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Public art, affect, and radical negativity: the wall of daydreaming and man’s inhumanity to man

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The artist and his [sic] art are a warning to man [sic] of dangers ahead. If man [sic] fails to understand this, total destruction must surely come.

—Bill Walker, 1971.

Abstract

“The Wall of Daydreaming and Man’s Inhumanity to Man” is a mural that was painted in 1975 at 47th Street and Calumet Avenue in Chicago by William Walker, Mitchell Caton, and Santi Isrowuthakul. It depicts violence, including images of the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis, and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The mural was restored by Damon Lamar Reed in 2003. By analyzing discourse around the production and restoration of the mural in 1975 and 2003, this article argues that the mural functions as an example of negative-content muralism that demonstrates how negative affects, materialized and emplaced by public art, create a nodal point for questioning racial violence and neoliberal urban development that activates rhetorical agency and shapes subjectivity.

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  1. Department of Communication, University of Pittsburgh, 1117F Cathedral of Learning, 4200 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, USA

    Caitlin Frances Bruce

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  1. Caitlin Frances Bruce
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Correspondence to Caitlin Frances Bruce.

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Bruce, C.F. Public art, affect, and radical negativity: the wall of daydreaming and man’s inhumanity to man. Subjectivity 10, 223–241 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41286-017-0023-0

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