Showing papers on "Mural published in 2000"

Mural Painting in Britain 1840-1940: Image and Meaning

Abstract: 1. An Art Extraordinaire 2. Royalty and Reform State Patronage at the Palace of Westminster, 1841-1864 3. Pageantry and Propaganda: Murals in the Royal Exchange and London Livery Company Halls 4. Pictures and Politics: State patronage at the Palace of Westminster, 1906-1913 5. War and Peace: State Mural Schemes, 1912-1927 6. Celebrating the Empire, 1924-1938 7. Patron and Icon at the Town Hall 8. Ecclesiastical Murals 9. Mind and Body: Education and Welfare Murals 10. Private Houses 11. Work and Play 12. Conclusion Appendix A. Guide to Principal Techniques and Media Used, 1840-1940 Appendix B. Ecclesiastical Murals: Supplementary Examples Appendix C. Mind and Body: Education and Welfare Murals: Supplementary Examples Appendix D. Private Houses: Supplementary Examples Appendix E. Work and Play: Supplementary Examples Bibliography Index

"Nature's workshop": the work environment and workers' bodies in California's citrus industry, 1900-1940.

Abstract: Not content merely to try to feed the physical bodies of the one-third of a nation that he saw as ill-nourished, Franklin Delano Roosevelt also offered up images designed to nourish local communities and thereby fortify the body politic at large. The director of the Fine Arts Section of the Treasury Department, which commissioned over eleven hundred murals in post offices across the country between 1934 and 1943, wanted "to keep away from official art and to develop local cultural interests throughout the country.", The images would be rooted in the countryside, in the hope that this would help connect the people to each other and to the land. When the postmaster in Seneca, Kansas, objected that the mural design for his town's office (a portrayal of a wheat harvest on a flat landscape) was more appropriate for parts further west, the artist readily revised his work. He wanted his audience-"the working people, the people producing useful things with their hands" to be able to see themselves in his landscape. When muralist Paul Julian saw his space on the wall of the Fullerton post office in the California county of Orange, he did not have to look far to find his subject: "Orange Pickers." Though painted with the brush strokes of realism, Julian's mural depicted a scene that did not correspond to any actual grove. All of the elements were real enough, but his picture was a composite. It brought together a range of representative figures, all of whom might have picked oranges at a particular time, though not likely at the same time: a white male high-schooler wearing a sweater embroidered with an "F" for Fullerton; a young white woman with bobbed hair and a

Images of Texan and Mexican cultures shared in a telecommunications partnership

Abstract: Two classes in College Station, Texas and two classes in Mexico City shared artwork via telecommunications. In this arts‐based case study we asked: What cultural similarities and differences manifested themselves through children's artwork shared over geographic distances via videoconference? The cultural similarities and differences manifested through the children's art in the form of murals included the children's choices regarding (a) what to portray and (b) how to convey an artistic message. In addition, characteristics and communication styles of each school's culture were described through analyses of each mural's symbols, labels, and artistic style.

