Diego Rivera’s promotion as a global artist and his reception in the United States
Anetha McLean
Mexican muralist Diego Rivera (1886–1957) had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1931. Eighty years later (2011), MoMA was revisiting the main attraction of this exhibition in a new one called Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art. The attention payed by MoMa in the present decade to their first exhibition of Diego Rivera allow us to inquire into the motives behind Rivera’s advertising and the conditions that helped to spread news about Mexican arts, and Rivera, in the United States of America. In 1931, Rivera became the second artist to have a solo exhibition at the Museum since its opening in 1929, being Henri Matisse the first one. By the time, Rivera—one of the so-called “big three” muralists—was well known in his home country. His promotion in Mexico and in the United States is the result of a complex network of influences conformed by different parties—government, artists, writers, dealers, museums, private sponsors—, each with disparate interests, which complicate the reception and understanding of his artwork. This paper will explore the exhibition of 1931 to highlight the network that contributed to spread his fame in the United States and advance his career as a global artist, as well as the series of intercultural debates triggered by it. From eight portable murals commissioned to Rivera by MoMa for the exhibition, Sugar Cane (1931) and Frozen Assets (1931–1932) will be explored to point out the visual and conceptual problems posed to Rivera in his encounter with the United States, and how his proposals were perceived by the audience.
Diego Rivera was born in Guanajuato, Mexico in 1886. He started his artistic studies by the age of ten at San Carlos Academy, where he was trained according to European classic norms. After receiving a scholarship from the Mexican government to continue studies, he left to Spain in 1907. He visited various countries before returning to Mexico in 1910 for an exhibition. His visit coincided with the beginning of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) which was the result of growing tensions during the three decades of Porfirio Díaz’s government. After a few months in Mexico, Rivera returned to Europe. There he was in contact with avant-garde movements such as Post-Impressionism, Dada and Cubism, and became a member of the latter for a few years. While staying in Paris, he was contacted by the new Mexican government of Álvaro Obregón to participate in his cultural program, on account of his friendship with Alberto Pani—Mexico’s Minister to France—who told Secretary of Public Education José Vasconcelos about Rivera. Rivera was paid to travel through Italy. A series of sketches made during this trip, reveal his studies of public and monumental art in churches and civil buildings.
Vasconcelos had the ambitious plan for educating the masses and for reconstructing the Mexican identity. Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco—the other two members of the “big three” muralists—were the first to be called to become part of this project. Vasconcelos believed that a “mestizo culture would solve the ‘Mexican problem’” which for him was a racial one—he attributed degradation and lack of moral to the indigenous blood. His way of reconciling this socio-cultural heritage was to combine native culture, folk and traditions with classical elements and give birth to a modern art aligned to his ideals of a post-Revolutionary society, where the mestizo had a prominent role. To fulfill his goal, he sent the artists to pre-Columbian sites and areas where craft was produced in order for them to absorb their essence. There were no restrictions and artists were free to experiment which, according to scholar Leticia López Orozco, “allowed them to avoid the ‘uniform ideological coloration’ that characterizes muralism in the following decade.” The muralists did not share the racial motive of Vasconcelos but were interested in his idea of bringing social change and constructing a national identity charged with political content, as seen in their Manifesto of the Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors of 1923—which Rivera signed as second vocal—: “We proclaim that the creators of beauty must make an effort so that their labour presents a clear aspect of ideological propaganda for the good of the people, making art for art's sake, but also to use it as a social model … the art of the Mexican people is the world's most important and healthiest spiritual expression and its indigenous expression is the best of all …”
Though they belonged to a same movement, the muralists’ vision differed. This brought rivalry among them, besides those that they already held with other existing vanguards.
By this time, Mexican arts was barely known in the United States, though the first Latin American artworks that received attention in the United States were those of the Mexicans. One of the most important figures to promote Mexican art in the U.S. was Marius de Zaya—a Mexican artist who fled to New York after threats for his criticism to Porfirio Díaz’s dictatorship. Together with photographer Paul Burty Haviland, Zaya founded Aztec Art Inc. through which they collected and promoted Mexican and Peruvian art objects while drawing connections between them and modern art. Zaya had a gallery in New York in which he had a permanent display of Aztec sculptures. In 1916, he showed works of Rivera with pre-Colombian objects from Mexico, being perhaps the first one to give notice of the existence of the painter in the foreign country.
A more aggressive campaign started with Obregon’s government efforts. Whether muralism can be considered an official art or not is still contested, but what is true is that the Mexican government promoted it not only inside the country but outside. Obregón was interested in the recognition of his regimen by the United States in order to avoid armed conflicts between both nations, and to gain support against his internal political enemies. Also, their economic relationship was at stake. Already since the end of the nineteenth century, a huge part of Mexican industry that included “[r]ailroad, mining, ranching, and timber interests” was controlled by the United States, and the economy of Mexico, in a huge extent, depended on exports to the United States and, at some extent, to the imports from the latter. The perception of Mexico, on account of the Revolution—triggered in part by injustices suffered by the Mexican laborers—, was shaped by U.S. officials and private interests through the report of the violence. Even Pancho Villa sold his image to the U.S. to raise funds for weapons. The resulting image was that of a “‘backward’ nation, a land without laws.” Thus, Obregon’s diplomatic efforts included a cultural agenda to redeem Mexican image.
