Above is a striking panel from the west wall of the Diego Rivera ‘Detroit Industry’ hall in the Detroit Institute of Arts. One of Rivera’s main themes was the dual use of technology, for both good and bad, and here he represents aviation both commercial and military. The bottom panel shows worldwide shipping and the extraction of natural resources by developed countries (on the right, you can see rubber trees being tapped).
Today we feature the main panel of the South wall of the Diego Rivera Detroit Industry frescoes in the Detroit Institute of Arts, which shows the construction of an automobile (probably the Model B – we will see the V-8 engine being produced on the north wall) at Ford’s River Rouge plant in Dearborn. The wide shot is above and more detailed shots of the lower left, the right third, and the lower central portion follow.
Here is a video of the Rouge plant in 1938 and 1939 …
Here is the right third – in the bottom right corner (above the strip with panels charting a day in the life of workers) can be seen Edsel Ford, of Ford Motors, and William Valentiner, director of the Detroit Institute of Arts at the time Rivera painted the frescoes (1932-1933).
The lower left portion …
Below are three shots of the lower central section, of increasing proximity to the work; the third demonstrates the amazing level of detail of the frescoes.
Three shots of an old mural above the steps to the pedestrian walkway over the Sydenham bypass in east Belfast, featuring workers from the turn of the 20th century at the Harland & Wolff shipyard, which can be seen in the third image.
These billboards are all over north Belfast to coincide with the Scoıl Samhraıdh Mhıc Reachtaın (McCracken Summer School) which begins on the 22nd. This one is outside Tesco’s on the Antrim Road.
The mural features “North Belfast dockers, millworkers, shipyard workers [from] Titanic town 1912”.
Along the bottom are the names of various Belfast pubs and other businesses: The Waterloo, The Terminus, The Sportsmans Arms, The White Hart, The Bowling Green, The City Arms, The Orpheus – York Street, Railway Bar – Canning Street [image from 1970], The Edinburgh Castle [the boat of the Union-Castle line, launched 1910, built at H&W?], York Street Mill, The Gibralter [sic] Bar [whose then-owner was killed in 1972], Ye Old Castle [a bar (and restaurant?) bombed in 1971], The White Lion. Please leave a comment if you can add any information about these place-names.
A close-up of the info plaque at the top right can be found below. The piece was painted by Jim Russell from Glasgow.
The Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI)’s collection of photographs of Belfast, 1912-1914 (some actually from 1911 and 1915) contains various shots of the area.
There are always cars parked in front of the mural, which is at the blind end of St. Vincent Street, next to Crusaders’ football ground. But finally we have captured it entire, automobile-free, in an extra-large (3854 pixels wide) image.
Mural in the Tullycarnet estate to the local flute band (“established 2007” Fb), showing various UK flags and the lion and the unicorn from the UK coat of arms. According to the nursery rhyme, “the lion beat the unicorn/all around the town” and so only the lion wears a crown.
Previously: TFB mural in the subway under Kings Road.
The three central panels of the World Wars memorial in Tullycarnet (featured previously), along with two smaller stones, stand in front of a mural reading “Time for peace. Invest in kids … not war!”. The image of a boy playing with a ball against a wall is based on a 1994 photograph by Crispin Rodwell. The slogan in the photograph, originally, was “Time for peace; time to go” but for publication, as here, the second part was cropped out.
Victoria Cross recipient James Magennis was the only person from Northern Ireland awarded the VC for action during WWII (WP). Although the mural is in loyalist Tullycarnet, Magennis was a Catholic, born in west Belfast, though he later lived in Castlereagh.
The smooth-talking alley-cat Fancy-Fancy (from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Top Cat) might or might not have painted this mural within a mural of the Tullycarnet Flute Band in the subway under King’s Road.
The two murals featured here, depicting Smithfield in the ‘good old days’ — before it was fire-bombed in 1974 (gallery of 10 images at the Tele) – are inside the modern Smithfield, rebuilt in 1986, depicted in the third and fourth images. Update 2013-11: The two ‘Memories of Smithfield’ paintings are by Angela Ginn and Lorraine Burrell, 1999; funded by Belfast City Council.
The external shot is taken from the rear of Castlecourt. The foreign multinationals in it appear to be flourishing, while many units are vacant inside Smithfield.
Extramural Activity 