Firstly, there was a lot of material covered in this article, and I did not manage to analyse it all; however, the material surrounding this article, and also the background research I did made it significantly more interesting and also made it more understandable, as I could relate it to a political and historical context of the main people in this discourse.

The article written by Campbell discusses the problems, and decline of Mexican muralism, and the culture surrounding it. It seems to focus on a few names, but one most important name, that of Siqueiros. His full name was David Alfaro Siqueiros . With the help of Rivera and Orozco, he is thought to have been one of the three founders of Mexican muralism. Being a Marxist, he often encountered struggles with the law, as the USA sought to stifle any traits of Communism during WWII/Cold War afterwards, during the time of when he was painting.

What interested me most about this, was how much of an issue politics could be in the production of art, and how political discourse, in the case of Mexican muralism, has dominated it for the last half-century or thereabouts. One of the things which interested me greatly was how many of the original Mexican murals were, albeit not strictly, constructed in the vision of Jose Vasconcelos, who was the Minister of Education in Mexico during the years 1921-21, President Alvaro Obregon. He was a revolutionary minister who initiated massive educational reforms in both school and university contexts. Equally importantly, he helped Mexican muralism to flourish for the next 5 decades.

The political significance of muralism is referenced multiple times during this article, for example on p31, where Octavio Paz noted that by the late 1970s Mexican mural painting belonged to what might be called the the wax museum of Mexican nationalism. Furthermore, on p39, the political significance of the mural is then re-emphasised, as the act of signing one specific mural causes outrage within the artistic community, and overall popular community. Also on p29, with the destruction of Mexican muralism; one feels like it is the centre point of urban Mexican culture and it’s almost like people aren’t even interested that it’s disappearing/lack of care for it?

I would argue that the paradox here is that muralism needed Mexican nationalism in order to dominate Mexican art culture, but simultaneously many people felt that this nationalism undermined and even restricted any possible counter-culture within the art form.

The decline of the ‘Mexican school’ after Siqueiros shows how important he was in Mexican muralism, but also perhaps how much of the culture revolved around him, and really relied on him – without Siqueiros, we might not be studying about muralism today!