A collective of Brooklyn street artists has threatened to sue McDonald’s for featuring their murals in a recent campaign without prior authorization.
As Artnet first reported earlier this week, six graffiti artists including Don Rimx, Beau Stanton, Virus, NDA, Atomik and Himbad sent a letter to the fast-food giant Tuesday threatening imminent legal action for “copyright infringement and false endorsement,” said their representative Andrew Gerber.
According to a statement from Gerber’s law firm, McDonald’s had teamed up with The Bushwick Collective—one of New York’s most renowned mural projects—to create a “edgy” and “gritty” ad campaign to promote its new “New York Bagel Supreme” burger in the Netherlands.
As part of the collaboration, half-a-dozen artists from the collective were flown to Holland and paid to create graffiti-style promotional billboards with stylized bagel burgers on them. (Because what says cool more than a bunch of bearded creatives spray-painting slabs of meat on concrete walls?)
The four-minute promotional video, titled “McDonald’s presents the Vibe of Bushwick NY,” shows Bushwick Collective founder and artist Joe Ficalora giving a tour of the hip neighborhood and highlighting its most iconic murals. “We have murals all over Bushwick,” he says at one point. “It’s just a family of everybody.”
The only catch? At least two of the murals shown in the video are unaffiliated with the Bushwick Collective and many artists whose works are also featured in the ad were never contacted by either Ficalora or McDonald’s to seek permission.
As Vandalog pointed out, many of them were completely unaware that their work had been captured on video until someone sent them a link to the ad. The reaction was swift.
On Facebook, one artist with the moniker Lmnopi expressed her frustration that the “gentrifying Bushwick Collective” had teamed up with the fast-food chain to exploit street art to “sell burgers.”
This will not stand. They did not get my permission to use my work in their psuedo doc and the mural is NOT part of the Bushwick Collective. PERIOD
Gerber told Arnet that McDonald’s had gotten in touch with the owners of the buildings on which the murals were spray-painted prior to the shoot, but not the artists themselves. And that matters a great deal because, contrary to public perception, street artists do hold copyright of their work as long as its fixed on a tangible medium and “irrespective of artistic quality.” In other words, even a work of dubious taste that required the artist to illegally trespass on property is entitled to legal protection under federal copyright law.
Claiming that their rights were flouted, the aggrieved artists plan to seek compensation for alleged damages to their work and reputation, as well as profits derived from the unauthorized use of their creations by McDonald’s.
“The case hinges on the perception that they are somehow affiliated with or involved with this product and that they are endorsing McDonald’s, when they absolutely are not,” Andrew Gerber told Artnet.
This isn’t the first time the Golden Arches has courted controversy for copyright infringement over street art.
In October, the estate of late artist Dash Snow sued the chain for ripping off his signature tag, “SACE,” and placing it hundreds of McDonald’s restaurants around the US and the UK to make them, you know, more “urban.”