| Abstract | Ulična umjetnost ili street art inačica je javne umjetnosti, dolazi u obliku svojih najčešćih podvrsta murala i grafita. To je umjetnost koja nastaje u okviru zajednice i njome smatramo sve vidove umjetnosti koja nastaje u javnom urbanom prostoru, a koja pri tome ne nastaje po diktatu vlasti. Iako to ne znači da nije odobrena jer su je vladajuće strukture ponekad čak i poticale zbog dokazanih dobrobiti za specifičnu zajednicu. Ipak, uz street art uvijek dolazi i izvjestan oblik buntovništva, želje za promjenom, pa čak, u krajnjim slučajevima, i vandalizma. Mural, umjetnička disciplina izrade velikih slika na zidovima grada koji su vidljivi cijeloj zajednici, smatra se posebno moćnim alatom društvene promjene. Pokazalo se da može utjecati na razvijanje osjećaja vrijednosti, ponosa pa čak i stvaranje identiteta cijele zajednice. U zadnjih stotinjak godina, naročito od uspjeha Meksičke revolucije, moć murala počela je koristiti i sama zajednica kao vrlo potentan alat u borbi za ostvarenje svojih ciljeva. Zbog toga se nakon Meksičke revolucije mural dokazao u američkom new dealu, black poweru i chicano pokretu te sukobima u Sjevernoj Irskoj. U Hrvatskoj se moć javne umjetnosti mogla vidjeti samo u agresorskom rušenju pokazatelja našega identiteta i kulture. No kao alat borbe ni jedan vid javne umjetnosti nije uspješno i sustavno korišten. Nažalost, dobar je dio Hrvatske stradao u ratnim razaranjima te su na tim mjestima i danas izrazito vidljive posljedice. Ratom pogođeni dijelovi Hrvatske i danas su najslabije razvijeni, a grad Petrinja dobar je primjer za sve navedeno. Obnovom je napravljeno puno pogrešaka, a jedna od njih je i sustavno identificiranje tih prostora isključivo s ratom. Skoro svi spomenici i kulturno-umjetnički artefakti nastali od kraja rata do danas, posvećeni su isključivo ratu i stradanjima, a ne ostalim vrijednostima i potrebama zajednice. Nije se prepoznala moć kulture i umjetnosti u stvaranju novoga i prosperitetnoga identiteta zajednice. U ovom radu predstavlja se projekt izrade murala koji će služiti kao sredstva oplemenjivanja urbanoga prostora u poslijeratnom urbanom kontekstu grada Petrinje. Oni će služiti kao poticaj stvaranju pozitivnih vrijednosti cijele zajednice koja živi ili gravitira području grada Petrinje. Nizom murala, tj. prijedlozima za izradu murala, utječe na osjećaj ponosa, slave, podsjeća na stoljetnu tradiciju i kulturu te na zajedničke vrijednosti koje mogu postati nosioci bolje i prosperitetnije budućnosti. |
| Abstract (english) | This work presents the project of creating murals which will serve as a means of urban space refinement in the post-war context of Petrinja town. These murals will act as incentives to forming positive values of the entire community that lives or gravitates towards Petrinja. The series of murals, i.e. propositions to create murals aim to influence the sense of pride and glory and act as a reminder of a centuries-old tradition and culture, as well as common values that can become the bearers of a better and more prosperous future. The art project encompasses two basic parts of work. The first part, i.e. theoretical research, regards examining the problem contexts of the studied phenomenon and thereupon the success of artistic intervention with regard to the set research goal and hypotheses. The second part is creating the artwork itself, with all its technical and creative questions and solutions. Street art is a form of public art, with murals and graffiti as its most common types. It is art created in the community, that is, it encompasses all aspects of art created in the public urban space and, accordingly, not created upon government rule. Although, this does not mean that it is not authorised because sometimes, it is even initiated by the government due to its proven benefits for the community. However, along street art always comes a breath of rebellion, desire for change and in extreme cases, even vandalism. The mural, artistic discipline of creating large paintings on city walls, visible to entire communities, is considered an especially powerful means of social change. Previous experience shows it can develop a sense of worth and pride and even influence the creation of overall communal identity. Over the last hundred years, especially since the success of the Mexican Revolution, communities themselves have started to utilise the power of murals as a very special agent in fighting for the fulfilment of their goals. After the Mexican Revolution, mural has proven itself in the New Deal, Black Power, Chicano Movement and the conflicts in Northern Ireland. The first major muralist movement in the world, Mexican Muralism, started in the beginning of the 20th century, after the Mexican Revolution. Postrevolutionary Mexican government 7 funded the project that brought together a group of prominent national artists, headed by the so-called „Three Greats“: David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera. They were meant to create a “new” social identity based on tradition, togetherness and social rights, but also on the promotion of new industrialisation. The mural was chosen as the best medium for communicating the message because the language of visual art was easily understandable, available to all and particularly efficient, especially when considering that most Mexican population were illiterate at the time. Mexican muralism used this kind of art as a mighty social and educative aid, and even political weapon. At the time of the Great Depression, the American government, led by president Franklin D. Roosevelt, implemented a series of comprehensive changes under the name New Deal to recover the American economy. One of the enacted programs was the Federal Art Project, an art project spanning from 1935 to 1943. It employed over ten thousand artists and generated an enormous amount of art works, wherein many were murals created on walls of public buildings such as administrative buildings, hospitals, post offices and schools. It was necessary to enrich the multitude of newly-created urban spaces, express the government’s intentions via the murals and empower the idea of the „American Dream“, i.e. of America not only as a land of plenty, possibility, freedom, progress and place where dreams come true, but also as a country leading the Free World. Motivated by the success and social meaning of the Mexican Muralism and Federal Art Project, during 1960s in America, wider social movements started that used precisely murals as the main means of communication. These movements had a goal to raise awareness about the values of so-called minority groups, such as African Americans, Hispanic Americans and others fighting for their rights and acknowledgement, but also against oppression imposed by white people in, at the time, unequal America. The most renowned movements in America during that time were the so-called Black Power and Chicano Movement. The first mural movement in Europe happened in the course of a thirty-year-long conflict in Northern Ireland. This conflict caused the creation of probably the best-known murals on European soil. Both sides in the conflict created these murals, which mediated mostly political and ideological messages and glorified cultural and historical persons important