Tlacolulokos The Murals of Jalatlco Part V.

 

Part V. Thee Finished Mural.

On my first morning meeting the guys I asked how long they thought it would take to complete the work. I was thinking of adapting my schedule so that I could do this photo essay. One told me matter of factly...we will be done Sunday afternoon.

At 5:30 Sunday afternoon I went over to see how they were doing. Each of them was wiping his hands on a paint rag. Se acabo! (It is finished!) each told me proudly.

How’s that for timing!

A well known art historian, whose name escapes me at the moment, has written that fine art painting falls into two types: painting that is linear and painting that is painterly. Rembrandt and Cezanne are fine examples of painterly painters in that they used masses of color modulated to suggest form, creating the perception of forms which create a design. Picasso is a fine example of a linear painter. He loved to draw, he was a master draftsman and all of his paintings are in essence drawings in oil on canvass.

Here in the finished mural we see that line is king. Forms are created using lines, sometimes willowy lines, lines of colors banded together that build beautifully into suggested forms. In the hand and face we see the lines build the form of that represented. The colors very carefully do not blend, as if respecting the contribution of each color to the whole, saying emphatically: this is a painting. The artist is not trying to fool you: it is straight up and honest.

The mural is entitled Nuestra Sol se ha ido...our sun is gone or, perhaps, Our Sun Has Set. It commemorates an ethnic past. There is no attempt to make any part of it a representation of a living present. On the right we see that the glyp has come to represent a jaguar head piece on the head of...the King? But what I especially like here is that none of the forms ever really recede into deep picture space. It is the key note of modern painting that an art work is a visual experience on a flat ground. And we see here that the suggested forms are really only a painted surface. A strict discipline is required to achieve that result. Thus, stepping back and seeing the whole we have a visual experience and stepping in to see the details we see a mastery of the painter’s craft creating art. Fine art. Bravo Tlacolulokos!