Showing papers on "Mural published in 2005"

Death of a Mural

Abstract: This article focuses on what happens when mural paintings in Northern Ireland come to the end of their effective lifespan. It begins from a perspective of mural painting as a socially constructed artefact, which is involved in dynamic interaction with the local environment. But while most work on this subject area has focused on the reasons why paintings are created in the first place and/or on the meanings of their symbolic content, the article analyses what happens when the murals are no longer of any social interest and explores a number of reasons for their transformation, removal and disappearance. It defines a framework of seven categories: retirement, redundancy, recycling, redevelopment, reclamation, remonstration and restoration that can be used to explore how and why mural paintings that have reached the end of their life are removed or replaced.

The Troubled Republic: Visual Culture and Social Debate in France, 1889–1900

Abstract: Fin-de-siecle France was a period of unrest, with strikes, demonstrations, and anarchist terrorism reflecting deep social and political differences. Yet at the same time, this decade produced a vibrant visual culture--monumental sculpture, mural decoration, avant-garde painting, posters, illustrations, and photography--much of which was used to articulate France's ideological arguments. This fascinating book shows how four key issues in social debate were treated by contemporary artists. Richard Thomson begins by exploring disquieting attitudes toward the body and sexuality that resulted from France's concerns about national decadence after its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. He then considers how artists depicted crowds and represented public discomfort about mass unrest. Next he discusses religious imagery during a decade when the Catholic Church was attempting to come to terms with Republicanism. And finally he addresses the question of revenge against Germany for the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, showing that it was kept alive in contemporary art.

Shades of Peace and Democracy: Social Discontent and Reconciliation in Central America

Abstract: After traversing the twenty-kilometer road that leads from the Pan American highway up into the central highland town of San Juan Comalapa in Guatemala, one of the first breaks from the verdant scenery is a mural painted on the cemetery walls. In 2002, teachers, artists, students and other community members sketched and painted the history of their town and people; the result stands as a testament to Mayan resistance. For the recent past, it depicts Guatemala's civil war, the poverty

Graffiti and Urban Space

Abstract: Graffiti, by its very practice, stands out as a disharmonious counterpoint to an urban discourse that has held the city as a “universal subject, as a concept of clean space with an urge to ongoing purification practices” (Best & Struver 2005:4). In such a way, graffiti has the power to disrupt the ‘indifferent’ networks of cultural sense elaborated upon by Mckensie Wark, by bringing sites and spaces encountered in everyday life into contention. One such example is the prominent mural (above) located between the suburbs of Fortitude Valley and New Farm that I pass on the morning commute to university. Standing in stark contrast to a streetscape otherwise dominated by advertising, it presents a striking visual image while leaving the viewer with a number of unresolved questions about the nature of its content. Who, for instance, is Pope Alice? What were the motivations of the writers who painted the mural? 1 In Wark’s estimation “modern, urban culture is as much about indifference as it is about difference” because the space in which people interact belongs to neither party in particular. “The space itself is indifferent, and that indifference makes possible the intermingling networks of cultural sense” (Wark, 1997:18).

Shadows on a wall : Juan O'Gorman and the mural in Pátzcuaro

Abstract: Novelist and essayist Hilary Masters recreates a moment in 1940s Pittsburgh when circumstances, ideology, and a passion for the arts collided to produce a masterpiece in another part of the world. E. J. Kaufmann, the so-called "merchant prince" who commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, was a man whose hunger for beauty included women as well as architecture. He had transformed his family's department store into an art deco showcase with murals by Boardman Robinson and now sought to beautify the walls of the YM&WHA of which he was the president. Through his son E. J. Kaufmann, jr (the son preferred the lowercase usage), he met Juan O'Gorman, a rising star in the Mexican pantheon of muralists dominated by Diego Rivera, O'Gorman's friend and mentor. O'Gorman and his American wife spent nearly six months in Pittsburgh at Kaufmann's invitation while the artist researched the city's history and made elaborate cartoons for the dozen panels of the proposed mural. Like Rivera, O'Gorman was an ardent Marxist whose views of society were radically different from those of his host, not to mention the giants of Pittsburgh's industrial empire-Carnegie, Frick, and Mellon. The murals were never painted, but why did Kaufmann commission O'Gorman in the first place? Was it only a misunderstanding? In the discursive manner for which his fiction and essays are noted, Masters pulls together the skeins of world events, the politics of art patronage, and the eccentric personalities and cruel histories of the period into a pattern that also includes the figures of O'Gorman and his wife Helen, and Kaufmann, his wife Liliane, and their son. Masters traces the story through its many twists and turns to its surprising ending: E. J. Kaufmann's failure to put beautiful pictures on the walls of the Y in Pittsburgh resulted in Juan O'Gorman's creation of a twentieth-century masterpiece on a wall in the town of Patzcuaro, Mexico.