to each side 8 of the struggle. During these years, more than two thousand murals were created, the majority in Belfast and Derry, and they are a tourist attraction even nowadays. Today's mural painting is not so much in service of political goals as it is an expression of a certain community's folklore. However, the critical side of street art and murals has survived, although now global issues are more present than problems of individual communities. Hence, in these works artists frequently deal with issues such as ecology and sexual orientation or criticise consumer society, racial or religious intolerance and alike. The same as public art in general, murals use the city for existence and expression. The city is a large, constantly and densely populated place with administratively defined borders, where most of the population deal in non-agricultural professions. However, cities are also spaces of common living, encounters and life's drama, that is, environments placing people in relationships. In the conceptual sense, the city has become a kind of „organism“ where people live, work, identify with each other, fight, rest and idle. Urban space and urban way of life can physically spread outside city limits and even invade the countryside, which then becomes a place of rest and relaxation. The city or any other part of the urban whole cannot be separated from the stories therein created, whether through history or by legends, or originating from some other source. Precisely these narrative layers are factors that mould a city's foundation and identity. One part of the world has put effort into creating these narrative layers in a way that would be of the greatest use. In Croatia, no form of public art has ever been successfully or systematically used as a means of struggle. It is visible that destruction of public cultural and religious heritage is directly linked with ethnical cleansing. In the war, we erased almost every culture, art and tradition that had been developing over centuries in areas caught in the war whirlwind. Despite the fact Croatia was able to fight off the aggressor and liberate occupied territories, it seems that all its heritage loss severely changed the community. Now it is of essence to deal with meaningful reparations and further construction of the destroyed, but also to create a legacy for future generations. 9 Sadly, a large part of Croatia was devastated by war destruction, so the consequences in these places are expressly visible even today. These war-stricken parts of Croatia are least developed yet today, with Petrinja being an obvious example of the aforementioned. The reconstruction entailed many mistakes, one of which was systematic identification of these spaces exclusively with war. Almost all monuments and cultural-art artefacts that have been created since the end of war are entirely dedicated to war and suffering, not other values and needs of the community. The power of culture and art in the creation of new and prosperous community's identity was not recognised. There are two systematically different views about art written on by philosophers of ancient Greece, Plato and Aristotle. Plato's idea places intellectual elite in the role of light-bearers who are supposed to disseminate the light of knowledge and lead others toward a greater goal. Accordingly, he felt that the work of art in itself is not enough, but it has to encompass an idea, that is, the aim for which it is created. For Aristotle, the goals and values of society start from social base and are shaped in order to be implemented by the enlightened elite. He considers artistic rapture and creative satisfaction reasons enough for artistic creation. This project is inclined to Plato's recommendation designating that the work of art, i.e. intervention is created out of a conscious goal, intent and desire for positive change, but at the same time it comes from in-depth research, and that future work also has the power to affect wider social image. In this case, it can be said that values such as forming common identity, education and positive change of social conditions are ideas transferred from the artistic and academic world onto a mundane and „ordinary“ human. This work was conceptualised as a series of paintings in the manner of figurative painting, which act to remind us of certain parts of Petrinja and hold importance for the community living there. The paintings entail scenes of places relevant for Petrinja, but in a way that preserves the buildings' integrity and therein does not negate their architectonic shape, i.e. colour. The paintings are to be integrated into the whole, with the walls, buildings and ambiance. The base of every painting in this art project is a certain tone which simulates the colour of some building's facade. This tone changes at times with regard to the possibilities that may 10 occur in the difference of colour from one building's facade to the next. The tonal palette is limited to two or three tones chosen in order to harmonise with the existing background. The accent is only on the tonal contrast and the summation of visual components into plane and mass, without distracting the eye with excessive details. Most facades come in gentle grey or brown hues, a quality shared with old, faded and yellowed postcards, so in such a way the chosen tonalities gain a two-fold role. Old postcards are artefacts of the past with strong emotional charge, connecting several generations of either known or unknown people with urban space. They also witness the changes in urban space brought on either by human or natural acts. The chosen colours aim to allude to old postcards and intend to procure the same emotional charge, awaken a desire to rebuild and come together, and show the community has something worth remembering and being proud of. By painting the surfaces that mark the enlightened parts on the portrayed motive, what is actually painted is “empty space“. Such “empty spaces” are referred to as “negative spaces“ in the literature. There is no visually suggested matter in these places, but solely space that in the artistic sense is at least equally important, if not more important than the illusion of matter. Positive space of the motives remains in this part as untouched background surface, i.e. a building's facade on which a mural would eventually be painted. In such a way, it would be possible to retain the basic character of a building, fill it and make it a part of the image. There is no intention to negate the building or its previous destiny. In such a way, its history would continue to „speak“ through the painting. After the paintings are realised as a kind of preparatory work for murals, a computer-aided technique is used for applying them onto photographs of buildings on which murals are to be created according to this proposition. Computer-aided simulations represent illustrations of their imagined appearance in reality, and the locations in which the suggested murals would be made are also suggested. The chosen locations are very close to each other, they belong to Petrinja's very centre and in a way overflow one into the other, thus making a common whole. Murals arranged in such a way would surely create a kind of cultural and touristic route. |
