Words of the Prophets

Preface

Acknowledgments

List of Figures

Introduction: from “Kilroy Was Here” to Krik Kong

Part 1
Four Murals and Their Environs
1 Thessaloniki: a Born-Again Faith in Graffiti
 1 Graffiti in Thessaloniki, 2014

 2 Athens, Exarchia, and Missolonghi
 2.1 The Street Is My Gallery

 3 Exarchia
 3.1 St. Paul Six Years Later: Graffiti Has Now Become Inartistic Sloganeering

 3.2 Messolonghi

 4 Conclusion

2 Naples, Graffiti in Naples, or Rubbish Is Gold
 1 Two Visits to Naples

 2 “Rubbish Is Gold”: Three Films on Neapolitan Garbage
 2.1 “We Want to Breathe! It’s Our Right!”

 3 Parking among the Corpses of Syracuse

 4 Approaching Florence
 4.1 Florence: Masterworks outside the Uffizi

 4.2 On Bullshit in Florence

 5 Venice

 6 Between Venice and Milan, 2020

 7 Approaching Milan

 8 Roma Termini

3 Gdańsk: Remembering Solidarity
 1 An Unguided Tour of Gdańsk

 2 Krik Kong

 3 Solidarity Museum

 4 Courtesy Solidarity Museum, Gdańsk

 5 Fonts of Fascism, or the Heaviness of the Solidarity Museum
 5.1 Westerplatte Tour

 5.2 A Closer Look at Krik Kong

 6 My Interview with Krik Kong
 6.1 Art School vs. Street Knowledge

 7 Conclusion: from Andrez Wajda’s Man of Iron to Warsaw

4 Welcome to Chicago
 1 Welcome to Chicago/ We Can Change the World (1971)
 1.1 Welcome to Chicagoland: Redux

 1.2 Is Rap a Black Art Form

 2 Conclusion: Chicago, Philadelphia, New York
 2.1 Philadelphia

 2.2 New York

 2.3 One Last Mural

Part 2
Graffiti as Narrative Art
5 Byron, Blake, and the George Floyd Protests: the Evolution of Fonts
 1 Lord Byron: Graffiti Artist
 1.1 Byron’s Name at Ferrara

 1.2 Graffiti: Local and Global Practices

 2 Graffiti Practices in England

 3 Visions of Belshazzar: Ortygia, Syracuse, and the Book of Daniel

 4 Graffiti in the South Bronx

 5 Who’s John Lennon?

 6 Lady Pink and Lord Byron: the Museum of Graffiti in Miami Beach

6 Orozco, Pomona College’s Prometheus
 1 Blake, Orozco, and the Graffiti/Mural Tradition

 2 The Parable of the Ten Virgins

 3 Lady Pink and the Art of Pointing

 4 George Floyd: “Corporate Media, Graffiti, and the Visualizations of the George Floyd Protests” in 2020

 5 Calligraphy: from Istanbul to the South Bronx

 6 Hagia Sophia

 7 Words of the Prophets on Walls and Curtains

 8 Cultural Riches vs. Benign Neglect

7 Conclusion

Appendix: In the Words of Contemporary Artists

Notes on Artists and Interviewers

References

Index