Thoughts on the murals

By Daryl Fridley

As the Mississippi crests furiously in the spring, it suddenly disappears from view in Cape Girardeau. Giant gates close, and although Nature's barbarian beats against the floodwall with his tumultuous voice demanding entrance, civilization survives for now, cloistered within the walls it has made for itself.

Our relationship with the river, though, is not one-dimensional. Like the Romans, we live in both terror and wonder of the horde, feeling its potential for destruction as well as its primeval connection to our basic identity as humans.

The wall itself raises feelings of ambivalence -- protecting property but denying access to that which gave life to the city, in a sense separating us from our communal past. In addition, the wall's dull, utilitarian uniformity is aesthetically a poor substitute for the river view it obscures.

Ostensibly to address this aesthetic loss, several murals have been painted on the wall. The two latest additions are by Thomas Melvin, a Chicago-based muralist, and are just the first in what is to eventually be a set of 24 historical illustrations.

Each painting is framed by a depiction of a stone arch. The first mural is labeled "1803" and portrays the meeting between Meriwether Lewis at the beginning of his famous trek and Louis Lorimier, the local governor at the time. They are attending a horse race along with local Native Americans and the expedition's men.

Labeled "2003," the second mural is of the late congressman Bill Emerson sitting in front of the new Mississippi River bridge for which he secured federal funding. A small porthole is painted next to the main archway in this piece, and through it the old bridge can be seen.

The river lies quietly in the background of both works, suggesting the simple illusion that we are seeing through the wall.

At first sight Melvin's paintings appear technically flawed and overly simplistic. They lack a sense of depth. The people, trees and other figures in the background are too fuzzy to create the illusion of perspective, and even the river seems static -- more like a lake than a roiling waterway. The unremarkable features of the background keep us from being drawn into the picture. In fact, they push us outward toward each mural's central figure: a horseman galloping out of the first mural and the new bridge reaching beyond the second.

Melvin's use of color also seems oddly chosen, but this too serves a purpose. The "1803" painting in particular might inspire the term "cartoonish" with its vibrant hues reminding one more of a circus poster than a serious work of art. In contrast the "2003" mural is muted, as if covered by a giant piece of protective vinyl that we still need to pull off to get the full effect. The past, it seems is clear and bright, if somewhat unrealistic. The present and the future to which the bridge leads are foggy but as yet unmuddled by the caricature of memory.

Given the subject matter of the murals, it is tempting to see them as simply historical representations, but Melvin's work repeatedly refutes such a factual interpretation.

In "1803" Lorimier is not portrayed as a colonial official but instead as a Native American, complete with buckskin clothing, beadwork and a peace pipe. If his meeting with Lewis is the point of the picture, then why is he apparently ignoring the leader of the celebrated expedition, who is relegated to a spot at the edge of the painting? Instead he smiles approvingly at the horse and rider who seem to be literally galloping out of the scene and off the wall.

Clearly the painting is meant to represent the past -- but not the past of historical record. It is a past we yearn for in which the unity and peace represented by the smiling Europeans and Indians, as well as the peace pipe in the center of the painting, reign. It is a past in which the mural's main figure can ride exuberantly toward the opportunity and excitement of the frontier unburdened by thoughts of the displacement, war and genocide to come, or even by the disapproval of anyone in the painting. This is a past remembered by the soul, not the mind.

After empowering us with this curious combination of peace and adventure, Melvin does everything in his power to keep us from dawdling too long. He pushes us away from the background, focuses attention on the figures at the fore and then leads us right out of the picture. And as your eyes follow the horse and rider out and to the left, you find yourself staring at the nearby gateway to the river.

The "2003" painting suggests no reverence for reality either. Despite depictions of two bridges that usually carry a steady stream of traffic, no one is traveling across either one. There are, in fact, no signs of human life at all. Even the figure of Emerson is pointedly outside the scene (suggested by the placement of his chair and the contrast between his shadow and that of the new bridge.)

Another curious detail is that the old bridge seen through the porthole is not portrayed in its current condition. Instead of a decrepit, rusted structure, a shiny, new edifice spans the river. Although Melvin will have opportunities in the murals to come to place that "new" old bridge in its proper chronological place, he chose to defy temporal reality and paint it where it cannot logically be: next to the new "new" bridge. This representation of the new bridge carries the viewer out of the painting and to the right, leaving you staring directly at the actual bridge itself.

Melvin points us, then, on the one hand, toward the river. He downplays its existence in the murals, rapping on our skulls and saying, "What are you? Stupid? This is not the real river. The real river is just through that floodgate. See, I've taken you right to it. Experience the living river!" But he also draws our attention to the new bridge with its 18-wheeled barges transporting goods out to I-55 and on to ports up and down that modern asphalt channel.

As the two murals represent points near opposite ends of an eventual chronological sequence of paintings, it takes some time to move from one to the next. In the expanse between the two there is another floodgate, a living portrait of the river situated between representations of its two roles.

To the right the artist portrays its commercial role, impersonal perhaps, but necessary nonetheless. Although responsible for the city's founding and growth, this role the river has, at least in terms of Cape Girardeau, ceded to the interstate.

To the left, however, is a reminder of a role the river still plays for us: a spiritual one. If the commercial aspect of the waterway nourished its residents' stomachs, this aspect nourishes their souls. It connects us to a symbolic communal past wherein nature, unity and adventure share a harmonious existence.

The people of Cape Girardeau understand this at some level. Despite the dangers of the wild Mississippi, we are fascinated by it. Why else put gates in the floodwall, or build (and recently expand) a park on the river side of it, or repeatedly paint pictures on its surface if not to pull us to the river?

But we are torn by these two identities, the material and the spiritual, even within ourselves. We cannot feed our souls on the banks of the interstate, and we cannot feed our stomachs on the banks of the river. The powers to enrich or destroy are combined within the river itself, and its two symbolic roles echo this dualism.

Despite the devastation that may be wrought by high waters or raging commercialism, neither walls nor laws can protect us fully, because we cannot exist separated from physical and spiritual nutrition. We both need and fear all that the river represents. In these first two murals, Thomas Melvin confronts us with this conflict for which we, individually and communally, must constantly seek the resolution of balance.

Daryl Fridley of Cape Girardeau is working on his doctorate in education at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.