A Tentative Exploration On The Tomb With Mural Paintings In Western Han Dynasty Unearthed At Xi 'an University Of Technology'

Abstract: The tomb with mural paintings unearthed at Xi′an University of Technology is the third tomb with mural paintings discovered in Xi′an area. The mural paintings with rich contents have been perfectly preserved, in which there are paintings describing not only guarding tomb, fighting against evils, ascending to heaven and becoming immortal, but also hunting activities, singing and dancing of the owner of the tomb. The lines in drawings are tenuous and the characters have bright eyes and graceful eyebrows, which are quite different from the drawing style of "being bold and unconstrained" in Han Dynasty. These mural paintings provide the most realistic and lively materials for us to study the social life, funeral custom in the capital Changan in Western Han Dynasty and the development of the Chinese drawings.

Drive-by-shooting, filmando Detroit: Conversación entre Michael Chanan y George Steinmetz, realizadores de "Detroit, ruin of a city

Abstract: This article presents a conversation between the makers of the film �Detroit : Ruin of a City�. This film looks back over the history of the city in the twentieth century: reconstructing the rise and fall of the social system identified by social theorists as �Fordism�; the way the city was shaped by the automobile; and its decline following the deindustrialization that set in during the 1950s, leaving the city itself ill-adapted to the post-Fordist society of the epoch of globalization. With the participation of Detroit artist Tyree Guyton, French sociologist Loic Wacquant, Detroit-born writer Dan Georgakas, Detroit photographer Lowell Boileau, and a variety of local residents, the story is traced through a rich variety of archive footage �of the Ford plants, mass protests of the Depression years, Diego Rivera painting his famous mural �Detroit Industry', the struggle for trade union rights, and the riots of 1943 and 1967. The which the film charts both the city's history and the battle over its image that began when the Ford Motor Company started making its own films back in 1914. Through this footage the film charts the battle over the image of the city, its industry, and its people, a battle that began when the Ford Motor Company started making its own films in 1913 and is perpetuated by the dystopic Hollywood representations of Detroit in films like �Robocop� (1987), �The Crow� (1993), and �Assault on Precinct 13� (2005

Two différent brewing processes revealed from two ancient egyptian mural paintings

Abstract: We attempted the faithful reproduction of the brewing processes depicted on the mural paintings in the tombs of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep of the Old Kingdom and in the tomb of Kenamun of the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt using a common pathway. After multiple reproductions, we succeeded in brewing stable beer using both of the above processes. Surprisingly, the two processes were proven to be completely different. We also attempted to analyze the manufacturing processes depicted in the Kaemraef mural painting, as well as the Meketre models, of the Middle Kingdom. It was evident that the manufacturing process of the Kaemref mural painting belonged to the Niankhkhnum type, while the Meketre models fell under the Kenamun process. These results indicate that two ancient Egyptian beer-manufacturing processes coexisted for a long period of time in Upper and Lower Egypt.

Preservation, People, And Politics In TheRestoration Of The National Theatre Of Panama:A Case Study

Abstract: The National Theatre in Panama City is an Italian-style opera house completed in 1908 by architect Gennaro Nicola Ruggieri, and decorated with painted murals created by Panamanian artist Roberto Lewis. Though the theatre has undergone numerous restoration projects, the collapse of a large section of the ceiling mural in 2000 initiated not only evaluation and restoration, but also publicity, education programmes, and funding from foreign governments. The restoration of the ceiling mural in 2002 led to a total restoration of the theatre, which was completed in August 2004. Bureaucracy and politics caused delays in the project, which was supposed to be completed in November 2003, and though the theatre underwent a near-total restoration, the roof was never fixed. Leaks in the roof were the reason why the ceiling mural collapsed in the first place.

Image-ing Our Foremothers: Art as a Means to Connecting with Women's History

Abstract: This is an 8 week experience for the college student that begins by setting a learning context through using library resources, especially online databases, for locating images and art that reflect a chosen research topic and creating a mural that demonstrates the students’ comprehension of the chosen topic. The experience includes conducting research on 3 significant events or people in women’s US history. The written research will be accompanied by images or art that the student has chosen (described) as reflective of, or related to the researched event or person. In order to determine the students’ level of information literacy, the research will include a detailed description of how the students located the images. The students will also draw or describe a personalized sketch of one of the researched events or people. The culmination of the research is the design and painting of a collaborative mural depicting the students' research topics.

The Art of Negotiation

Abstract: Scholars examining the twentieth‐century American civil rights movement typically prefer action and events to objects of commemoration. When art historians turn to New Deal public arts, they generally focus on projects perceived to embody collective values rather than on works that embraced contemporary controversy. Mitchell Jamieson's 1940–42 mural, An Incident in Contemporary American Life, for the Department of the Interior building in Washington, D.C., reimagined the purpose of federal art. The subject, Marian Anderson's 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial, was a watershed event in American racial history. Although the concert has received extensive scholarly attention, the art that honors the event remains unexamined. Jamieson's little‐known mural merits attention for the pivotal place it occupies in the history of American public art. It not only qualifies as the first work to celebrate an event of the modern civil rights movement but also marks an important departure in using federal art to agitat...