Home Photo Gallery Classroom Documents Concerning Mural Painting Philip Evergood
In thinking about mural painting and its development from the earliest prehistoric beginnings in the caves of Southern France, through the early Florentine period when such great hands as those of Fra Angelico, Lippo Lippi and Masaccio wielded the brush, to Eugene Delacroix, the last great nineteenth-century European exponent of mural art, one can't help being impressed, and not a little shocked, by the fact that with all our exciting past, with all our crammed history books, brave deeds, and great accomplishments, we Americans had managed to exist without a real mural art for so many generations. One marvels also, that such innocuous mural illustrations as Edwin Abbey's for the Boston Library, and those of the modish-mannered Sargent on a nearby wall, could captivate the imagination of such a young and virile nation as ours. It is safe to say that no monumental mural painting had been executed in the western world before the recent great and sweeping movement in this field took place in Mexico twenty years ago under the leadership of men like Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros. An interesting fact to be observed in comparing the development of painting in this country with that in Europe, is that in Europe the embellishment of walls was the first and most elementary concern of the artist. His first exciting pictorial adventures in color and design were made on the walls of dwellings. Easel painting in Europe developed from the mural. In this country easel painting had reached a comparatively high standard of quality before the humble wall seemed worthy of the painter's art. Perhaps this was the result, in part, of the lack of a true, uninfluenced native architecture in this country until the invention of the skyscraper. It is possible that the present interest in the art of the mural derives from the important part modern architecture plays in our everyday life. A more logical reason for the slow development of interest in mural painting in the United States may be outlined as follows: Our early art consisted of a folk art which was the natural free expression of the spare-time worker who carved a beautiful chair, beat a weathervane out of copper, or painted a crude but expressive portrait. These amateur artisans were farmers, fishermen, etc.—their houses, churches, and community buildings were of rough-hewn wood (not of brick and stone like those of the earlier and older civilizations) and were therefore unsuitable for murals. The professional artist, at this time, was a carryover from the genre painters of Flanders, France, and Germany, who painted familiar scenes of everyday life and sold them to the merchant, the farmer, and the peasant. He was a "speculative" painter. As industry and the machine developed in this country, the factory and sweatshop gradually claimed the folk artists, and the professional painter found himself catering to a rich and select audience—he became a "precious" painter—concentrating on exquisite quality in small scale—and because he got closer to preciosity and farther away from the public as a whole, he got farther away from the mural, both in scale and in aim. The mural, by virtue of its physical characteristics (being of large scale on a wall where it is on permanent public display), belongs to a people's audience. Whether our country's growing interest in the mural is predominantly the result of Mexican pollen which has been wafted northward on the breeze or due to an inner compulsion of our own artists to extend their appeal to a larger audience is a disputable point, but two things are certain: First, that our artists are unquestionably indebted to the Mexican artists who have brought to life the sound and permanent techniques of the ancients; second, that the economic depression and the consequent birth of the WPA/FAP has done more in five years for mural painting, and more for the closer understanding between the American artist and his public through the medium of the mural than any individual efforts could have accomplished during a much longer period. Today throughout the length and breadth of our country we see new and virile mural talents coming to the fore. Our young artists never would have had the opportunity, on such a large scale, to embellish the walls of public buildings had not the government supplied a living wage to them and the public institutions supplied the bare walls and the cost of materials. Also, the artist living in this highly mechanized and technically advanced country of ours has become aware of new and necessary fields for the mural—take the subway for example. A group of Project mural painters has been experimenting in the past year or two with three processes which will resist the dampness, vibration, and modern cleaning methods used in the subways An important exhibition of this work, in glazed tiles, enamel fired on sheet iron, and silicon ester paint applied to concrete, was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art last year.* The completion of experiments in these techniques and the ensuing process of perfecting these new methods has definitely established the practicability of murals for subways. For the final blossoming of a distinct and great American mural tradition, we need time. Time and the assurance that our government art projects will continue on a permanent basis. Great strides have been made toward establishing this American mural tradition as a result of this encouragement. Let us hope that the American artist will be given the chance to complete the experiment and to build mural monuments which will rival the great works of the past.
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