Chicano Murals and the Construction of Home (ePub)

Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,0 (B), University of Leipzig (American Studies), course: Chicano Culture, language: English, abstract: Introduction: B always starts with Bacon, Francis

In Chicano quarters, the barrios of East Los Angeles or in Mission District in San Francisco for instance, one can discover many outdoor walls covered with huge paintings, murals as they are called. However, Chicano muralism is little talked about. In fact, it turned out to be rather tedious to gather information for this essay. In several German libraries there was not a single art dictionary that listed Judith Baca, one of the leading Chicana muralists in Los Angeles. B always starts with Bacon, Francis. Or take Western travel literature on the places mentioned as an example. I have checked 35 travel guide books and magazines as well as illustrated books, most of them published in the 1990s in Germany or the UK, some in the US and elsewhere. All of them stress the high percentage of the Chicano or the Latino population Californian cities. 16 out of them show photographs of murals. However, the murals' origin and location are often not indicated. Only half of the books that depict murals (that means less than a quarter of the total amount) put straight that they are dealing with Chicano murals by providing a short written explanation. Out of the remaining eight some pictures were obviously taken in Santa Monica, Hollywood or China Town.
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