I found a couple pictures that I took on a visit to the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn many years ago (2013, in fact). There is so much street art in Bushwick that I took tons of photos on that visit, so the fact that I’m pulling something from 12 years ago is just the result of revisiting a vast archive of pictures and finding something interesting.
At any rate, this picture above, which was a wheat paste piece on a wall but was partially ripped off, features what I would assume to be a depiction of Dr. Doom with the words “There is a spectre haunting Europe …” with Dr. Doom holding his fist up in the air. I’m not sure who the street artist is, since the bottom half (which might have a tag or signature) is ripped off, but for some reason today, I saw this and wondered about the text. Who said that? What’s the context?
I found out that the phrase “a spectre is haunting Europe” is from the famous opening line of “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, published in 1848. A “spectre” is another word for “ghost,” and the full opening line is “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre; Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and German police spies.” But I find it interesting to read that no European countries were formally “communist” in the 1840s, because communism as a system of government did not exist until the early 20th century with the 1917 Russian Revolution. So what was Marx talking about? Without pretending to be an expert on this, but rather just someone going down a rabbit hole after seeing this street art, I see that Marx viewed communism as the inevitable successor to capitalism, because of capitalism’s inherent exploitation of the working class.
So my next question, since this picture and street art are from 2013, is to refresh my memory of what was happening in Europe in 2013 that might inspire an artist to make this statement? A little research reviews the fact that public confidence in the European Union was falling, with financial, currency and debt crises. Other events included Croatia joining the European Union; Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected Pope Francis in March; high unemployment existed in some EU countries and devastating floods hit Central Europe.
I wish I could see the full street art, as I’d be curious how Dr. Doom fit into this statement.
Here’s another word-based street art piece also seen in Bushwick on the same trip:
I’m not sure who the artist was of this piece either, but it’s another case of the art being as much about the words as it is about the visuals. It looks like the paint used to make the words is really thick, as if it was squeegee’d onto the wall through a stencil. It reads, “Loneliness, Isolation, U R not alone, New York, NY USA.” I’m not sure if the artist is making the same connections I’m about to make, but there was a New York Times article in May of 2013 which discussed the health effects of loneliness and potential ways to combat it, highlighting the issue’s relevance in NYC at the time. Even more significantly, I see that “Grouper” was a “NYC start-up to watch” in 2013, with the mission to “end loneliness.” Was this street art some guerilla marketing for Grouper? I don’t know. But the texture of the wall surface in the background of this text makes for a solid composition, I like the whole effect as an art work in its own right.