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Mural

About: Mural is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1144 publications have been published within this topic receiving 5050 citations.


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Book
01 Jan 1999
TL;DR: The bold political mural projects of Diego Rivera and other leftist artists in San Francisco during the 1930s and early 1940s are the focus of Anthony W. Lee's fascinating book.
Abstract: The boldly political mural projects of Diego Rivera and other leftist artists in San Francisco during the 1930s and early 1940s are the focus of Anthony W. Lee's fascinating book. Led by Rivera, these painters used murals as a vehicle to reject the economic and political status quo and to give visible form to labor and radical ideologies, including Communism. Several murals, and details of others, are reproduced here for the first time. Of special interest are works by Rivera that chart a progress from mural paintings commissioned for private spaces to those produced as a public act in a public space: Allegory of California, painted in 1930-31 at the Stock Exchange Lunch Club; Making a Fresco, Showing the Building of a City, done a few months later at the California School of Fine Arts; and Pan American Unity, painted in 1940 for the Golden Gate International Exposition. Labor itself became a focus of the new murals: Rivera painted a massive representation of a construction worker just as San Francisco's workers were themselves organizing; Victor Arnautoff, Bernard Zakheim, John Langley Howard , and Clifford Wight painted panels in Coit Tower that acknowledged the resolve of the dockworkers striking on the streets below. Radical in technique as well, these muralists used new compositional strategies of congestion, misdirection, and fragmentation, subverting the legible narratives and coherent allegories of traditional murals. Lee relates the development of wall painting to San Francisco's international expositions of 1915 and 1939, the new museums and art schools, corporate patronage, and the concerns of immigrants and ethnic groups. And he examines how mural painters struggled against those forces that threatened their practice: the growing acceptance of modernist easel painting, the vagaries of New Deal patronage, and a wartime nationalism hostile to radical politics.

23 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on these murals as an element of the built environment that lends insight to cultural heritage, preferences, and change in a community, and discuss the role of street art as a vehicle for political and social expressions.
Abstract: M URAL art became popular in the United States during the great depression, when wall paintings, sponsored by the Federal Arts Program of the WPA, were executed in public buildings across the land.1 Currently mural art has become important on exterior walls of buildings and thus is part of an evolving pattern of street art.2 This essay focuses on these murals as an element of the built environment that lends insight to cultural heritage, preferences, and change in a community. Exterior murals are now distinctive features in many urban landscapes, particularly in Mexican American districts of many cities. Here mural art is not only an artifact that embellishes the barrio landscape but also a vehicle for political and social expressions.3 Art and landscape are not new themes for geographers, but their emphasis has been on traditional art forms like canvas painting. A focus on less traditional forms like exterior murals presents several challenges not usually encountered in conventional studies of landscape art. Mexican American, or Chicano, mural art is relatively recent and not well documented in traditional sources. Much of the data presented here were collected in the field and through interviews with artists and art historians. Because these murals are part of the everyday landscape, they are exposed to the elements and can be ephemeral. Dating murals and ascribing artistry are not always easy tasks. Many early street murals and some recent ones have no date of execution or information about the artists. Whenever the

23 citations

Book
01 Jan 1997
TL;DR: Barasch as mentioned in this paper explores a variety of mediums including sculpture, painting, mural, statuary, woodcuts, bas-relief, and even music, and discusses how, once an art work is seen and understood, a new, communicative function is added to the work.
Abstract: Moshe Barasch, an authority on art theory, tackles the complex question of how art works as language. Barasch shows how, once an art work is seen and understood, a new, communicative function is effectively added to the work. In an engaging style Barasch moves from the art and civilization of Ancient Egypt to that of modern Europe, and effortlessly shows a full and surprising range of language in art--from the magical to the impious, from the ambiguous to the didactic, from the scientific to the propagandistic. Barasch contemplates a variety of mediums including sculpture, painting, mural, statuary, woodcuts, bas-relief, even music. Over one hundred illustrations are included as an integral part of the discussion.

22 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The discovery of mural paintings at the Classic Maya site of Xultun, Guatemala, provides an important context for the study of ancient literacy and writing in practice as mentioned in this paper, where the hands of multiple scribes recorded events and astronomical tabulations on walls that were also painted with portraits of ritual specialists and the reigning king.
Abstract: The discovery of mural paintings at the Classic Maya site of Xultun, Guatemala, provides an important context for the study of ancient literacy and writing in practice. The mural chamber was a place of writing where the hands of multiple scribes recorded events and astronomical tabulations on walls that were also painted with portraits of ritual specialists and the reigning king. We present evidence suggesting that creation and inscription of indigenous Maya books, called codices, also took place onsite by a specific cohort of ritual specialists called taaj. In this article, we seek to archaeologically “situate” these codex-like inscriptions in the mural room—revealing a crucial and distinctly Precolumbian window (as opposed to colonial Spanish view) into Maya bookmaking, its practitioners, and the physical contexts in which it was carried out. Together, the images, texts, and archaeological materials found in and around the chamber enable us to contextualize acts of writing and their authorship as well as engage larger questions regarding the social and political structures shaping literacy in Maya society during the eighth century.

21 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
2023132
2022287
202149
202048
201956
201851