Malaysian Murals - Gilding the Lily

The case against public murals in Malaysia.

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,

To throw a perfume on the violet,

To smooth the ice, or add another hue

Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,

Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.  

The Life and Death of King John, 

Act 4, Scene 2, William Shakespeare

Recently there has been a rash of murals in public places, in cities, across Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur has largely limited this paint daubing to the banks of the rivers which converge to form the name of that city. Penang, under a misguided attempt to woo tourists, and appease tourist ministers, has begun a mass titivation and re-painting process, with the inclusion of public statuary and public art (murals). Ipoh too has caught mural fever, and has hastily painted the side of very public buildings to cover whatever innate charm they may have had if left un painted. These public paintings present the general public with a fait accompli, an ’artist's view' of what they think should be grabbing our attention.

While I agree that many painted images, including some murals, are amazingly beautiful to look at, skilfully executed and perhaps done with the best of intentions, there are many good reasons why the art of mural painting had died down, until it's renaissance in the mid twentieth century. The realisation that it was more difficult to upkeep a mural than a portable artwork is one reason why murals declined, but I feel that another reason is the innate beauty of walls and their interaction with their environment, and with nature, as opposed to we public being subjected to the mind, eye and hand of the muralist, however well intentioned. It has also been mentioned that in the early 20th century, and later, murals appeared in Mexico and in places in North America, with the least literacy. 

It could be said that murals are as much as an imposition as billboard advertising, in public spaces. Mural painting is an anti-aesthetic, it is the difference between a book and a film of the same story. A book (usually the product of one person's storytelling) engages your imagination, works with you, whereas a film (the vision of a whole team of people) sets out everything for you, tells rather than engages. That is what I fear murals do. It is the very people who prefer plastic Christmas Trees over real ones, or artificial flowers over ones whose petal drop, or prefer to wander around listening to an iPod instead of the life about them. People, effectively, willingly disengaged from the natural world, and yet imposing their aesthetic upon others.

There is a beauty, an authentic aesthetic to an outside wall often chipped, with broken bricks, plaster starting to decay with black mould or green moss. It may be an end to a house where the next door building has been demolished, revealing where staircases had once stood, rooms were coloured etc. but there is an unplanned, naturally occurring beauty to that.

There is a simple, and yet timeless beauty, in ageing buildings such as Britain's Elizabethan Shakespeare's cottage, The Egyptian Pyramids, Ancient British Stonehenge, Cambodia's Angkor Wat, Jordan’s Petra, Java’s Borobudur etc., and no one is suggesting they be mural painted, tarted up, made smart and acceptable for tourists visiting. No, they are left to their natural beauty for visitors to capture for themselves, the original and authentic ambiance of those places mentioned. Then why must older inner-city buildings be subjected to a marring of their natural beauty, by murals. 

Shakespeare wrote the phrase - to gild the lily, to take something which is naturally beautiful and cover it with a metal made precious by man. The innate beauty of the lily is destroyed, that naturally occurring beauty disappears to be covered by something of less beauty but of more financial value. This is what murals do, they cover an evolving authentic beauty with paint. They take away our imaginations and replace them with someone else's vision, to make reference to something else entirely, to the detriment of the natural beauty of the surface they are painted on.

Many would argue against this, I know, and cite successful mural programmes that reflected the culture of the area (as in the Northern Ireland murals), or attempt to engage tourism, (the Penang and Ipoh murals). But isn't that really just gilding the lily. Instead of finding a way to engage in a dialogue regarding naturally occurring, or evolving, beauty, we are subjected to the artifice of dubious mural beauty thrust into our sight, whether we appreciate it or not.

My thesis, therefore, is for city planners to learn how to appreciate the innate beauty in the buildings we already have, rather than seek to cover that beauty with a dubious and transient aesthetic. To, in fact, unnecessarily gild the lily.