Diego Rivera and his artistic legacy

Diego Rivera the Artist as Politician

In an article discussing the connections between the famous muralist, and political activist Diego Rivera there is a statement about art that demonstrates both the depth of Rivera's involvement in the political and the controversies that surrounded him and his allies. The Mexican art movement of the 1920s-30s was a foundational backdrop to Rivera's political leanings, described later in this work by a contextual biographer of Rivera. It would seem contrary to say that if Rivera had not been so adamant a proponent of public art, many of his ideas and works would have been lost to the walls of private homes and indoor museums, but his activism was in fact rooted in his idea of public art as a tool of political and social revolution and therefore in his mind to be displayed for the world to see and the community to build from.

At issue were two fundamentally different attitudes toward art and the role of the artist in society. The Communist International developed the doctrine of socialist realism in the belief that art must immediately serve the cause of revolution. The Surrealists and Trotsky himself in his last years were primarily concerned with upholding the absolute freedom of the artist, which, they insisted, was a necessary precondition for creativity. Believing that art could serve the revolution even if it lacked an overtly revolutionary content, they maintained that to subject art to any censorship, even in the name of Marxism, destroyed the freedom of expression essential to it.

This work will draw from the idea of public space planning as a politically motivated and concerted effort on the part of those in power to reshape society by planning and reshaping its public spaces. It will then move forward to a biographical and political discussion about Diego Rivera, his life his work and his mind as a public contributor to political and social thought, through his art.

Politics of Public Planning:

As Michel Foucault discusses in his interviews with Paul Rabinow the architectural theorist, not a political discussion has passed since the 18th century that did not include at least some reference to the political planning of public spaces and even private architecture.

A from the eighteenth century on, every discussion of politics as the art of the government of men necessarily includes a chapter or a series of chapters on urbanism, on collective facilities, on hygiene, and on private architecture. Such chapters are not found in the discussions of the art of government of the sixteenth century. This change is perhaps not in the reflections of architects upon architecture, but it is quite clearly seen in the reflections of political men.

The value of such a recognition is essential to the fact that there is an agenda in public planning that is associated with reshaping a potential future of any given community. Through public planning, political minds attempt to marry their ideals of future patterns with the physical space in which the publics interact. In contrast modernists, as Rivera could be labeled, sensed a need to create planning that is reflective of future ideal possibilities, through art, architecture and even space allocation.

A the project of modernist planning is to transform an unwanted present by means of an imagined future. Whether in the form of urban design or applied social science, this idea of planning is central to the identity of the modern state: it motivates political authorities to attempt to create and legitimate new kinds of public spheres, with new subjects and subjectivities for them.

As planning is essential and a product of most political work, the modernists could see that if they were interested in social change one of the avenues they could explore was public planning, with direction and design associated with a better rather than simply structured culture. Change could not only be expected it could be guided by those who had a desire to do so.

Diego Rivera the Politician:

Rivera had the heart and hands of an artists, but the mind of a political genius. In a less tumultuous (or at the very least more conservative) time this combination might have created an impossible barrier to creativity, but for Rivera it created a whole man who was at once tormented by desire for change and desire for creation to elicit change. Diego, spent a great deal of time in Europe, contemplating life and art and making connections that would last throughout his turbulent life. His consummate biographer and contemporary Bertram D. Wolfe, described Rivera, in one concise introductory paragraph with clarity that could only be gained by knowing the man and studying his ideas and works.

Diego returned with a predisposition to believe in the Revolution and its promises. He brought back an undigested mixture of Spanish anarchism, Russian terrorism, Soviet Marxism, Mexican agrarianism, and Paris studio revolutions. He also brought back with him a highly sophisticated technique and sensibility, memories of a thousand great works he had seen in the cathedrals, palaces, and galleries of Europe, love for his native land, a determination to build his art on a fusion of his Paris sophistication with the plastic heritage of his people, and to paint for them on public walls.

Rivera's intention was always to align himself with revolutionary doctrine and to express such in his art and life, as can be seen by his involvement in the overall revolutionary movement and his art.

Probably one of the most telling sentiments of his life, is actually his own account of the mural that never was, or at least was never seen, commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller for the new RCA building in New York, city. In his description of the events that surrounded his touch with the political censor in the U.S. there is a strong sense of his politics and his love for art. The manner in which Rockefeller contacted artists, through the clueless architect (from Rivera's perspective) is foundational to the conflict between purpose and vision that can be seen in the mixing of structure with artistic expression as well as telling of the eventual outcome of the work. The architect proceeded to step on the toes of three of the greatest artists of Rivera's day, Picasso, Matisse and Rivera, and in so doing created immediate tension, that in retrospect should have sent Rivera to reject out of hand the offer of work. Raymond Hood, the architect asked for specific submissions of examples, which implied that these three greats were not up to the challenge. Going further as Rivera puts it, "Hood's idea of a mural was typically American: a mural was a mere accessory, an ornament. He could not understand that its function was to extend the dimensions of the architecture."

