Should Mural Art be Saved or Trashed?

Sao Paulo artists Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo obliged London's Tate Gallery by painting their distinctive yellow graffiti on outside walls of the museum. Just a month later, their hometown began rolling gray paint across one of the brothers' murals as part of clean-up efforts.

Officials did an abrupt about-face after the Pandolfos and other artists complained both to the city and in the news media. Now Sao Paulo is creating a registry of street art to be preserved, exempt from Mayor Gilberto Kassab's drive to eliminate ``visual pollution.'' The episode is sparking a public discussion of what constitutes art.

``Outside of Brazil, graffiti art has been much more accepted,'' said Gustavo Pandolfo, speaking by telephone from Barcelona, Spain. ``Galleries and museums invite us to do shows. And in Sao Paulo, where we do this mural for free as a present to the people of the city, it's viewed as trash.''

Under the Clean City law, enacted in 2006, billboards were removed, signs with large corporate logos were scaled back, and graffiti is being expunged.

The Pandolfos' 680-meter (2,230-foot) mural on retaining walls along the 23 de Maio expressway, south of downtown, was half-covered by gray paint on July 3. The destruction occurred even though the art had been officially sanctioned.

Some of the city's 800 inspectors ``understood the Clean City law to mean paint over anything that's irregular,'' Monteiro said. ``Because the law didn't give objective criteria, it was left up to subjective opinion.''

Sao Paulo is developing those criteria, giving priority to cataloguing works of graffiti that were painted with permission from the property owner, Monteiro said. The Clean City law prohibits graffiti that functions as advertising. The city expects the catalog to be ready by November.

Before the crackdown, South America's biggest city had been seen as a place where graffiti artists could go to work without interference from passersby or police, Gustavo Pandolfo said.

``Graffiti would stay up for 10 years, and no one would erase it,'' he said. ``People liked seeing the graffiti.''

Hundreds of the brothers' works have disappeared during the clean-up campaign, he said. That would be a costly loss if measured by the price of their gallery works.

The Tate exhibition is helping change Sao Paulo's perception of its graffiti art, Monteiro said.

``We want to make this part of the city's look,'' she said. ``It's a trademark of the city.''