A Postcolonial Reading of Mural Art in South Africa

Abstract: Introduction Most residents of South Africa's larger cities will, when prompted, immediately recall having noticed one or more wall paintings, or murals, somewhere in town. Fifteen years ago, it can be ascertained, the response to such a question would have been very different--mostly due to circumstances associated with South Africa's political situation under an oppressive apartheid regime. While there were a few murals in South African cities and townships during the 1970s and 80s (1), urban mural art has only recently emerged as a highly visible phenomenon and tremendously flourished ever since. This paper will focus mostly on so-called `community murals' (a term to be elaborated upon below) as opposed to muralised advertisement, graffiti, and commissioned wall decorations, often executed by a single artist, as well as all forms of traditional African rural homestead paintings (2). Community mural art is mostly a post-apartheid phenomenon, its emergence closely connected with political change and liberalisation in South Africa. Despite this close correlation with political processes, mural art appears to be strikingly unpolitical and uncritical in content. Murals are often perceived to be unchallenging, boringly re-iterating what we already know. They have a long tradition of being associated With advertisement or graffiti, justifying the fact that they are not taken seriously as art. (3) This paper will suggest that there is more to murals than meets the eye. It aims to challenge some of the common stereotypes and assumptions associated with urban community murals and question the customary (and often dismissive) ways of reading their contents. This attempt to reposition mural art is based on the premise that the reception and perceived meaning of murals may be a very different one to different communities (4) and that the current perception of mural art within academia rests solely on one societal group's reading and frames of reference. Postcolonial theory will provide the theoretical framework to first expose the subversive character of community murals as a form of visual arts practice located in opposition to `fine art', and then illustrate with reference to a few examples how a critical dimension manifests itself in the imagery of mural art in South Africa. `Community art' versus `fine art' Despite the current rapproachement of `high art' and `low art' realms in artistic practices and strategies of display, South Africa is still largely polarised between `fine art' on one end of the scale, and various forms of `low art', including craft, commercial art and what has been labelled `community art' on the other. `Fine art' usually implies academic training according to European (or more generally Western) models, although this may be substituted by more informal training if the artist is invested with great natural talent in accordance with the concept of `genius'. `Fine art' entails, knowledge and mastery of a specific norm of artistic ability, which is closely associated with Western aesthetic standards and artistic practices. `Fine art' in South Africa clearly follows international trends as evidenced, for example, by the recent 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, Trade Routes--both in terms of art production and modes of display. After the end of South Africa's pariah status under apartheid and in particular the cultural boycott, South African artists clearly enjoy taking part in and meeting the challenges of a wide international competition in a global art world. `Community art' on the other hand, of which mural art plays an important part, is a collaborative art form that may involve the participation of non-trained artists, who do not necessarily adhere to `fine art' aesthetic standards and artistic techniques. Most importantly, community mural art often places more emphasis on the artistic process than on the final product, the painting itself. As opposed to such public art works as conventional monuments or sculptures, which could be called `fine art in public places', `community art' is highly site specific and presumes an active engagement of the local community in one form or another. …

The Guernica Children's Peace Mural Project

Abstract: This is an exploration of the international Guernica Children's Peace Mural Project, particularly in terms of its theoretical underpinnings and possible impact as a paradigm for ‘real life’ art education.

The heavenly court: a study on the iconopraxis of Daoist temple painting

Abstract: This study investigates four complete sets of Daoist wall paintings, termed Heavenly Court paintings (chaoyuan tu) and depicting a court audience of Daoist deities in heaven, of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in the context of related Daoist ritual practices, mural production, and personalisations. After outlining the history and development of Heavenly Court painting in China, it explains the conceptual framework on which painters based their design, how this design was built up, and why patrons modified some elements in the design thus accounting for differences between the wall paintings.

Chemical analysis of Mediaeval mural paintings in Sweden

Abstract: The present contribution summarizes the results from investigations of interior mural paintings dating from the late Middle Ages in seven Swedish churches, three from the island of Gotland and four from the Swedish mainland. About 230 samples have been analysed by SEM/EDS and XRD with respect to inorganic pigments. it was noted that lead dioxide and atacamite were quite common. Also GC-MS was used to identify various organic constituents.

Virtual Dunhuang Mural Restoration System in Collaborative Network Environment

Abstract: This paper introduces a virtual Dunhuang mural restoration system in collaborative network environment. It describes the style of Dunhuang mural, analyzes the reasons of mural spoilage, and presents the necessity to develop a collaborative mural restoration GroupWare. It describes the components and the workflow of mural restoration in detail, solves some key technologies in the system. In the end, it introduces the system architecture, and presents the system interface and some restored results.

Medieval Armenian Art and Architecture: The Church of the Holy Cross, Aght'amar

Abstract: Davies' study of medieval Armenian architecture focuses on one of Armenia's most outstanding medieval monuments, the Church of the Holy Cross at Aght'amar. The church, built a thousand years ago, has survived intact and provides a valuable glimpse of the art of the 10th-century kingdom of Vaspurakin. The sculptural and mural programmes are discussed in detail as are the influences on the artwork and the subsequent history of the church up to the present day.

The Public (Mis)use of Art: Radical Artists, Reformist States, and the Politics of Mural Painting in 1930s and 1940s America and Mexico

