands, while he himself can be found at home. "Let them sell. I print, I produce, they sell," he said.

The city says the sidewalks in and around the park are too crowded. Where there were between 75 and 85 permits for all of Manhattan's park artists last year, there are now more than 100 vendors around Central Park alone. Most of them set up near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where there were fewer than 30 permits in the old system.

Mr. Linn has watched the growth from his office, bunkered in the Arsenal, just inside Central Park near 64th Street and Fifth Avenue, a sometimes difficult place to walk to without passing someone who wants to sketch your portrait.

"There are many public needs in a park," Mr. Linn said. "We serve one, and to us, it is sacred. The park is a retreat from the tumult of the city, not an extension of the commercial activity." He pointed out benches hidden behind the artists' booths in a corner of the park that are unused by anyone but the vendors.

The artists won their victories based on a 1982 provision of the city code that makes anyone selling "written materials" exempt from city permit requirements. The courts have interpreted that to include artwork. The Parks Department has proposed amending the code to allow a permit system for artists in and around the park.

The proposal is in the early stages of review. "Any permitting system we put in place would obviously have to be constitutional," said Alessandro G. Olivieri, a Parks Department lawyer.

Many of the artists say they have no interest in expanding to multiple booths. Alexander Glayzer, 33, a photographer who moved to New York from Russia four years ago, said, "I just want to sell my work. I don't want to do business. I'm happy to be alone. It makes me more free. Artists should be independent of anything. If you're doing business, you're not independent. Business stops creative work."

That idealism grows fuzzier a few booths down, where Fu Wu Zhang, 61, sells his photographs 21 blocks from where another man sells the same pictures for him. Sure, he said, he takes the same pictures of the bull and the bridges and the Statue of Liberty as everyone else, but his are better. He points out his photo of the "Imagine" mosaic tribute to John Lennon in Central Park. "Too much flower, no good," he said, pointing to a neighboring booth's picture of the memorial. "I only have one flower. Different feeling."

To a Directory of Mr.Lederman's Essays

Robert Lederman is an artist, writer and activist and is also the President of the street artist advocacy group, A.R.T.I.S.T.
Click here for an archive of A.R.T.I.S.T. related news articles on the Freedom Forum website

His essays and Op-Eds have appeared in hundreds of alternative publications as well as the Daily News, Penthouse, Africa Sun Times, Street News and The Shadow.
Lederman was falsely arrested 41 times for his anti-Giuliani activities and was never convicted of any of the charges. As a result of the arrests, he's won four Federal lawsuits and overturned three laws.
He is best known for having created hundreds of paintings of Mayor Giuliani as a Hitler like dictator which were carried in demonstrations throughout the eight years of the Giuliani administration. Images of his paintings and articles about his arrests and lawsuits have appeared on all of the major television networks hundreds of times as well as frequently appearing in the NY Times, Daily News, NY Post, Newsday, Newsweek, People, The Washington Post, LA Times and NY Magazine.

Robert Lederman,
President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net

For a detailed exposition on the West Nile issue
http://www.nospray.org/
For an article on the Manhattan Institute go to
http://www.konformist.com/2000/rudyg.htm

If you would like to help oppose the spraying,
please write to the
No Spray Coalition
PO Box 334
Peck Slip Station
NYC, NY 10272-0334
or call the No Spray hotline at (718) 670-7110.

Any funds you can send to help continue the lawsuit
and this work are greatly appreciated.

Important Note:
Mr. Lederman has explained that his articles posted here are not to be taken as official statements by the No-Spray Coalition of which he is a member or of the "No-Spray" lawsuit in which he is a plaintiff.

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