Moving Pictures
“I used to be quite the polemicist,” admits Weber, who cofounded the Chicago Mural Group (now the Chicago Public Art Group) in 1970 and would go on to do dozens of murals, reliefs, and mosaics throughout the city and the world. “I used to write manifestos saying, ‘We must do this! We must do that!’ But I’ve mellowed over the years.”
Last year Weber was involved in the painting of his first outdoor mural in Chicago in two decades. He and fellow artist Bernard Williams led a team of mostly African-American teens in the creation of Urban World at the Crossroads, a 1,700-square-foot work at Orr High School on the west side. A visually complex piece that addresses family, culture, education, and community development issues, it was created with neighborhood input. But perhaps the mural’s most revolutionary aspect is its collage technique. Inspired by the art of Romare Bearden, the mural’s design allowed Weber to work in a multipaneled style that’s closely related to his own studio art.
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Weber is also back in the public eye because of last month’s reissue of the seminal book Toward a People’s Art: The Contemporary Mural Movement (University of New Mexico Press), which he coauthored with muralist and writer Eva Cockcroft and sociologist James Cockcroft. Originally published in 1977 and long out of print, the book remains a classic account of the community-based movement that produced hundreds of socially oriented wall paintings in the U.S. beginning in the late 60s; as the first full-length study on the subject, drawn largely from firsthand experiences, the book has served as a bible to untold thousands of mural artists and aficionados.
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The mural movement soon spread to other places–most notably Detroit, where Walker and Eda temporarily set up shop, and California, where murals depicted the struggles of the Chicano farmworkers and served as an important organizing tool for their nascent union. Toward a People’s Art recounts the formation of mural collectives in Chicago, in New Jersey (at Rutgers, led by Eva Cockcroft), in New York City, and in Santa Fe. The new edition does include more material from California, which, the authors concede, had been given short shrift in the original book.
“But where are they going to take it? I don’t know. You have to reinvent, not just continue painting walls.”
