September Features - a mural special!

Friends, Modernists & Urbanists,

after the recent excitement of the recent reprieve for Salford’s gorgeous ‘tree of knowledge’plus the emotional reuniting of the Moberly frieze with its rightful owner, it seems only fitting to devote Septembers features to all things mural!

This month we are dedicating our coveted Icon status to the rediscovery of a Manchester modernist hero, Hubert ‘Nibs’ Dalwood, one of an unsung army of artists and sculptors committed to brightening up the post war public realm and its skyline with panels, friezes and mosaics. Turns out Manchester, indeed the whole region, is awash with such treasures if you simply choose to glance upwards!

On our very doorstep we are lucky enough to have the work of such acclaimed and accomplished artists as Victor Pasmore, Anthony Hollaway and Lynne Chadwick available to view and admire 24/7: there’s even a Barbara Hepworth to drool over in the courtyard of the Kantarovitch. With a little imagination the city becomes a vast open air Tate Modern minus the exhibition fee and restrictive opening hours! And unlike the ‘do not touch’ mantra of the art gallery with its cathedral-like deference, the work of this period is typified by an approachability and inclusivity that was pioneering, refreshing and endearing. Their work was an exuberant expression of colour in a hitherto monochrome landscape, initiated by the 1951 Festival of Britain which featured murals heavily on its festival sites around the country. It was an era of bringing art to the people and the post war building boom created more opportunities for muralists, as modern architecture, with its tower blocks and expanses of blank surfaces, was literally a blank canvas for experimentation. And experiment they did – with new materials, with style, techniques and increasingly with abstraction. And a concern with the reception of their work placed so directly in the landscape off the plinth as it were, preoccupied them too. These artists intended their work to be tough enough to weather the elements and handled by the public at large – Henry Collins (the painter and muralist whose work includes the Post Office Tower and several BHS stores) said his murals were intended to be touched, describing this as ‘spectator involvement’, whilst Mitzi Cunliffe wanted her work to be ‘used, rained on, leaned against, taken for granted’. This New York, sometime Manchester based artist went further declaring that her ‘life-long dream is a world where sculpture is produced by the yard in factories and used in buildings as casually as bricks’….groovy!

But despite brightening up our cityscape and bringing art to us all, these vibrant, democratic and irreplaceable gems are barely acknowledged by the museum world, largely dismissed by art historians and generally neglected by civic authorities. Disappearing fast they are now becoming so rare as to be on the 20^th century society’s special campaign list.

Even Mitzi wouldn’t want us to take them this much for granted…

So here at the mms we bring you three muralistic tales (see what we did there…?) and suggest that next time you are looking for a free and stimulating way to spend an afternoon, why not give the gallery a miss and bask in the public glory of a modernist mosaic or two! It’s high time we reclaimed our post war murals and treasured them in the generous spirit of those times.

As ever we are indebted to the scholarship of other marvellous modernists – in this instance to the 20^th century mural mini-site (above) and to Lynne Pearson  a heroine in her own right!

now turn to our Icon, at risk & RIP sections for all things mural.......

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