Now, there are few indignities that can be thrown in the face of an established painter greater than to offer him a commission on terms which imply any doubts as to his abilities....they specified how the sample murals were to be done. Picasso flatly refused. As for Matisse, he politely but firmly replied that the specifications did not accord with his style of painting. I answered Hood that I was frankly baffled by this unorthodox way of dealing with me and could only say no.

After Rockefeller entered the negotiations himself, Rivera agreed to do the work and quickly went to work, submitting a full accounting of his plan and preparing to execute it with the new conditions that he could work in color and in fresco. His plan, his mural and the ensuing controversy that resulted clearly identify his revolutionary leanings.

I was to cover slightly more than one thousand square feet of wall. The theme offered me was an exciting one: "Man at the Crossroads Looking with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a New and Better Future."... The center of my mural showed a worker at the controls of a large machine. In front of him, emerging from space, was a large hand holding a globe on which the dynamics of chemistry and biology, the recombination of atoms, and the division of a cell, were represented schematically. Two elongated ellipses crossed and met in the figure of the worker, one showing the wonders of the telescope and its revelation of bodies in space; the other showing the microscope and its discoveries -- cells, germs, bacteria, and delicate tissues. Above the germinating soil at the bottom, I projected two visions of civilization. On the left of the crossed ellipses, I showed a night-club scene of the debauched rich, a battlefield with men in the holocaust of war, and unemployed workers in a demonstration being clubbed by the police. On the right, I painted corresponding scenes of life in a socialist country: a May Day demonstration of marching, singing workers; an athletic stadium filled with girls exercising their bodies; and a figure of Lenin, symbolically clasping the hands of a black American and a white Russian soldier and workers, as allies of the future.

When the work was near completion a reporter came to the cite to interview Rivera and took many scenes from the work as examples of a dangerously revolutionary idea, despite Rivera's impassioned explanation and led the public to believe that Rivera had duped Rockefeller and the American people.

A said that, as long as the Soviet Union was in existence, Nazi fascism could never be sure of its survival. Therefore, the Soviet Union must expect to be attacked by this reactionary enemy. If the United States wished to preserve its democratic forms, it would ally itself with Russia against fascism. Since Lenin was the pre-eminent founder of the Soviet Union and also the first and most altruistic theorist of modern communism, I used him as the center of the inevitable alliance between the Russian and the American. In doing this, I said, I was quite aware that I was going against public opinion Having heard me out, the reporter, smiling politely, remarked that, apart from being a remarkable painter, I was also an excellent humorist.

Rockefeller asked Rivera to remove the face of Lenin and instead paint a picture of an unknown man, and Rivera promptly told the man that he would rather destroy the whole of the work than remove such a large part of its message, though this is not the story told by the Rockefeller biographers or the Rockefeller foundation, but it is none the less the artists conception of events.

Within his surviving works there is also a sense of his politic and manner in which he chose to change the world, though interestingly probably the most controversial of his works was never shown to the public. A modern interpretation of his works claims that his murals "They were 'the visual component of [the] need to create that Mexican citizen necessary for the survival of the post-Revolutionary state,' the 'official intrusion into political consciousness and social life' (195). "

They served, as he would have liked them to, to engender ideals in the public of Mexico, though the communist revolution of Rivera's hoping never occurred the public spaces that he became a part of are mostly preserved. He can boast huge murals on the walls of several public buildings in Mexico, the education department and the agriculture school at Chapingo being the most famous.

His ideas were radical and his beliefs were often countered, even by his own beloved communist party but his work is a legacy of the establishment of public spaces as places where art and ideas can come together to attempt to rework society into a better place.

Works Cited www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=31153840

Charlot, Jean. Mexican Art and the Academy of San Carlos, 1785-1915. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1962. Questia. 30 Apr. 2007 http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=31153840.

A www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=109096946

Foucault, Michel, and Paul Rabinow. "57 Space, Knowledge and Power." Companion to Contemporary Architectural Thought. Ed. Ben Farmer and Hentie Louw. London: Routledge, 1993. 342-348. Questia. 30 Apr. 2007 http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=109097299.

A www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=15224586

Holston, James, ed. Cities and Citizenship. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999. Questia. 30 Apr. 2007 http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=15224751.

A www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=100290255

Kramer, Michael, and Sam Roberts. I Never Wanted to Be Vice-President of Anything! An Investigative Biography of Nelson Rockefeller. New York: Basic Books, 1976. Questia. 30 Apr. 2007 http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=100290313.