Obregon’s government supported Mexican poet José Juan Tablada—who was living in New York—to publish articles and organize talks about Mexican art. In 1923, Tablada wrote a special article focused on Rivera. In general, the government wanted to reinforce the idea of peace reigning after the Revolution, thus, they prohibited the display of war and struggle in the murals. It is quite possible that the government preferred to export artists that concentrated on the cultural aspects of Mexico and, from the “big three,” Rivera is the one that shows the mildest imagery of the conflicts in his works, which explains to some degree why he was one, if not the most, preferred.
When Obregon finished his ruling period, Plutarco Elías Calles became the President (1924). Despite Vasconcelos renounced to his position, Rivera kept his commissions. Since the main client for artworks was the state—and Rivera got most of the assignments—, many artists decided to try their luck in foreign markets. A growing tension between Mexico and the United States took place the following years. Calles wanted to enforce an existing law (article 27) in the Constitution—momentarily modified by a treaty during Obregon’s government—, that established that “lands taken from the peasantry during the Porfiriato had to be returned” and that the government could take “all land not used ‘appropriately,’ and repurpose it for the public good. It also forbade foreigners from owning land within 100 km of a national border or 50 km of the sea.” In addition, the article specified that all natural resources were property of the government. To protect their interests, the United States appointed diplomat Dwight Morrow as ambassador to Mexico in 1927. Just as Obregón, the strategy of Morrow included a cultural campaign to demonstrate U.S. “admiration for Mexican culture.”
Morrow chose Rivera to paint a mural cycle at the Palace of Cortés, his weekend residence in 1929. According to art dealer Frances Flynn Paine—Rockefeller’s art dealer—, “Morrow offered him absolute liberty for the selection of his subject and the manner in which it was to be treated” and it was “the first time in Mexico, Diego’s work was to be adequately paid for…” The same year, Morrow coordinated with art curator René d’Harnoncourt, in conjunction with the Mexican government, a recollection of Mexican art objects to be exhibited in Mexican Arts at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The exhibition coincided with the Pan-Americanism movement that promoted contribution and exchange between the countries of the Americas, as well as the search for a cultural identity of the United States. The Mexican Arts exhibition combined folk and modern—which included works of the “big three”—, though the first was the focal point. Art historian Anna Indych-López asserts that this “set a precedent for the way Mexican art would be exhibited in the United States throughout the century.” It also contributed to shaped the way Mexico and even other Latin American countries were perceived: “place[s] untouched by modern progress.” The exhibition toured for two years around the United States and reached around 500,000 visitors. Mexican Arts was promoted as the “first authentic” display of Mexican art—though an exhibition of Mexican folk art took place in 1922, and there was another one in 1928, in which the Rockefeller Foundation participated.
Just as Morrow, the Rockefeller’s were willing to show their appreciation for Mexico and their culture. The Rockefeller’s were owners of Anaconda Copper Company and Standard Oil Company both operating in Mexico and they were threatened by the possible application of Article 27. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller—wife of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.—was one of the founders of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which could explain, to a considerable extent, its engagement in promoting Mexican art and Diego Rivera, who was now one of the most known muralists in the United States and had already painted three frescoes in San Francisco. In words of Abby Rockefeller, Rivera was “the leading artist of Mexico, one of the best-known in the world,” and her enthusiasm seemed to be shared with Alfred H. Barr Jr., who was the director of the Museum, and Jere Abbott, associate director, who met Rivera in a trip they made in 1927 to Moscow where Rivera was staying at the time.
In 1931, MoMA commissioned eight panels to Rivera to paint in situ as part of his solo exhibition. The mission was in response to complains made of prior exhibitions for the absence of murals which was seen as an inefficient representation of modern Mexican artists, because the frescoes were the core of their artistic production, and the photographs could not account for the real work. The expectation for the MoMA’s exhibition grew with the announcement of the murals. The treatment of the frescoes became problematic. Despite MoMa used the steel and concrete support and doubled the size of the frescoes—around 5 by 8 feet—of its prototype Market Scene for the Mexican Arts, the critics pointed out how the murals were still severed from the architectural frame. The reasons that were given for not having them painted in actual walls was that the Museum was in “temporary quarters.” In the exhibition catalog, the portable fresco was signaled as convenient for “the destruction of the [temporary] building…does not necessarily mean the destruction of the fresco.” But the lack of context was reinforced because four of the panels—Agrarian Leader Zapata, Sugar Cane, The Knight of the Tiger (Indian Warrior) and Liberation of the Peon—were adapted fragments of the cycle murals done in the Palace of Cortés and in the Secretaría de Educación Pública, and thus the audience felt the spatial context that validated the artwork was missing. About this, critic and journalist Paul Rosenfeld (1890–1946) wrote that:
Rivera’s great frescoes in (Mexico City) and in Cuernavaca are serial, and are said to build up with a monumentality unequaled by mural painting since Tiepolo and Luca Giordano decorated church and palace ceilings…Hence intrinsically vigorous, courageous, and brilliant as the adaptations…made by Rivera for his New York exhibition are, they are fragmentary, bare of the effects secured them by their settings and continuities.
