DESIGN & INTERIORS
A MURAL MAKEOVER
It seems that modern interior decoration has hit a creative wall in recent years, argues Catherine Lovegrove. The answer is reintroducing some old interior decoration trends such as mural art to reawaken the personality of walls.
The days of bold geometric patterns, statement rugs and motif wallpaper that defined the aesthetic of many of the 20th
look is characterised by its minimalist features, often favouring a monochrome palette with perhaps one feature colour. Walls do little but contain a room nowadays, and it is unusual to see a particularly colourful room or feature walls.
In short, the potential of walls as a creative space in both commercial and private settings is being hugely restricted, with all the effort and thought being put on furnishings and accessories to deliver the character of an inside space. Mural art stands as a solution to this problem; adding impressive flourishes to otherwise bland and dull walls.
We’re not talking street art... The idea of mural art is somewhat constricted nowadays by the prominence of its association with street art - the kind popularised by such vigilante artists as Banksy - blurring the line between mural art and graffiti art. Such efforts are often left by uncredited artists on outdoor public spaces and intended to convey some sort of ideal, quite often political.
52 | TOMORROW’S FM century decades are gone. The contemporary
However, mural art has been the preferred style of many highly influential artists in bygone eras, and it is their sort of influence that needs to be reintroduced to the mural concept.
French artist Jean Dunand created some of the most influential pieces of the Art Deco period, crafting mural art with lacquer, while Jean Dupas defined his art nouveau mural work with mostly human subjects. Such work was in stark contrast to the likes of Phyllis Bray’s colourful landscape murals, and the soft hues of Thomas Monnington’s geometric architectural designs. The vast expressive potential of mural art is no longer being embraced for indoor spaces.
Modernising mural art Historically, mural art has been used extensively for millennia and around the world. While in centuries past it was a common fixture for the abodes of aristocracy and elaborate places of worship, in more recent times it was a common decorative technique on board ocean liners. Although many classic ocean liners were dissected and sold for scrap when cruising took over travel by sea, treasure hunters were able to salvage some of the ships’ most remarkable fixtures.
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