[00:00.00]I noticed on my way to class today that someone has spray-painted an image of our school mascot¡ª¡ª [00:05.84]you know, a wolverine¡ª¡ªwith the slogan ¡°Go Wolverines!¡± on the wall of the Student Union. [00:12.02]Have any of you seen that yet? I guess they¡¯re just expressing their enthusiasm for the football season. [00:17.49]It¡¯s not a very artistic effort, but it is a perfect example of the kind of modem art I want to talk about today: graffiti. [00:24.92]Of course, graffiti is not modern at all. The earliest known examples are around 2000 years old. [00:31.25]When Mount Vesuvius buried the Roman city of Pompeii under lava during its eruption [00:35.66]In 79 AD, it preserved all kinds of graffiti, or wall messages, ¡ª¡ª [00:41.42]magic spells, curses, declarations of love, political slogans, literary quotations, all sorts of messages¡ªjust like our modem graffiti. [00:51.39]The Mayans scrawled sayings on their temples in Guatemala. [00:54.93]The Vikings scratched their initials on New Grange Mound in Ireland. [00:59.14]And the Vandals ¡ª no pun intended¡ª¡ªcarved runes on the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. [01:05.87]So defacing public property with graffiti has been a universally popular pastime since the world¡¯s earliest history. [01:13.45]Actually, we could go a lot further back into prehistory for examples, to the famous cave paintings of Lascaux, for instance¡ª¡ª [01:21.02]but these probably don¡¯t fit the definition, [01:23.31]since a main characteristic of graffiti is that it¡¯s drawn or written on someone else¡¯s property without permission¡ª [01:30.19]and consequently with some haste! [01:32.88]By definition, graffiti¡ªthe singular is ¡°graffito¡± Ò» [01:36.57]is the name for lettering or images that are illegally scrawled, scratched, sprayed or painted in any way on property. [01:45.58]Nowadays, there are four general sorts of graffitigang graffiti, socio-political graffiti, expressive or humorous graffiti, and public art.