Beyond the Portrait Wall: Why Public Art Needs a Style Revolution
Walk through almost any city today and you’ll likely encounter a mural; often large, figurative, and skilfully rendered. There’s no denying the technical prowess behind many of these works. They’re celebrated, photogenic, and accessible. But as an artist deeply engaged in the evolution of visual language, I believe we’ve reached a plateau.
Public art has become popular, but not yet progressive.
We are still in the infancy of what muralism could become. And if public art is to fully step into its cultural potential, it must evolve stylistically, philosophically, and aesthetically, just as every major art movement throughout history has dared to do.
A Medium in Its Early Stages
Unlike painting or sculpture, which have millennia of development behind them, contemporary public art, particularly in the form of large-scale murals, is relatively new in the Western world. In many ways, it’s still finding its footing, still seeking public acceptance, still shaped by the expectations of councils, commercial developers, and tourism boards.
But in that desire to be legible and liked, much of public art has become safe; relying heavily on photorealistic portraiture, celebratory figures, and “community-friendly” themes. These murals often serve important commemorative or decorative functions, but they rarely challenge our way of seeing.
The Long Arc of Art History
Visual art has always evolved through rupture, through movements that rejected what came before to create space for new thinking:
The Impressionists broke away from academic painting to explore perception and light.
The Cubists shattered form to explore multiple viewpoints at once.
The Surrealists mined the subconscious, turning inward instead of outward.
The Abstract Expressionists abandoned figuration entirely, seeking truth through gesture and emotion.
The Minimalists, the Conceptualists, the Futurists, the Constructivists: each generation of artists advanced not just a style, but a worldview.
This legacy matters. Because it shows us that art doesn’t progress by refining old ideas. It progresses by inventing new visual languages. So why is public art still largely stuck in the representational mode?
The Limits of Literalism
A city wall is not a gallery wall. It’s something more powerful. It meets people in their daily lives. But that doesn’t mean it must be simple. The notion that the public can only “understand” figurative murals is both condescending and creatively limiting. People are more visually literate than we give them credit for.
Abstract, conceptual, and experimental art invites interpretation rather than instruction. It doesn’t tell you what to see, it lets you experience something unfamiliar. It asks for engagement, not just admiration. And in doing so, it expands the visual vocabulary of the city.
Toward New Ways of Seeing
I want to see public art that disturbs symmetry. That plays with perception. That builds on the traditions of geometric abstraction, contemporary minimalism, kinetic art, or even data-driven and algorithmic aesthetics. I want murals that surprise you; not just with scale, but with form, intention, and philosophical depth.
I want muralism to be a platform for visual experimentation, not just visual celebration.
Because when public art dares to step beyond the predictable, it becomes more than beautification. It becomes cultural innovation.
What This Looks Like in Practice
In my own work, I explore abstraction as a way to respond to space rather than represent it. I think of shapes, rhythms, and tensions. I treat a wall like a composition; one that speaks to architecture, movement, light, and the surrounding urban textures.
This approach doesn’t ignore community, it reflects it in less literal but more open-ended ways. A city is layered, messy, rhythmic, and non-linear. So why shouldn’t its art be?
A Call to Evolve
If public art is to remain relevant, not just popular, it must evolve stylistically. We owe it to the walls we paint, and to the people who pass them daily, to push the boundaries of what muralism can be.
There are enough portrait walls. It’s time for new visions, new vocabularies, and new visual frontiers.
Let’s make space for mural art that doesn’t just reflect the world, but reimagines it.