mexican revolution essay

Mexican Murals and Diego Rivera Sam A. Lewisohn Parnassus , Vol. 7, No. 7. (Dec., 1935), pp. 11-12. Stable URL:

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The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Mon Jul 2 19:52:33 2007 MEXICAN MURALS AND DIEGO RIVERA BY SAM A. LEWISOHN Everyone loves a well-told story whether in words or in paint. Both the character and history of the Mexican people have made it the logical country to satisfy this craving by reviving the art of plastic story-telling on a grand scale. For something in the psychology of the Mexi- can Indian has made his customary expression visual rather than verbal. Whether this preference for the pictorial is biological or conditioned by outward circumstances such as the amazing light and the incredibly beautiful scenic pat- terns, is anyone's guess-but that there is this propensity is clear. The symbols of Aztec writing were pictorial. Even among the Mexican children the talent for covering sur- faces pleasantly is marked. At the International Exhibition of Children's Art the contributions of Mexican children were outstandingly the best. The charm of Mexican peasant textiles and ceramics is notorious. Compare a Mexican market place to a Russian. In the Mexican market place every object is placed in a pictorial design, in Russia the market places are comparatively drab. The Russian genius is verbal. the Mexican ~lastic. As a result we have had great Russian novels and are having great Mexican murals.

On the historical side the repression that the Mexican Indian has suffered since the Spanish invasion has created a reservoir of suppressed bitterness. This has supplied an intensity of conviction, which of course is one of the essen- tial factors in great art.

It is popularly supposed that the "Mexican Modern Art Movement" has been based solely upon Mexican sources.

This is onlv vartiallv true. In emotional content the move- , * ment has been completely Mexican, in its main subject- matter largely Mexican, but in technic it has fortunately drawn upon traditional European sources. Thus the basis of this movement has been a unique combination of primi- tive energy and sophisticated tradition. We must not for- get that at least twelve out of the fifteen million Mexicans, or about eighty percent, are Indians. The primitive quality has been furnished by the Indian undercurrent and the sophisticated by the European surface in the Mexican char- acter. Of course when we speak of the primitive quality of the Indians we must take into account the fact that there was a previous expression in sculptural forms. Pre- cursors of the vresent Indian civilization revealed an innate talent in the visual arts that unfortunately has been sub- merged. Since the Spanish invasion the Indian produced charming folk craft, but nothing of any real importance in the history of plastic art. Indeed there was no important Indian expression in the visual arts except insofar as the Indian influence gave a quaint and racy tang to the Span- ish baroque architecture that has ,both vivified and strengthened it. But political and social repression of the Indian seems to have had the result of producing a reservoir of energy not unlike a tank of compressed air. Propelled by this hitherto repressed race consciousness and equipped with European technic, we have in Mexican murals today an important contribution in the history of art.

The outstanding achievement of the present Mexican art movement has been to pick up what was initiated in Italy and dropped because of other preoccupations, namely the expression of epic material in plastic firm. In ~~zad- tium Christianity was conveyed, "sold," through mosaic THE DEATH OF THE PEON DIEGO RIVERA patterns rather than words. In Italy it was the biblical saga that was portrayed by Giotto and his successors. In Mexico ~he race saga-and the ideology of revolution have been given pictorial expression by Rivera and Orozco and other masters.

RIVERA'S REVIVAL OF NARRATIVE PAINTING Genius is an elusive term. To those who appreciate the delightful pluralism of life it is not a rigid phrase but in- cludes many varieties of excellence. The genius that Diego Rivera possesses is of the type which includes the capacity for taking pains and the ability to bring into a coherent whole all his efforts.

It is the ability to see the parts and the whole at the same time. Rivera has in his maturity painstakingly studied the art of the Italian epic masters.

With anyone lacking personality this thorough study of the methods of these masters might have resulted in a sterile academicism. Instead he has made this knowledge - serve as a tool to give pictorial expression to his main emo- tional preoccupation-the daily life of the peasant.

As a result we have what we have not had since the Ital- ian mural masters, a plastic artist who has paralleled the achievements of the epic poets. For, without attempting to "rank" Rivera, he is undeniably a mural painter who can tell a story that embraces an epoch and not a moment.

He lacks, it is true, the naivete of Giotto and his fol- lowers who were pioneers in humanizing the Byzantine.

It is the pioneer, almost inventive, character of Giotto's work that has caused him to be classified as a primitive and in this sense Rivera's work lacks the charm of the "originale." Against this he has been able to utilize what he has learned from such masters of design as Uccello, Piero del Francesco and Tintoretto, to make his work sound in structure and satisfying as mural decoration.

But what is particularly striking, he has at the same time retained that enviable quality that we all appreciate in ELEVEN THE SUGAR REFINERS DIEGO RIVERA Both murals from the Ministry of Education, Mexico City our childhood, the ability to tell a story. And he has told the story not in literary terms but in terms of paint.

He has learned much of the esoteric art of decoration from the Byzantines whose works he studied at Ravenna.

Indeed some of his best panels on the ground floor of the Department of Education coruscate in the incredibly bright Mexican sunlight like Byzantine mosaics. But there are other panels on this floor and some at Chapingo which parallel the achievements of Giotto, Massacio, Barna and other Florentine and Sienese masters in making people move in space with simple gestures that tell the story.

The forms have bulk and weight, they are heroic in the sense that they symbolize not one but many lives. The contrapuntal design and the broad gestures indicated by a superb draftsmanship, unite to give poignant expression to the rhythm of daily tasks-to the saga of toil-in a way which makes Millet seem sentimental and banal.

There are three panels in particular which best illustrate these qualities, on the ground floor of the Department of Education, laborers going to work in a mine, workmen stirring sugar in vats, the Teotilhuacan women dyeing linen an indescribably beautiful blue. To this should be added the burial of the peon leader in the agricultural academy at Chapingo with its sustained mood of silent grief.

There is one quality of Rivera, which is his individual contribution and which gives a unique charm to his work; that is a roguish humor which is more lbenignant than bitter. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I seem to see Rivera's mischievous eyes repeated in the horse which stands beside the dying peon and in other panels, akin to a Greek chorus objectively surveying the scene.

In some of his work Rivera is open to the charge of introducing a mechanical poster-like quality and in most of the panels on the upper floors of the Educational Build- ing we are offended by a stridency due to the fact that Rivera has forgotten his role as an artist and becomes solely the propagandist. On the other hand in the ground floor panels, particularly those I have mentioned, there is a warm human quality sometimes motherly, sometimes elfin, and the social message is the more convincing because of a certain serenity and tranquillity which is always the mark of plastic art at its best. In the general effect produced in these panels there is a combination of the immediate and the cosmic that is convincing. The figures move not in a vacuum but in a resonant atmosphere that seems ap- propriate to the heroic symbolism that they embody. At the same time the design is satisfying and the effect mural in its best sense.

Whatever our political beliefs, we cannot but be ex- cited by this revival of epic painting by a master of pic- torial form.

TWELVE