Are we
allowing great works of art to disintegrate?
From shopping centres and schools, to our greatest
buildings, it is claimed many of Britain's best murals are being allowed to
disintegrate.
The Twentieth Century Society is campaigning to save artwork
from the post-war building boom.
"We are losing a whole chapter of our art
history," says campaign director, Catherine Croft.
Ray Howard Jones's An Eye For The People located on the
Western Mail building in Cardiff, has recently been destroyed.
So too has Barbara Jones's Adam Naming The Animals at
Yewlands School in Sheffield.
Redevelopment and rebuilding has seen artworks across
Britain reduced to rubble while others have just gradually faded.
"We are knocking down a lot of the buildings on which
these buildings were originally painted - a lot were in schools and the
Rebuilding Schools Programme has demolished some," Ms Croft says.
"A lot were in local authority buildings, publicly
funded buildings and with the recession there isn't the money to keep them
going - it's a really difficult time for murals."
Forgotten art
In the 1970s Robert Lenkiewicz's huge Elizabethan mural on
the Barbican was a tourist attraction. Today you can barely see it.
Attempts are now being made to reawaken interest in our
public art.
A conference on the topic has just taken place in London and
an exhibition of the best of British mural art from 1920 to 1970 is currently
on display at the Fine Art Society.
Many of the works are not mentioned in catalogues and some
have been almost entirely forgotten.
In the Welsh seaside town of Colwyn Bay, the local council
has just discovered the remains of murals on its derelict Victoria Pier.
They date from the 1930s, by the artists Eric Ravilious and
Mary Adshead and have been covered in both wallpaper and a thin layer of
plaster.
A bid is in with the Heritage Lottery Fund to restore both
the pier and the murals.
Other works can be found on a shopping centre in Redditch, a
tower block in Gosport and at Sunderland University.
'Great works'
One of the problems, campaigners say, is convincing people
that art on shopping centres, schools and streets may be great works.
Murals are big in the US too, particularly during the 1930s.
Part of President Roosevelt's New Deal was to get artists back to work, which
often happened through the commissioning of giant murals in cities throughout
the country.
The Mexican artist Diego Rivera became an art superstar with
his left-wing, communist inclined wall paintings.
The initiative kept artists such as Willem De Kooning from
poverty and it was to be the making of Jackson Pollock, who took what he
learned from the muralists about throwing paint against a wall and turned it
into a modern movement called abstract expressionism.
"We are just not taking them seriously enough," Ms
Croft says. "They are really great works and they ought to be treated
well, ideally kept in the buildings for which they were first created.
"But they are enormous and it's very difficult to find
somewhere to put them where they wont get damaged."
Among the Twentieth Century Society's list of notable works
is a mural on the Co-op in Ipswich, although the artist is a mystery.
In the post-war era mural art was taken very seriously.
Between the 1920s and the 1970s some of Britain's greatest
artists were employed to create murals for buildings, streets and public
spaces.
John Piper was given £1,200 (around £1.50 per sq-ft) in 1951
by the organisers of the Festival of Britain to created a 794 sq-ft painting.
The resulting piece - The Englishman's Home - was created in
his garden using household paint and was seen by millions on the banks of the
Thames in London.