Abstract: Leonard Folgarait and Anthony Lee were both students of T. J. Clark; they both explore the relationship between the state and mural painters (in Mexico and America respectively); and they both supply sophisticated iconographic readings of the works in question in an attempt to determine their ideological significance vis-a-vis the social systems in which they were produced. Yet here the similarities end. Despite these apparent points of contact they pursue what are ultimately different methodological agendas that produce conflicting interpretations of the relationship between the state, radical artists, and the practice of mural painting. I will argue that these differences are as much theoretical as they are empirical, as much a product of the respective interpretative frameworks used as the result of fundamental differences between the nature of the American and Mexican states and their respective patronage of mural painting in the 1930s and 1940s. Whilst both writers claim to be working within the remit of a social history of art, Folgarait's rigid adherence to the theoretical work of Nicos Poulantzas and Michel Foucault produces a somewhat deterministic account of the relationship between the Mexican state and mural painting that largely negates any meaningful concept of human agency. Such overt theoreticism stands in stark contrast to Lee's study, which instead pays close attention to the changing constellation of class forces in San Francisco as the context in which to read the shifting fortunes of radical mural artists during the politically turbulent years of the Depression. Folgarait rightly begins with a political analysis of the Mexican Revolution. In exploring the relationship between the uprising of 1910 and the transfer of power from the autocratic Porfirio Dfaz to Francisco Madero in 1911, and the subsequent presidencies of Venustiano Carranza, Alvaro Obreg6n, Plutarco Elias Calles, and Lazaro Cardenas, Folgarait writes that Mexico 'was living a postRevolutionary reality and using Revolutionary rhetoric to express it, using a Revolutionary culture as a voice for post-Revolutionary society' (p. 6). The Revolution was the catalyst for the emergence of a modern capitalist state in Mexico, and as such the country remained 'a land of cheap labour, where no worker could claim ownership of the means of production and toiled only to fatten the profit margins and dividends of usually absent owners' (p. 120). In accordance with recent scholarship Folgarait argues that the Revolution ultimately benefited those who became the new elite during the post-Revolution. Political power remained centralized, although a regular change of leaders by election was presented as a greater sign of democracy. Economic power was shifted, but only away from an ageing Porfirian aristocracy to an opportunistic

South African mural art in the 1980s and 1990s: impulses and influences

Abstract: The recent tremendous explosion of urban mural art in South Africa raises questions about the origins, influences and roots of this vibrant facet of visual art production in the country. 1 The mural boom first manifested itself in South Africa's large metropolitan centres with their sprawling surrounding townships, then in smaller cities and towns throughout the country. The sudden high visibility of mural art has prompted a variety of writers employing different perspectives to rationalise and contextualise the phenomenon. Frequently, urban mural art is linked to, and implicitly presented as an extension of, a century-old indigenous South African tradition of wall painting that commenced with San rock art (eg Anonymous 1997; Felgine 1997; Frescura 1989). Others place contemporary urban murals in the context of 'street arts', along with literature, song, dance, parades and carnivals, decorated vehicle bodies, popular theatre and poetry (Agier & Ricard 1997). Similarly, murals are sometimes understood to be closely related to, or even identical with, graffiti, taking a similar visual shape and being assumed to be motivated by a comparable dynamic. Others equate murals with advertisement, while journalists and artists tend to characterise murals as a popular form of cultural production, in other words, 'people's art'. (1)

Framing the early modern field of vision

Abstract: just a term of discourse. Lee fulfils his declared intention of demonstrating 'the inaccuracy of our received notion of "1930s public art" as issuing suddenly from an agency of the federal government and the efforts of reformist Democrats' (p. 128), to argue instead that the New Deal programmes intensified local battles over the perceived uses and abuses of public art. My only reservation to Lee's welcome contribution to the analysis of the complex relationship between the state and mural painting under the New Deal concerns his claims for Californian exceptionalism. The San Francisco Big Strike was just one of four important and violent strikes of that year there were others by workers at the Electric Auto-Lite Company in Toledo, Ohio; by truckers'in Minneapolis, Minnesota; and by textile workers along the East Coast. What they had in common was the fact that they all involved unorganized workers encouraged by Section 7a of Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act to move against their powerful anti-union employers.16 It would be interesting to see if radical mural painters also had a part to play in these confrontations, whether this be real or imaginary. And although the subsequent WPA years seem to be 'a period of relative homogeneity, in the murals' iconography and style and in their general ideological tone' (p. 161), there were nevertheless continuing battles over censorship as radical artists continued to challenge the restrictive administrative prescriptions for federal art. This is a story that has yet to be properly told. 16. In exchange for their exemption from the antitrust laws under the National Industrial

Abstract Art and Controversy: A Case Study of Louis Bunce’s Airport Mural and Other Portland Art Controversies

Abstract: art and controversy : a case study of Louis Bunce's airport mural and other Portland art controversies Michael P. Craven Portland State University Let us know how access to this document benefits you. Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds Part of the Art and Design Commons, and the Sociology Commons This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. For more information, please contact pdxscholar@pdx.edu. Recommended Citation Craven, Michael P., "Abstract art and controversy : a case study of Louis Bunce's airport mural and other Portland art controversies" (1997). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 4296.