Fascinating murals

By Shireen Senadhira

Vesak time was just over and the all the temples were spruced up. I visited the Gothami Vihara in Borella area, mainly to admire the famous murals in the temple's shrine room. This particular temple was built by Apolonia de Soysa Pieris, mother of Sir James Pieris. This temple would have been one among the others in our country but for the fact that it contained special murals.

This vihara was established in 1900. Then, in 1939, George Keyt, the well known artist was invited to paint the walls in the shrine room where the statues are. He was asked to paint episodes that depicted the life of Buddha and so he did. Thus, this temple became special as the other temples mostly have murals of the Jataka stories and paintings of hell.

George keyt was one of our foremost artists when he took over this task. Keyt took only one year to paint all the walls of the shrine room. He had not hitherto undertaken this type of work. Manjusri, a priest turned artist, assisted Keyt and his stylized paintings adorn the entrance sandalwood door of the shrine room. These two artists belonged to the renowned Group of '43, of Sri Lanka who were none other than the avant garde artists of Sri Lanka who exhibited here and abroad. Though there were and are many modern artists, no other group similar to this was ever formed in Sri Lanka.

At a time when western educated elite of art had looked in askance at the value of Sri Lankan painting tradition, George Keyt was successful in combining tradition with modernity in his paintings. By creating the Gothami Vihara murals, he added a new step to the Sri Lankan painting traditions.

It was Andrew Bayd, an architect at that time who prepared the walls of the shrine room to help Keyt paint on them. Keyt, when he painted episodes from the life of Buddha on the walls, he did it with a flourish. Keyt painted the murals so as to unfold the life of Buddha like reading a story book. The effect was more so as the paintings are drawn below eye level.

He painted his well known figure painting depicting, inviting the Gods, Queen Mahamaya 's dream , wedding of Siddhartha, birth of Rahula and the Buddha's first sermon on these walls. He also linked the drawings from one to another and one can easily understand the story painted. The biggest paintings are Buddha visiting Kimbulvathpura and his first sermon. It is said that Keyt drew all the pictures without any prior practice. Since this was a new style, many praised his creativity and ability. The then incumbent prelate however, wanted these dark brown murals to be coloured. Then by using a method known as 'burnt Sienna' the murals were coloured.

Birth of Prince Siddhartha

Murals have a long history. The painting of murals is time immemorial. Mural painting has its primeval instincts of people to decorate their surroundings and to use wall surfaces as a form of expressing ideas, emotion and beliefs. In the ancient murals of the ice age and the protodynastic Egyptian frescoes, symbols and representational images have been spread freely and indiscriminately across walls, ceilings and floors. The same concept is displayed in the graffiti paintings of the present.

Later, in more disciplined attempts to symbolize the importance and ideas, buildings, through interior décor have designed murals in specific surface areas. This was done taking care of scale, style mood of the interior, with consideration to light sources, spectator levels of sight and way of approach as well as the emotive relationship of the viewer to the painted images.

It is said that origins of the primeval murals can be discerned dimly in the caves of the nomadic hunter artists of the Paleolithic Age (25000 - 10000 BC) and in the lake dwellings and agricultural settlements of their Neolithic successors (10000 - 4000 BC).

Egypt is one of the chief storehouses of ancient murals, as of all the arts. These testify clearly to the antiquity of Egyptian civilization and the earliest paintings more than 4000 years before our era and are also the cleverest, both in drawing and execution. In later times, Egyptian art influenced the great Persian empire and throughout the valley of Euphrates. This same influence affected the early art of Greece, It is said that only in the middle of the 5th century BC, that the further development and perfecting of Grecian art could obliterate the old traces of Egyptian mannerism .

Some of the well known murals of the world are: Egyptian frescoes - tomb of Nebamum, Thebes, (in the British Museum) (1450 BC) , Ajanta cave murals, India ( 7th C), Sistine Chapel paintings, ceiling frescoes, Creation of Adam, (early 16th C)and the magnificent frescoes of Kaisersaal Residenz, Wurzburg, West Germany, (18th C).

The European churches and palaces are enriched with splendid murals and one looks at them in wonderment. Coming across to the south western coast of India, in Kerala, prehistoric paintings have been found in the Anjanad valley of the Idukki district.

It has been presumed by archeologists that these paintings belong to a different period from the upper Paleolithic period to early historic period. The roots of the Kerala murals have been traced to the more ancient Dravidian art. In India, the state of Kerala holds the second place in having the largest collection of archeologically important mural sites, the first being Rajasthan. Our own frescoes in Sigiriya Rock, in central Sri Lanka also stand alongside these famous murals. It is breathtaking to know and your good fortune to see some of the 492 decorated caves that are preserved to the present day.

Prince Siddhartha and Mahamaya

They are the Mogao caves temples near the town of Dunhuang, at the edge of the Gobi desert in north-western China. These caves are filled with the most extensive and exquisite collections of Buddha paintings and sculptures in the world. Every surface of the walls and ceilings are filled with paintings. Row upon row of miniature images of the Buddha, subtly varying in colour and dress adorn virtually every cave.

The site is popularly known as the 'Caves of thousand Buddhas.' An interesting fact is that Dunhuang town lay at a crucial junction of the Silk Road, the ancient braid of caravan tracks stretching for more than 7000 kilometers from China to the Mediterranean. Thus, it is said that by the 4th century, the Silk Road brought Dunhuang town commercial prosperity and a growing Buddhist community.

