Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Chicano Art: The sacred figure at the centre, with people and labour running around it as a band
- Type
- Set in Chicano Art's manner (Hand drawn brush script or blackletter for headings, English and Spanish at the same size), and let Mexican Muralism's lettering (Keep lettering inside banners and flags, painted with the same brush as the image) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Chicano Art's material (Four screens at most, outlines on a black plate, printed cheap for paper or wall); bring in exactly one thing from Mexican Muralism (Fresco on lime plaster with earth pigments, the wall texture left visible).
- Colour
- Build on #eec17b, #940400, #203146 and admit one accent from #d7b77a, #9d3e2e, #35584b.
Where they fight
These are already listed as related entries, so the join should come easily.
Caution
- Chicano Art Lifting the lettering and the saints as decoration: the imagery belongs to a specific movement and community, and taken away from that it reads as costume.
- Mexican Muralism Borrowing crowds and raised fists without deciding whose history is told and for whom yields a large decorative wall with no argument.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from Chicano Art (style, 1965–) and their accent from Mexican Muralism (style, 1920s–1940s). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Chicano Art exists for: organising and campaign graphics that have to belong to the people they address and be producible by them, or bilingual identity and signage in which code-switching is designed rather than reduced to a translated second line. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Chicano Art - The narrative composition of the mural - Aztec and Catholic imagery placed side by side - Bilingual lettering - The strong flat colour of silkscreen Composition: The sacred figure at the centre, with people and labour running around it as a band. Type and lettering: Hand drawn brush script or blackletter for headings, English and Spanish at the same size. ## Accent comes from Mexican Muralism, used sparingly - Monumental murals - Crowds of figures - Political narrative - Public space Let one material quality come from it: Fresco on lime plaster with earth pigments, the wall texture left visible. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #eec17b, carry the structure in #940400 and #203146, and let a single accent come from #9d3e2e. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: rebellion, intimacy, exhilaration, trust. ## What goes wrong - Chicano Art: Lifting the lettering and the saints as decoration: the imagery belongs to a specific movement and community, and taken away from that it reads as costume. - Mexican Muralism: Borrowing crowds and raised fists without deciding whose history is told and for whom yields a large decorative wall with no argument. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Chicano Art 1965– / Style / Printmaking and Social Movements
An expression born out of the Mexican American civil rights movement. Murals, silkscreened posters, lowriders and lettering form one continuous vocabulary, and Aztec imagery, Catholic devotional figures and mixed English-Spanish lettering share a single surface. A case in which a movement produced a style.
- Mexican Muralism 1920s–1940s / Style / Mural Traditions
Paints post-revolutionary history, labor, indigenous culture and visions of the future onto the vast walls of public buildings.
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