Graffiti beefs are settled on walls. This one is in court.

For 23 years, a two-story mural in Northwest D.C. depicting the yellow-brick road, the Emerald City and the cast from “The Wizard of Oz” overlooked the basketball court in Stead Park. The “humanity wall,” painted in 2001 by 11 notable graffiti artists from around the District, was festooned with chunky graffiti lettering and clever details, down to the winged monkeys.

And then one day last spring, as though it had clicked its heels, the mural disappeared.

A group of muralists painted over the humanity wall with a new design, which depicts a sea of evening clouds hovering over a city of toys, complete with a Jenga-set Washington Monument and a U.S. Capitol made of blocks. A playing toddler - intended to be a young version of famed D.C. graffiti writer Cool “Disco” Dan - sits at the center, flanked by tags. Also at the center: the word “humanity.”

A few months after the mural’s painting, one of the artists behind the 2001 “Oz” work - Roger Gastman, who as a curator and author has become a prominent figure in American graffiti culture - sued the creators of the new wall painting. The suit cites a law that allows artists to collect damages for wrongful destruction of their pieces. Naming the leader of the group who painted over the mural, Cory Stowers, Gastman claims a “significant portion of his work” was “distorted, mutilated, modified, and/or destroyed.” (His suit does not name the other artists.) The U.S. District Court case stands out, legal experts say, because the law is not being used in the typical scenario of going after a landlord who painted over graffiti but instead the plaintiff’s fellow artists.

Muralists fear the case could complicate the relationship between artists and landlords with wall space. In graffiti ethos, disputes among taggers are best settled in the open, with cans of spray paint.

Gastman and Stowers are both 47 and have known each other since their early days as members of the D.C. graffiti culture. Gastman now lives in Los Angeles, while Stowers has stayed in D.C. area, where he’s been an active proponent of graffiti and mural art as historical and living arts. They have mutual friends and have crossed paths professionally many times - but a half-dozen street artists who spoke to The Washington Post said their relationship soured long ago over various disputes. (Gastman and Stowers declined to comment for this story, although Gastman’s attorney did give a statement.)

Why paint over the mural in the first place? Some in the neighborhood thought an update to the wall was long overdue. The “Oz” mural, which needed repairs over the years, had even lost its Tin Man under a fresh patch of concrete. But for some involved in the 2001 work, the new mural is a clumsy nod to D.C.’s graffiti culture at best - and, at worst, an act of disrespect.

Washington has long had a complicated relationship with graffiti and street art, which blanketed much of the city in the 1980s and 1990s and remains as much a part of that era’s enduring legacy as hardcore and go-go music. The kinds of legal murals seen around the city today - aerosol paintings spanning entire walls with the approval by property owners - were mostly unheard-of.

One did emerge in 1992. Five artists - SMK, Mesk, Cycle, Dah and Rust - threw their graffiti art onto the outside wall of the now-closed restaurant Café Luna that faced Stead Park, near Dupont Circle, with permission from the landlord, Tony Shallal. (His brother is entrepreneur and onetime D.C. mayoral candidate Andy Shallal, who has dabbled in mural-making himself.)

This wall contained an inclusive message: “Before you’re a color first you’re a human,” one tag read, “teachin’ humanity is what we’re doing.” For emphasis, bold letters repeated the word “humanity” underneath.

By 2001, a Fresh Fields Whole Foods had opened on P Street, and the neighborhood was shedding some of its grittiness. A new group of artists got permission to update the mural again under one agreement: The word “humanity” should remain. Gastman, who had done graffiti himself in his youth and had been building up his name in the culture thanks to his book “Free Agents: A History of Washington D.C. Graffiti,” headed the project. A total of 11 collaborators (Joker, Kier, Ever, EKE, Cycle, Rust, Con, Felon, Cert, Pez and Clear, the last being Gastman’s tag) climbed up onto scaffolding to paint the “Oz” scene. Tim Conlon, or “Con” - now a visual artist who has exhibited in Washington and beyond - said they chose L. Frank Baum’s famous setting because the story’s universal resonance matched nicely with the theme of humanity.

“The statement of humanity was the genesis of any and all of the different murals that were being put up,” Tony Shallal said. The motif also fit with the neighborhood’s prominence as a hub for LGBTQ residents - an “Oz” scene that “friends of Dorothy” would appreciate as more than a Hollywood throwback.

Over the years, parts of the mural were vandalized, but the real damage came from the weather. Segments of the wall with chips or cracks were repaired. But by 2023, the wall was badly frayed, and the park’s recreation center was being renovated, so the next year Stowers assembled a group of eight others - some who had worked on earlier iterations of the mural. They received $38,000 from the neighborhood organization Friends of Stead Park to repaint the wall, according to the group, with permission once again from Shallal. They came up with a new concept while preserving the basic idea: humanity.

Stowers was served with the lawsuit at the end of August.

Disputes over art, expression and intellectual property go back to the earliest waves of graffiti culture. In the late 1970s, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Al Diaz, the duo behind the “SAMO” tag that was scribbled around Lower Manhattan, ended their partnership amid a disagreement. Years later, Diaz clashed with the family of the late Basquiat over the tag’s copyright, and publicly criticized them for slapping his art on products such as doormats and designer clothes.

In the early 1990s, the owner of an abandoned factory complex in New York’s Long Island City, Jerry Wolkoff, agreed to let graffiti artists empty cans of Krylon spray paint onto its walls. After 20 years of artistry at the site - which came to be known around the world as “5 Pointz” - Wolkoff wanted to develop the property, hiring workers to hastily whitewash numerous pieces with cheap paint.