Much later in the 20th century, another aspect of the murals was manifested. It was the political murals. In Mexico, after a prolonged civil war and people's revolution, the Mexican Mural Movement was born.

Thus, the 1930s brought a new prominence to murals as a social and political tool in Mexico. In 1948 the Colombian government hosted a Pan American conference to establish the Marshal Plan for the Americas and the Colombian government commissioned and a mural was painted in the Colombian congress building to commemorate the event. Almost 2000 murals have been documented in Northern Ireland since the 1970s and some depict notable political topics.

The famous Berlin Wall between East and West Germany had murals painted only on the Western side of the wall from the 80s until the fall of the Wall in 1989. This wall became the 'longest canvas' of the world for artists to give vent to their ideas and depict them. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Eastern side of the Wall too became also a popular 'canvas' for many mural and graffiti artists.

In Sri Lanka, one of our prominent muralists is Senaka Senanayake. A child prodigy in art is now an internationally celebrated artist. His murals capture the vibrant hues, radiant moods and the sparkling effervescence of the tropics. His works are immensely popular across the globe and are seen in prestigious buildings. To name a couple of buildings, they are the white House in Washington and the UN headquarters in New York. His art celebrates the country's flora and fauna. He has the gift of lifting up one's spirits with his murals in the present gloomy scenario of life. It is interesting to note that the circular style adopted in Senaka's paintings, portrays three reasons . They are, to create movement, dimension and the continuity of life and this is greatly thought evoking too.

Lucky Senanayake, a Sri Lankan, is a well known muralist too among his other talents. His marvelous renderings of capturing the spirit of the foliage as much as the place that harbors them are portrayed in his large murals. The details of branches, patterns of leaves and the shadows they cast in the sun and shade are all reflected in his single colour murals. Some of them can be seen in the big building and hotels here and have not been paralleled.

Murals today are painted in a variety of ways, using oil or water based media. The styles can be traditional, modern and abstract. The murals too have experienced a renaissance in buildings of Europe. The best well known method that was used for a long time was the water soluble paints with a damp lime wash. A rapid use of the resulting mixture can cover a large surface area.

The colours lighten as they dry. Another method is that the paint pigment mixed with water is painted on a thin layer of fresh lime mortar or plaster. The pigment is then absorbed by the wet plaster and after a number of hours, the plaster dries and reacts with the air; it is this chemical reaction which fixes the pigment particles in the plaster. After this, the painting stays for a long time up to centuries in fresh and brilliant colours. Tempera painting is one of the oldest known methods in mural painting.

Enlightenment

In tempera, the pigments are mixed with a binding albuminous medium such as egg yolk or egg white and diluted with water. The famous Sigiriya frescoes on the 'mirror wall' were painted in this manner. There is another method, in which a nearly dry plaster is painted so that the pigment only penetrates slightly into the plaster. This method was used by Michelangelo.

Murals are important in that they bring art into the public sphere. For artists, their work gets a wide audience who otherwise might not set foot in an art gallery. A city benefits by the beauty of a work of art. Murals can have a dramatic impact whether consciously or subconsciously on the attitudes of the passers by, when they are added to areas where people live and work. It can also be argued that the presence of large, public murals can add aesthetic improvement to the daily lives of residents.

Public commissions of murals in schools, hospitals and retirement homes can achieve a pleasing and welcoming atmosphere in these caring institutions.

Murals are dedicated to healing. When communities are faced with disaster, like in Unawatuna, south of Sri Lanka, after the December 2004 Tsunami, somewhat later, people from all over the country and all walks of life got together to paint an underwater scene mural on a wall erected by the side of the beach. The wall was 200 metre long and 6 feet tall. It provided a catalyst for discussion, people needed and outlet and many ideas were discussed. Observers stopped and spoke candidly to the painters and to each other, describing both what they thought the mural meant and what they were feeling and experienced as front liner workers in a disaster. Some tsunami affected people in the vicinity came forwards and talked to the painters and others. Some of their heartfelt tales and insights were infused in the mural with a kind of poetic expression.

In Bolivia, in 1997, young drug addicts and alcoholics were brought from the rehabilitating centers and they contributed to a mural painting session together with the help of 200 high school students. The team effort produced a vast mural portraying the harsh realities of drug addiction and alcoholism in Bolivia. Between brush strokes, the former drug addicts came out with comments such as: "I am so glad to have this opportunity to warn young people like me about getting hooked on drugs and coming to a horrible end."

"Once you start taking drugs you are trapped in a vicious hold. I don't want that to happen to others. So, that's why I'm painting this message."

The beauty of this work was that the message was being led, was being driven by those who were most affected, by those touched and those who were recuperating from the problem.

I visited a hospital some time ago to look at its murals. At that time, the sick but able children were painting a new ward wall. As I watched happily but in amazement how the children were applying paint and chuckling and laughing and singing, I noticed that there were adults but they were quiet in supervising. A sick little boy in a wheel chair was placing his palms on two trays of paint and applying them this way and that on the wall. I went behind him and said gently,

"I would love to do that too."

"Why don't you?" he replied and turned his twisted body in the chair holding his painted palms high and he had paint on his nose too. He gave me such a warm grin that I wanted to hug him but instead I hugged the image of him to my heart and etched it in my memory forever.