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The Handwriting
on
the
Wall Just a cursory stroll through the titles of articles about graffiti is enough to make you go breathe paint fumes:
—"The
Handwriting
on the Wall: Toward a Sociology and Psychology of
Graffiti" (Only one of those titles is a fake.
I dare you to find it. If you answer correctly and your
entry is received first, I will spray your name—and
address—on the front of the police station in downtown
Naples!) There are also hundreds of magazines with names
such as Aerosol
Kingdom, Foe
Toe Graff, Pressure
Expansion Valve, and Vandal Maggotzine. (Those are all
real.) In other words, this is not just some ephemeral,
lightweight phenomenon. This is Art. Even worse, this is
sociology. Naples, from that point of view, is one very
large open-air laboratory of anonymous expression,
insubstantial pageants, and spray semiotics. Some of it isn't bad actually. I'm
not talking about the brain-dead magic markings of
teen-age lust that you find defacing public buildings
and classical treasures at Pompeii, or even the poorly
understood and imperfectly rendered versions of American
rap lyrics scrawled on the magnificent columns of the
Church of San Francesco di Paola at Piazza Plebiscito, the
largest square in Naples. Or even the insults directed
at poor "Gloria's mother" on the great statue of Dante
in Naples. That is the work of idiots, whose bodies
should all be steamed back into their component
molecules, forced into one large aerosol can and then
sprayed onto an outhouse in Hell. Welcome
to Barra!
The local Louvre of graffiti seems to
be the station of Barra (photo, above). The original
long one-dimensional nothingness of grey concrete wall
along the track has been morphed into a bright
kaleidoscope of Rastafarian "reefer art"—a happy change.
They even "tag" the trains with elaborate murals. (Hold
on. I'm getting a message. Yes, I can feel it being
sprayed onto my brain from the "other side," some very
hip —or at least hip-hop—parallel universe. It's an idea
for an article—"Train Graffiti in Naples: the Semiotics
of Mobile Protest") Or something like that. (Wait. I
think "Or Something Like That" is supposed to be part of
the title. Oh, no. They've put me on hold.) I just wish they wouldn't spray the windows; after all, that gets in the way of my admiration for the graffiti on the station walls as we whiz through. I have thought about spraying the "taggers" a message about not spraying anymore.
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No, I am talking about real art: the
complicated portraits and stylized script, the stuff
that takes all night to do—the kind that decorates—dare
I say alleviates?—the concrete bunker sameness of all 30
train stations of the Circumvesuviana train line that
runs from Naples to Sorrento. If I have to choose
between waiting for a train in some drab & slab dump
and waiting amid bright psychedelic shapes and letters,
I'll always choose the latter. (It's like having a
1960's flashback!— and that's 40 years ago. It works out
just right because I'm likely to wait 40 years for the
next train. Who says there is no balance in the
universe?)