Michael Shanks - site 2006: Dave Daly

KILLROY WAS HERE

...and so was i

"(A) Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
"(B) Its the first day of the rest of my finals! You ass
"--Meyer basement, on a desk"

An example of graffiti on the Stanford campus, but the story itself is something else. Check it out in In the academic sense... below.

Themes:

Art or not?

Questions of Identity

Marginal spaces

Politics

In the academic sense...

I'm interested in art in public spaces, and how one might even try to define that topic. Murals, sure. Statues and installations, yes. Parks, why not? But graffiti? Advertising billboards?

I'm particularly into graffiti. Here are some examples I found while I was studying abroad in Chile:

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Posted at Apr 20/2005 09:39 PM:
[Serena Love]: I really like your idea, Dave. I think graffiti speaks volumes about an under-represented group. In its own way, graffiti can act as a voice. Your pictures are great examples of this. Graffiti is a justifiable medium for 'art' just as any other.

I added a little piece of graffiti that I found in Bratislava, Slovakia this summer. At first I found it sort of disturbing but then I understood the sentiment. The oddest thing was that Reagan died later that day (or at least that was when I found out about it). The following day, there was an 'altar' of sorts in the center of town with an American flag. The whole thing was laced with irony.

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[Alex]: I'd agree with Serena that graffiti tells us something about under-represented groups. I'd say there's an intuitive leap to label graffiti as anti-establishment (and the photo below does nothing to counter that). I wouldn't say that's wrong, but I'd also argue that sometimes graffiti serves as an interesting study in conformism.

Here's a piece that I came across in Sicily - along with your picture and the countless other examples of anti-American graffiti in Europe and elsewhere, it starts to paint a picture of a disgruntled European underclass chafing under American superiority (not hegemony but a distaste for a Bush-led America taking a proactive foreign policy?). But where do their views come from? A carefully considered analysis of Middle-Eastern and global politics or a more gutteral reaction against a differently cultured assertion of power? The conformity of rebellion seems to be something that has become glorified in Europe lately. Isn't this another form of mindless followership in parallel to the flag-waving, "Pray for Our Troops" warmongers of our own culture?

I know a lot of graffiti in Pompeii was focused on a) brothels b) games and c) local politics; does anyone know of any examples of ancient graffiti that deals with anything beyond local politics? Any "Romanes eunt domus" out there? Or any ancient graffiti that's more image than message, as Dave brought up?

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Posted at Apr 27/2005 05:35 PM:
Dave Daly: I definitely found some anti-establishment graffiti, like the following stencil painted on a wall in Valparaiso:

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Posted at Apr 27/2005 05:43 PM:
Dave Daly: But there was also a section of town called the "Museo al Cielo Abierto" (The Museum of the Open Air/Sky). Chilean artists had been brought in to paint on the walls. Pictures will be forthcoming (I'll shrink them down first).

NB: These pictures are included on the page Art or not?

Posted at Apr 27/2005 06:31 PM:
[slr]: here's the reference for Roman (specifically from Pompeii and Herculaneum) graffiti: the volumes are in the Raubichek reading room:

Zangemeister, Carolus, ed. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, volume IV: Inscriptiones Parietariae Pompeianae, Herculanenses, Stabianae. Berolini, 1871.

Posted at May 08/2005 11:48 AM:
Dave Daly: Here are a couple websites. The first lets you draw your own graffiti.

http://www.graffiticreator.net/

http://www.artcrimes.com/

Urbanism - projects 2005