Americans are drowned in words—over the air, in directives on paper, in appeals through the mails. We’re also drowned in pictures—outdoor advertising, transit advertising, advertising
on pages of paper or in blurry pictures on a little screen. The independent graphic artist in America has in the past occupied himself or herself with filling rectangles to be hung on interior walls. Usually only a small percentage of people will pay for such art or even find wall space for it.
Now an increasing number of graphic artists are realizing the need to use exterior surfaces, visible to any pedestrian, cyclist, or to passengers in car, bus, or train. It’s an old technique, used by ancient societies in all countries, and today still in some places.
Sometimes it has been a folk art of anonymous painters filling the people’s needs. Sometimes, as in Mexico, the artists have been national heroes.
This manual will help young artists expand the tradition here. Now. In the crisis facing the inhabitants of this land, murals can fill a need for honest communication between all people on a nonverbal level. Independent artists can communicate ideas which will not be said by our politicians, our TV or newspapers—ideas which need to be explored in public.
Not all the artists will agree with each other, of course. No matter. Their noncommercial pictures will carry an important message: we are not one hundred percent at the mercy of the media. We can communicate with each other through color, line, and form. And as independent
human beings, our content is going to be different from what is ground out on the drawing boards of commerce: we are going to build a new world. We are going to unite for peace, freedom, jobs for all, and a clean, unpolluted world to share.
How will this come about? The murals will tell the story. You don’t believe me?
Keep your eyes open.
Pete Seeger, “Introduction,” in Mark Rogovin, Marie Burton, and Holly Highfill, Mural Manual (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), vi. Reprinted by permission
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