Art of the Bus Stop

What are the ethics of tagging an outdoor artwork with fake graffiti already on it? 

I ask myself this question as I sit on one of Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.’s mock bus benches, staring at another across from me. The other bench has the familiar phrase “YOUR AD HERE” on it, and those words are covered in looping, overlapping scribbles, as if it’s been visited by more than one graffiti writer. 

The quick answer is that you should never tag anything, but I have long felt it’s far more OK — or at least far less not OK — to tag an outdoor advertisement placed on public property than, say, a stained glass window in a church. Not all flat surfaces are equally inviolable. There is a spectrum, and I am not sure where on that spectrum I should place this particular bench, which is not an out-of-home advertisement but rather a work on art commenting on all the ads, and maybe all the graffiti too, in the city. Also, Gonzalez used to write graffiti when he was younger, so there’s that.