Handwriting on the Wall

CURRICULUM

Handwriting on the Wall

With just a glint of annoyance behind his thick spectacles, Author Robert Reisner emerged from the ladies' room of a Greenwich Village pub to confront nine girls and a Roman Catholic priest. "They've painted it!" he said. "Let's try the other John."

The group dutifully followed Reisner to the men's room. "It's a gold mine," Reisner exulted. Three at a time, they crowded into the dingy lavatory to savor the myriad scrawls that adorned the walls and even the ceiling. "Listen to this!" said one of the girls, copying furiously in her notebook. "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be." "Marvelous!" said Reisner.

After noting down the best items, the group trooped off in search of other bars and other public lavatories. It was a typical field trip for Anthropology 2675-2, "Graffiti: Past and Present," which Reisner teaches at Manhattan's New School for Social Research. Though conducted with much low good humor, the course is anything but frivolous. The graffito, explains Reisner, "is always a sensitive barometer of change in popular preoccupations. It is a twilight means of communication between the anonymous man and the world."

Classes begin with students presenting their homework--arresting specimens of graffiti that they have collected during the week. Among recent, and printable, student finds: "Life is a hereditary disease," found at the Princeton Uni-versity student center; "Sacred cows make great hamburger," from an East Side cafe.

Sometimes Reisner lectures on graffiti in history, from Pompeii to frontier America, or examines ways in which graffiti illuminate social or political frustrations. But more often the class will repair to a nearby bistro for a firsthand look at the living art. Reisner, who systematically began scrutinizing lavatory walls four years ago and has published two paperback collections of graffiti, believes that the golden age of the graffito is here. In addition to the wit on washroom walls, there is the contemporary lapel-button fad, which he describes as "walking graffiti." The fact is, says Reisner, that "graffiti may be the only creative outlet for some adults."

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