Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Briefly noted.

In an earlier posting today — “El Palo Alto” — I wrote:

the elegant Nobu Hotel Epiphany … preserves (from the earlier Casa Olga hotel) the 6-story-tall mosaic mural of El Palo Alto, the coast redwood tree for which the city of Palo Alto is named

Which caused my helper Isaac to ask two questions:

— 1 mosaic mural? Aren’t murals paintings?

— 2 Who created the mural?

I have no clue about 2, but 1 is straightforward:

Exemplary murals are paintings, but drawings, graffiti, collages, and mosaics are all also possible forms of mural art

Here I turn to NOAD:

noun mural: a painting or other work of art executed directly on a wall: huge murals depicting Norse legends. ORIGIN late Middle English: from French, from Latin muralis, from murus ‘wall’.

On the wall, professor, on the wall.

This entry was posted on March 17, 2026 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Art, Lexicography, Palo Alto. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.