Mexican Mural Movement Response

Five Essential Elements of the Mexican Mural Movement:
1. Jose Vasconcelos thought that public art would help educate and excite the public and get them to support the new government. The movement was states sponsored so they had the money to do it and the support of their country.
2. Artists collaborated to make cultural murals about their shared heritage, trying to get the Mexican people to get involved in the development of their new nation. Many artists gathered to take part.
3. Many of the artists showed nationalism in their art by incorporating Mexican hero’s and people, and pre-Hispanic types of art. They also incorporated European modernism.
4. They brought together many art movements in their murals like the Italian Renaissance, Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Postimpressionism, and Surrealism. They also incorporated the ideas of Marx and Lenin.
5. The formation of the Union of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptures and “A Declaration of Social, Political, and Aesthetic Principles” defined the movement and defined it as a public, ideologically driven, didactic art.

The murals talked about in the Mexican Murals reading made me want to consider basing one of my mural ideas on something political, or at least something that would make people think. I don’t think our mural has to be controversial, I just want our mural to make people stop and feel the urge to figure out what our mural is saying, not just see some pretty spray paint and keep on walking. This is what the Mexican muralists were doing. Rivera made people upset and made them want to figure out what he was thinking with the mural he started for Rockefeller Jr. Our mural is not going to be as widely seen as his because it is on the back of a building in Syracuse but that just means we need to make it that much more memorable to make viewers come to it, rather than it be conveniently place for the viewer.