Mural (art)

A mural is any piece of artwork placed onto a wall, floor, or ceiling. Murals may be painted directly onto such surfaces or first applied onto a canvas that is then attached to a wall or ceiling. The aesthetics of mural painting can be dramatically different from comparatively simple portrait painting. For instance, mural artists must account for such issues as the uneven surfaces of the canvas, how the completed work fits within its permanent environment, the typically large sizes of murals, differences in lighting in comparison to an internally mounted work, and questions of perspective and angles.

Murals have been adopted as a means of social and personal expression in the public sphere. They are often used to beautify buildings and neighborhoods and to promote messages of political, community, or cultural significance. As such, they are considered to be one of the most accessible forms of contemporary art. Some of the most common forms of murals are traditional painted murals; frescoes, in which paint is applied to lime plaster; prehistoric cave paintings; and mosaics, which are composed of small bits of glass, tile, or stone.

Brief History

The basic principles of mural painting can be traced back to prehistoric cave art. These early works of art date back thirty-five thousand years ago to Paleolithic cave paintings found in Indonesia. Other well-known examples can be found in the Lascaux cave complex in France, Cueva de las Manos in Argentina, the Altamira cave in Spain, Laas Gaal in Somalia, and the Bhimbetka rock shelters in India. Early artisans faced many of the same issues encountered by contemporary muralists, including shaping the works to fit their environment and dealing with the uneven surface of their canvas.

Many ancient civilizations—including the Egyptians, Greeks, Minoans, Etruscans, and Romans—created murals. The Egyptians were known for creating detailed murals as adornments to the graves of pharaohs and other important figures. Among the Greeks and Romans, the preferred form of murals was frescoes. Frescoes were used in public buildings and as ornamentation in private homes. When the remains of Pompeii were uncovered in the eighteenth century, intricate frescoes and mosaics were discovered throughout the city. Many of these were used for interior design. They depicted outdoor scenes in a three-dimensional style or offered portraits of famous myths and historical figures.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century CE, murals fell out of style in the Western world. However, they remained a viable art form among the Byzantines, who used murals in churches, mosques, and other religious buildings. By the tenth century, the use of murals in religious iconography had spread to Kievan Rus'. In the eleventh century, murals saw a European renaissance as part of Romanesque art. Spanish mosques and European churches increasingly used murals during this era as part of their ornamentation.

Murals also played an important role in Asian societies. The tomb of a Western Han dynasty king named Zhao Mo from the second century BCE contained a series of wall murals. The tombs of rulers from the Korean Goguryeo Kingdom (37 CE to the late seventh century CE) similarly featured elaborate wall murals. This style of painting has also been linked to cultures in Thailand, South India, and Central Asia.

In the United States, murals were a key aspect of the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) of the government's Civil Works Administration. This federal agency was an extension of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, which sought to counteract the effects of the Great Depression (1929–39) by offering jobs that contributed to the public good. Between 1933 and 1934, the PWAP provided work to American artists by having them decorate public buildings. In 1935, the government established a similar organization, the Federal Art Project (FAP)—a division of the Works Progress Administration (WPA)—which lasted until 1943. Between these two groups, more than three thousand artists created fifteen thousand works of art, including thousands of murals that became local landmarks throughout the United States.

In contemporary society, murals still play key roles in many communities. They serve as symbols of racial, cultural, and ethnic pride. For example, murals, painted by artists with a range of skills in a variety of countries, prominently served as activist symbolism as well as continued expressions of grief and frustration for the Black community following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in police custody in Minnesota in 2020. They may be used to depict religious symbols, monuments to social justice, and memorials to cultural or local heroes. In Northern Ireland, murals have served as emblems of the political, religious, and social fractures of the Troubles, which occurred between 1969 and 1998. They continue to remain as potent and divisive symbols of the region's troubled history into the twenty-first century.

Overview

Before creating a mural, the artist must check the surface of the wall or ceiling for cracks and loose mortar. This is to make sure that it is capable of supporting the long-term application of paints. Then the surface must be cleaned. The most efficient way of cleaning the wall may be achieved through sandblasting the wall, although a simple cleaning that removes loose dirt and sand can be effective. Placing a sealant on the wall can help save the structural integrity of the wall and mural from natural decay. Indoor walls are less likely to require this type of preparation.

Muralists often use traditional fresco techniques to paint murals. Three forms of fresco murals exist: buon frescoes, secco frescoes, and mezzo-frescoes. The buon fresco technique requires the muralist to use a pigment paint that is dissolved in limewater and applied directly onto wet plaster. This permanently locks the paint onto the surface. Secco frescoes are painted onto a dry plaster surface, but the paint is affixed by mixing it with adhesive agents such as egg, glue, gum arabic, or oil. These frescoes tend to be lighter in color due to the different composition of the paints, which are similar to tempura paints. The mezzo-fresco technique requires the artist to paint onto a nearly dry plaster surface so that the paint is only slightly absorbed into the texture of the wall. Muralists may also use other techniques, including attaching a piece of painted canvas onto the wall.

Next, the artist must create a draft of the selected image and mark it onto the wall. This may be accomplished by either using a grid method or a projector. The grid method requires the artist to divide the desired image into a series of small grids. A second set of grids is sketched onto the mural surface. Each section is then painted block by block onto the surface. The alternative is to use a projector, which casts a larger version of the image onto the wall. This can then be copied onto the wall by the artist.

Famous Muralists

As many historical artists did not work solely in one medium, some of the world's most well-known murals were created by figures who did not necessarily focus on this specific type of art. In the fifteenth century, Leonardo da Vinci, a painter and engineer who became best known for works such as his painting Mona Lisa (early 1500s), used oil paint and tempera to render his original piece The Last Supper on a dry wall that would become part of a convent's refectory. Between 1508 and 1512, Michelangelo, noted for his sculptures, employed the fresco style to paint his widely famous mural on the ceiling of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel. As artists increasingly turned to murals for political and social expression, in the twentieth century, Diego Rivera worked in the buon fresco style to paint a mural, meant to depict authentic rather than Eurocentric Mexican history, over a series of walls within a large stairway in Mexico City's presidential palace. Another Mexican artist renowned for his murals was José Clemente Orozco, who also painted on sites in the United States, including his twenty-four panel The Epic of American Civilization (1932–34) mural hosted on the walls of Dartmouth College's library. Americans inspired by this movement to create murals of their own that more accurately depicted a diverse country included Charles White and Hale Woodruff. In the early twenty-first century, Banksy, an anonymous British artist, became recognized as one of the most prolific and influential contemporary muralists as he used graffiti to make works of typically satirical street art on public walls and buildings in countries such as England, France, and the United States.

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