After artists sued, a judge ruled that destroying the graffiti did indeed violate a 1990 federal law called the Visual Artists Rights Act - the same law Gastman is suing under. An appeals court ultimately denied Wolkoff’s petition and established that even traditionally ephemeral artworks are “a major category of contemporary art” that deserve protection.

Since 5 Pointz, litigation under that law has increased, said attorney Jeff Gluck, who has built a law practice around intellectual-property complaints by street artists. With offices in Los Angeles, San Diego and New York, Gluck has represented hundreds of artists in complaints - more than 90 percent of which have been settled, he said.

Renée Vara, an art expert and advocate in New York who testified about the prominence of the art at 5 Pointz, said parties involved in these disputes are better off solving their disagreements in a different way than a lawsuit. It can be a “horrific burden,” she said, that is best handled in a small-claims venue. “Go through every possible scenario to work it out among the parties, because that’s where a lot of good solutions come out of,” she said.

If Gastman’s lawsuit does make it to court, legal experts say he will have to be persuasive on several critical points.

“This is basically a legal beef,” Vara said. “That seems pretty unique.”

Christopher Robinson, an attorney who specializes in artist rights and who was co-counsel for the plaintiffs in the 5 Pointz case during the appeals process, wondered why Gastman isn’t pursuing the landlord. The law, he pointed out, requires the owner to give 90 days’ notice to the artist before destruction of the work - a key to 5 Pointz. A plaintiff would need to prove they never got that notice from the party that was obligated to provide it.

Asked about why Gastman sued over the new mural, his lawyer, Scott Burroughs, said: “Mr. Gastman’s grievances are only with Mr. Stowers and what he has done to the artwork at issue. Our client has no issue with any of the other artists involved. To the contrary, his interest is in preserving and maintaining the legacy of their artwork, and addressing Mr. Stowers’ unilateral destruction of that artwork, which Mr. Stowers’ did with absolutely no warning to the artists.”

Another pivotal detail will be the “recognized stature” requirement. In the case of 5 Pointz, for instance, people from all over came to see this wonder of the graffiti world. Gastman’s complaint states that the “Oz” mural was “widely publicized and featured in numerous online articles and publications.” If this case goes to trial, the court will need to weigh the robustness of this claim.

Authorship may also be a complication in the case. Gastman claimed in his lawsuit to be the “co-owner and co-author of the copyright.” How much of the 2001 mural does he have rights to if he collaborated with 10 other artists, Vara wondered. One more complicating factor: At least one of the artists from 2001 helped repaint the wall in 2024. Vara expressed sympathy for Gastman’s position but found this aspect to be the most difficult to sort out, because the visual-arts law isn’t “designed to contemplate” that element.

Longtime D.C. graffiti artist Asad “Ultra” Walker said the artist-against-artist lawsuit has kicked up some intrigue in the graffiti world. “I think, in a way, we’re kind of in, like, uncharted territory,” Walker said. To his knowledge, “there’s never been a graffiti beef like this before.”

A Bethesda native, Gastman has collected, published, curated and film-produced his way to prominence in graffiti culture like few others. As a teenager, he got his start selling specialty caps prized by fellow graffiti writers for their spray paint control, and at 19 he created the magazine “While You Were Sleeping,” which filtered the world through a graffiti-culture lens, with hints of Mad Magazine and Maxim. From the 2010’s Oscar-nominated Banksy documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop” (which he was a consulting producer on) to his landmark art exhibition “Beyond the Streets,” Gastman has attained a rare level of influence and stature in the graffiti world. He was also executive producer of the 2013 documentary “The Legend of Cool ‘Disco’ Dan,” a tribute to Washington’s best-known graffiti writer.

Stowers, a local graffiti figure and self-proclaimed street art educator, tagged walls early on like Gastman, and even appeared in Gastman’s “Free Agents” book about local graffiti artists. As an adult, he tapped into the hunger for street art in the city, applying for grants with the Department of Public Works’s MuralsDC for projects such as the “Many Voices, Many Beats, One City” piece in Anacostia. He launched the 14th Street Graffiti Museum, an outdoor street-art exhibition. He was also involved in a shop called Art Under Pressure, which catered to graffiti and street artists and shuttered in 2016.

Walker said opinions on both men vary in the subculture - particularly in D.C. - and that Gastman hasn’t gained any fans by going to federal court. “Within the graffiti world, everybody’s looking at this and going: Yeah, that’s not the way you do it,” Walker said. Still, Walker said he’s always appreciated Gastman’s professionalism. (He was a fan of those specialty caps.) Conlon, who helped link up Gastman with the building owner for the 2001 mural, said he is “confused and curious” about why Stowers never reached out to Gastman about painting over their work.

But then again, that’s what graffiti does. It’s an art form that carries a sense of continuity, a mark that someone was there. Any kid can still pick up a marker and scribble on a wall - and on top of something else. Yet the culture has also evolved, gaining wider and wider acceptance. Some worry that the internet has endangered regional styles of graffiti. A court case between artists would seem to similarly distance the mores of the art form from its home: the streets.

Vara said that the 5 Pointz lawsuit was polarizing at the time because many artists want disputes handled among themselves but that much of that criticism disappeared after the plaintiffs were successful. Now, for the aggrieved artist, suing is a more attractive option.

After reviewing the images in Gastman’s complaint and the work of the artists involved, Vara offered a lament. “It’s a shame,” she said, “that a beautiful collaboration has kind of come to this.”