Art & the Public Sphere - Painting the Town Red? The Contemporary Legacies of One Hundred Years of Public Muralism and the Left, Apr 2024
Painting the Town Red? The Contemporary Legacies of One Hundred Years of Public Muralism and the Left, Apr 2024
- Opening Essay
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Painting the town red? One hundred years of public muralism and the left: An introductory essay
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Painting the town red? One hundred years of public muralism and the left: An introductory essay show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Painting the town red? One hundred years of public muralism and the left: An introductory essayAuthors: Warren Carter and Ben Wiedel-KaufmannTaking the centenary of the publication ‘Manifesto of the syndicate of technical workers, painters and sculptors’ as the inspiration for this Special Issue, this article introduces the volume through an investigation of the historical, historiographical and theoretical interrelationship between mural painting and leftist politics from 1924 to 2024. It is divided into two main sections. The first section presents a comparative survey of the historiography of murals made in Mexico and the United States in the inter-war period to argue against revisionist readings that interpret them as the unmediated expression of top-down state imperatives. The second section explores exterior mural painting in the decades after 1968 through a focus on two murals produced in London to challenge the notion that they constituted the unmediated bottom up expression of subaltern communities. Both sections argue for a nuanced theoretical model of state patronage and politicized mural production that registers the complex relationship between structure and agency within the context of the heightened class struggle that marked both periods.
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- Articles
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From the Motor City to a Mural City: The legacy of Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:From the Motor City to a Mural City: The legacy of Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: From the Motor City to a Mural City: The legacy of Diego Rivera’s Detroit IndustryThis article explores Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry mural cycle as a site of contested meaning both at the time of its creation in 1933, as well as at the time of the city of Detroit’s municipal bankruptcy in 2013. These two historic moments of economic precarity raised critical questions about the social value of art and its relation to the working class. The article returns to the existing literature on the mural in the 1930s as a way of thinking through the more recent debates around the role of art in the recovery of the city of Detroit in the twenty-first century. The contemporary instrumentalization of murals towards urban revitalization efforts and branding initiatives in Detroit calls for renewed consideration of the mural form’s relationship to left politics. As such, Detroit Industry offers a salient example of an artist’s successful navigation of the confines of corporate patronage to create art for the working class.
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Putting abstraction to work: Radio station murals and mechanized labour
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Putting abstraction to work: Radio station murals and mechanized labour show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Putting abstraction to work: Radio station murals and mechanized labourThis article explores how abstract murals produced by Byron Browne, Stuart Davis, Louis Schanker and Hans Wicht for radio station WNYC operated as part of New York City’s radio infrastructure. Framed by the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP) as integral to the broadcast, these murals mediated between office workers and the machine and participated more broadly in municipal radio’s disciplinary project. By conflating painting and music, these murals fulfilled WNYC’s desire for focused workers and good citizens while also proving the NYC WPA/FAP’s claim that abstraction worked.
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‘I am not a child of myself’: The public murals of Malangatana Valente Ngwenya
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:‘I am not a child of myself’: The public murals of Malangatana Valente Ngwenya show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: ‘I am not a child of myself’: The public murals of Malangatana Valente NgwenyaBy Richard GrayThe article examines the public murals of Malangatana Valente Ngwenya (1936–2011, born in Mozambique) and provides insight into the full range of his achievements as an artist. Close analysis of four works locates Malangatana and his artistic output in the context of his understanding of himself as a product of Mozambican history and culture, thereby, disrupting the binary between dominant existing constructs of himself as, on one hand, a unique individual artist and, on the other, an ‘artist of the people’ according to the definition of FRELIMO, Mozambique’s post-independence ruling party (1975–present). His capacity to maintain his artistic autonomy and agency in challenging circumstances and to insert political commentary in his works shows the power of the public mural as a socially and historically rooted medium. It invites consideration of Malangatana alongside his role models, los tres grandes, the Mexican muralists José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
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- Interview
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‘Digging where I stand’: Researching murals in the North of Ireland. An interview with Bill Rolston
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:‘Digging where I stand’: Researching murals in the North of Ireland. An interview with Bill Rolston show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: ‘Digging where I stand’: Researching murals in the North of Ireland. An interview with Bill RolstonAuthors: Bill Rolston, Warren Carter and Ben Wiedel-KaufmannProfessor Bill Rolston began documenting the murals of his native West Belfast in the 1980s. Since then, whilst pursuing a career as a sociologist (and as the director of the Transitional Justice Institute at Ulster University from 2010 to 2014), Professor Rolston has documented and written about murals across the world and published five books on the Republican and Loyalist murals made in the northern part of Ireland. In December 2022, we met with Rolston to discuss the evolution of his ‘hobby that got out of hand’ and the contrasting histories, iconographies, politics and cultures of Belfast’s two mural traditions. Exploring the emergence of his interest, comparisons with international mural traditions and how the peace process has affected Belfast’s murals, Rolston reflects upon his decades of study and interest in the form.
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- Articles
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Between indoor and outdoor: Barry McGee’s 1994 mural for the Clarion Alley Mural Project
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Between indoor and outdoor: Barry McGee’s 1994 mural for the Clarion Alley Mural Project show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Between indoor and outdoor: Barry McGee’s 1994 mural for the Clarion Alley Mural ProjectBy Sarah HwangThis 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.
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Narratives of Rebellion: Memories and prefiguration in the work of Fab Ciraolo during Chile’s October uprising
show More to view fulltext, buy and share links for:Narratives of Rebellion: Memories and prefiguration in the work of Fab Ciraolo during Chile’s October uprising show Less to hide fulltext, buy and share links for: Narratives of Rebellion: Memories and prefiguration in the work of Fab Ciraolo during Chile’s October uprisingArtistic activism has become a central element for political change in Chile. In 2019, during Chile’s October uprising, graffiti and muralism were at the centre of the street protests. Taking concepts of memory and prefiguration as a theoretical framework, this article examines how visual artist Fab Ciraolo created his narratives of rebellion during October’s uprising and, in turn, posits the potential of contemporary Chilean graffiti and muralism as a repertoire of political action. This article explores the inspiration that social movements have gained from these types of artistic practices and the role the arts, in general, have had as a new repertoire of political action and engagement in politics in Chile.
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