(C) Mural

(C) Mural

A Muralist Mexicano was José Orozco whose style révolutionnaire was Symbolist Manifesto. (C)

Despite losing his left hand in Zapotlán el Grande, José raised the level of art el Hispano.

Diego Rivera married to Frida, painted murals in Moscow, Mexico, San Francisco.

Frida did the foxtrot and things that she should not with Leon Trotsky; including the tango.

In the Sistine Chapel - Adam, Eve and the apple, were adorned on the ceiling by Michelangelo.

Whilst the walls of the Sistine were covered with pristine panels of Moses by Ghirlandaio.

Sandro Botticelli, Perugino and many more muralists did pluralist work there also.

And ‘The Temptation’ by Rust is considered a must after passing through Ragley Hall’s portico.

Cave paintings at Lascaux, Altamira and Chauvet are the original murals painted so long ago.

These frescoes were admired, and also inspired street artists like Banksy and … Pablo Picasso.

Murals in Northern Ireland are politically wired, religiously conspired and aggressively so,

To inflame deep held passions and prejudice fashioned to turn men into robots; so aggro.

But a mural is not always a durable record of humanity’s ills in the world that we know.

Modern graffiti, in the towns and the cities, is often removed after only one show.

What constitutes art? The critics are polarised when structures are vandalised by false bravado.

“Mural mural on the wall, who’s the bravest of them all”? The silent catchcry is incommunicado.

Da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’ - unarguably the uppermost example of the mural but not true fresco.

Down through the centuries, armoury to penitentiary, the painting’s condition has waned to and fro.

French troops threw rocks at it, prisoners spat at it, a doorway cut through where Christ’s feet should go.

Finally, Dan Brown’s pot-boiler produced one last spoiler – John became Mary, oh woe Leonardo!

The Last Supper’s  restoration fires the imagination, stimulates senses, and strokes the ego,

Of artists such as Banksy, who like ‘Widow Twankey’ uses satire, ridicule and innuendo.

The mural is not a cure-all, or graffiti all excreti; it seems that a compromise is not going to flow.

There’s a difference in implements: charcoal and crayon pencil to spray-can and stencil, although…

Beauty’s in the beholder and now that I’m older, I’ll just sit on a boulder and feel the wind blow.