Between indoor and outdoor: Barry McGee's 1994 mural for the Clarion Alley Mural Project.

This article situates San Francisco street artist Barry McGee's 1994 mural for the Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) within Democratic Mayor Frank Jordan's controversial Matrix Programme, which expanded the role of the police in the city's anti-homelessness policy. A central figure in the graffiti scene in the mid-1980s–90s, McGee was recognized for his everyman who represented the everyday people he saw while tagging the city, namely the unhoused community and graffiti writers. This figure was central to his CAMP mural, marking it as an important transitional piece in McGee's career as well as a liminal work of 'street art', rather than 'graffiti'. I suggest a reading of McGee's mural implicating him as Hal Foster's (by way of Walter Benjamin's) 'ideological patron' who struggles in the name of the cultural other to legitimize his art as graffiti and contemporary art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]