Murals : Cave, Cathedral, to Street

Children's Literature - Kristin Harris

This 80-page book explores wall painting from prehistory up to today. A brief introduction summarizes the basic concepts of mural or fresco painting and the range of surfaces and paints used in the process. What follows are detailed discussions of contemporary and historic American murals, Mexican murals, Italian Renaissance murals, early Christian murals, ancient Roman and Egyptian murals as well as cave paintings. There are many full color illustrations to support the descriptions of the paintings. This is a journey through art history with a focus on wall/ceiling paintings. Of particular interest are the contemporary American murals, many of which grew out of the protest movements of the 60's. These murals appear all over the country, but especially in the Western United States. Los Angeles is identified as the "mural capital of the world."

School Library Journal

Gr 7-9In his introduction, Capek defines the mural's form, major techniques, and muralists' motivations. He then explores the large pictures painted on walls, ceilings, and sometimes floors. The discussion covers murals in the U.S., ranging from those on buildings, freeway underpasses, and concrete flood control channels to the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. The author then moves on to the modern Mexican muralistsRivera, Siqueiros, and Orozcoand their politically charged, wildly energetic masterpieces. He examines the historical basis of their work, the wall paintings of the ancient Aztecs and Mayas. He introduces the European traditionsthe Italian Renaissance, the early Christian murals, and the murals of ancient Rome and Egypt. Lastly and briefly, Capek introduces the cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira. The arrangement is intriguing and the information is presented in a relaxed flow. Interspersed on bordered pages are biographical sketches of Thomas Hart Benton, Judith Baca, and Diego Rivera as well as brief descriptions of the efforts to restore Da Vinci's Last Supper and Egyptian tomb paintings. While these sections interrupt the flow somewhat, they contain useful and pertinent information. There are titles on Rivera, but there is little else on the subject of murals at a juvenile reading level other than encyclopedias.Jean Pollock, King Country Library System, Seattle, WA

Carolyn Phelan

Capek begins this informative history of mural painting with chapters on cave paintings and goes on to describe murals by the ancient Romans and Egyptians, the early Christians, the Renaissance Italians, and Mexican artists from Aztec, Toltec, and Mayan painters to Diego Rivera, and the twentieth-century U.S. Special two-page sections provide good insights into individual artists and special topics but interrupt the flow of the main text. Photographs of painters and many full-color reproductions of murals illustrate the text effectively. The "book is both attractive and well written."

Kirkus Reviews

Capek follows up Artistic Trickery: The Tradition of Trompe L`Oeil Art (1995) with this handsome but slipshod exploration of another visually intriguing, and even more ancient, art form. Taking readers backward in time, he begins with modern community murals, then surveys other 20th-century work, the great Mexican tradition, and murals created with paint or mosaic from the Renaissance back through prehistory. Sharp full-color photos enhance the presentation but not all are well-chosen: Two details of Constantino Brumidi's murals are included, but WPA-era artist Wendell Jones's First Pulpit in Granville is just one of several hard-to-visit works tantalizingly described and not shown. The author expresses his ideas clearly but ignores billboards, barn art, and cycloramas, does not mention the recently discovered cave paintings at Chauvet, and opens his chapter on early Christian murals with this discouragingly parochial observation: "Jesus Christ was born into a world that was largely Roman . . . The only lands Rome did not control were either too far away to reach or were still unknown."

Outside of individual biographies or general histories of art, young readers won't find much available on murals, but this book's limited purview makes it, at best, a stopgap.