The Quest for the QS: Between Pictorial Narrative and Social Discourse

Résumé En

Our paper is dedicated to the research we are carrying out on an artistic and social project named QS. It represents a network of graffiti, created by a group of anonymous semiprofessional artists (Cyop&Kaf), disseminated within Quartieri Spagnoli, a historical center of Naples. These quarters (San Ferdinando, Avvocata and Montecalvario) were built in the XVIth century to house the Spanish garrisons and, nowadays, are known for their poverty and criminality, as well as for their historical value. The street art project called “Quore Spinato” (phonetic equivalent of Cuore Spinato, literally “Thorny Heart,” image evoking the “Sacred Heart” of Jesus Christ), thus, has a double reference: the name of the city district (Quartieri Spagnoli) and the metaphor of mercifulness in relation to the “persecuted persecutors.” Mural paintings which constitute this project are of great interest from cultural, artistic and social viewpoints. Their symbolic pictorial narratives are full of everyday life references and represent an implicit codified discussion of pressing problems within the local community. At the same time, they are real little masterpieces of the contemporary art, woven from artistic, literary, cultural, historical hypertexts and personal psychological obsessions of their authors. Previously, we have already studied different aspects of this remarkable “social art” phenomenon. In particular, we have analyzed a “nomadic” nature of these paintings. Another research project allowed to reveal an interesting color symbolism (a kind of “motivated suprematism”) in their representational system. The present study concerns the relation between pictorial narrativity and social discoursiveness of these paintings.