A journey through drawings. Or you learn by drawing. It is enough to go back between the end of the 800th and the beginning of the 900s, to find, directly on the walls of the cities, on the facades of the houses, in the industrial centers, the "ghost signs", which still stand out today, discoloured, faded, lost and somewhat forgotten, on the walls of some of the great capitals of the world (old signs of soaps, lemonades, biscuits, records, sewing machines…). Many of these were made directly on the bricks, in the highest and most difficult to access part of the buildings and, to paint them, we helped ourselves with templates to draw straight and almost perfect lines. Almost a light tracing. Examples can be found in Great Britain and Ireland, but also in Mexico, India and some areas of Africa, where advertising communication or the social message are still heavily based on mural painting.
The image and the colors remain great masters in directing human memory and behaviour. The method of painting on the walls soon disappeared, however, because, since 1950, the economy had undergone a major change and transformation: production was facing almost exponential growth, the types and varieties of products multiplied and advertisements needed to be renewed quickly and continuously. New ideas, speed, agility, mobility, versatility. These were the watchwords, a paradigm shift. Consequently, the painting on the wall became obsolete and was replaced, in a short time, by advertising posters of variable and interchangeable dimensions, which ensured greater dissemination power and the possibility of continuously and quickly modifying the aesthetic aspect of the message.
That's why it's quite rare to find hand painted designs after the XNUMXs. But if even in Europe some artists are experimenting again with this technique (street art, albeit with other purposes, is an example), in Africa, advertising or socio-educational messages are not found on television programs or in print media but they have occupied and still occupy important spaces in the cities. Walls, mostly. Structures that remain standing, fixed, immobile, stable, that do not change. In this continent, where time passes slowly, where the rhythms are different and traditional commerce often replaces the modern and whirling one, you can still find drawings of colored drinks or useful objects, on the sometimes shabby walls: a trait that renews, that it restores life and vigor to an old forgotten part.
Advertising doesn't need to change often, the needs are often always the same. Social messages, then, from those relating to AIDS prevention or the importance of vaccines to those on the need to keep the city clean and which solicit and tease the citizen's education on the importance of doing so, are eternal. What we will call today "advertising progress" in Africa has another modality. From Congo to Mozambique, from Angola to Gabon, the walls speak. One voice, one language, one message.
Extensive colored panoramas are interrupted by equally gaudy and curious colours. Adults and children stop to admire them, almost enraptured. In schools these paintings, with immense educational value, are important; on the streets as well. It is from some time ago, in Libreville, my amazement at the parade of drawings, on the walls of downtown at a busy intersection not far from the Ministry of the Environment, placed there, deftly and almost to attention, to raise awareness of garbage management and the importance of a clean city. Colorful, sparkling, smiling, alluring and likeable characters invite you not to throw waste on the street, to take care of green spaces, flowers, plants and gardens. Children (but not only) remain interested, fascinated and impressed. They remember them.
A clever way to attract attention. We are faster, perhaps, and often inattentive and distracted also for this reason, but here beautiful educational drawings could fit very well even in some of our noisy, distracted, hurried and crowded streets. Also to take back the time.
From Eniday.
