Compose two styles
Rather than blending two styles into a middle, this assigns them roles: one carries the structure, the other appears as an accent. Where the two fight, 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 #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 and admit one accent from #d7b77a, #9d3e2e, #35584b.
Where they fight
These two are already listed as related, 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
An original image that takes its structure from Chicano Art (Style, 1965–) and its accent from Mexican Muralism (Style, 1920s–1940s). Structural cues: The narrative composition of the mural; Aztec and Catholic imagery placed side by side; Bilingual lettering; The strong flat colour of silkscreen. Accent cues, used sparingly: Monumental murals; Crowds of figures; Political narrative; Public space. 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. Let one material quality come from the second style: Fresco on lime plaster with earth pigments, the wall texture left visible.. Mood: Rebellion, Intimacy, Exhilaration, Trust. Color: build on #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 with a single accent drawn from #d7b77a, #9d3e2e, #35584b. Constraints: do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. Produce an original composition 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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