Graffiti Article (Pages 5-6)

Page from Louisiana Event scrapbook.

Transcript
as such street art is by no means unique to our century.

Once dismissed as the lunatic ravings of wannabe young gangsters graffiti is on its way to claim its rightful place as a true art form of the punk era.

"Treating cave paintings as graffiti might be seen as stretching the definition a little bit, but precisely that is truly what they are," says Dr. Klein and adds. "We have graffiti in anceient Ephesus in Pompeii and Rome."

Dr. Klein firmly believes street art has had a continnous existence ever since our ancestors learned to produce paint.

"This assumed genesis of graffiti in the New York subways assumes not only a narrow definition of street art but is also flat out wrong. Aerosol cans and hip hop do not define graffiti. They can merely be another page in this massive book."

Dr. Daniel Klein and his team are currently working on uncovering examples of street art from the late 19th century. Their research revealed particularly interesting examples from New Orleans.

"We were fortunate in this case. These photographs were found in a private collection. The owner, one Rebecca Collingwood had them donated to our university before passing away."

To the untrained eye, these examples of late 19th century American graffiti may seem like unintelligible gibberish, but DR. Klein seems convinced there is a method to the madness.

"We do believe they at least share a common semiological ancestry. The signs appear to possess similar characteristics. Whether it was its own micro language or only random art remains to be seen. Interestingly they also seem to be related to the pseudo language seen in