In a way, the expectancy from part of the audience to appreciate the challenges that the architectural frame posed as cited by Flynn Paine in her introduction for the exhibition’s catalog was not fulfilled. Rivera's decision of remarking that the scenes were cut off from their more extensive originals was not well received.
The thematic treatment by Rivera was also controversial because the elements he decided to remove, to adapt the fragments to a smaller area, made twists to the concept of the originals in which they were based. His selections sent an ambiguous message that led to an unsatisfied audience. For some, the changes he made to the new frescoes made them less poignant and therefore, lacking of their ideological meaning. Sugar Cane (1931), based on Slavery at the Sugar Mill at the Palacio of Cortés, eliminated part of the background which recalled the Spaniards conquest—which was the main subject of the mural cycle. The group of Indians that were pulling a cart full of sugar canes and the Spanish overseer with his spear disappeared. At the left, the Indians in loincloths that were cutting the canes were now dressed in white with hats that made them look more similar to the stereotyped image of the Mexican peasant, thus depicting a recent past. The image of a white patron resting in a hammock was more visible in the new version but without the servants and the portrait of the Virgin hanging in the wall above his head—another reference to the Spaniards and their religious subjugation. The man in the horse that was commanding the peasants on the foreground in the cycle, now occupied a second plane and the rider became blond instead of dark haired. If the story is being narrated from past to present, Sugar Cane emphasized present image of peasants peacefully picking up fruits in baskets. According to Indych-López, the details that were discharged “add[ed] to the social discourse” and the addition of the fruit collectors “transform[ed] the portable fresco into a picturesque genre scene.” Nevertheless, some reviewers still felt there was brutality in Rivera’s depiction: “…Diego…shows the whip-driven drudges of sugar plantation slaving under the indolent eyes of a very white occupant of a hammock.”
The restructuring of the original scene could have obeyed to multiple reasons besides the size of the medium, one of them is political. Some critics such as Henry McBride (1867–1962) had already warned in the past about the perils of following Rivera as some kind of “model” because of lefties ideals. Indych-López recognizes that the panel, regardless of its alterations is not devoid of political contents; for the peasant and the foreman now became a “symbol of longstanding racial tensions and class struggles in Mexico.” Though the detail in the change of the hair color of the overseer is not discussed, it is quite possible that the change is a subtle criticism to land-owners of the United States in Mexico. If Rivera was adapting his murals to send a critical message to his audience or if he was trying to conceal the political content is hard to assert. At least, MoMa seemed to have tried to avoid any ideological conflicts as reflected in Flynn Paine’s words, where she excused Rivera’s political intentions in past works by explaining that his involvement with politics was a reflection of “contemporary life” in Mexico and asserted that “Diego’s very spinal column is painting, not politics.” She also stressed that his production “speaks a language of great purety [sic] and beauty, a simple language that all can understand.”
The ambiguous reception took place also for his completely new movable frescoes: the New York themed-panels. These were the last three frescoes in which Rivera worked for the exhibition and were added in 1932. Some critics dismissed them because they thought Rivera, as a foreigner, could not grasp the New York atmosphere adequately. This observation can find a parallel to the one made by some Mexicans—especially the bourgeois—when they were confronted for the first time with Rivera’s murals. For them, Rivera was portraying “the most backward and primitive part of the country,” instead of the modernity and progress of the nation, and therefore, they did not feel his works represented Mexico. The Mexican bourgeoise did not like his choice of portraying the lower class, the indigenous people, the peasants—that were not only elements of the paintings but the main subjects—; they found his murals outrageous. It would not be surprising if the somber portrait of the U.S. industries and the Depression-era—highlighted by the selection of a grayish palette—was part of a reality that some were not willing to see: the poor and homeless, hidden from the sight of a modern city, ignored by those who profit. McBride commented that “[t]hey seem unofficial and second-hand…I admit that New York is not as thematic pictorially as it might be, yet just the same, our life has its moments.” In Frozen Assets, Rivera distributes in three sections of a vertical composition the social stratum of the city. He located in the upper part skyscrapers from Manhattan—though they belonged to different parts of the borough—being one of them the Rockefeller Center which is right in the center and cuts itself indicating that it surpasses the frame of the panel. There are also cranes, symbols of a changing city, in continual modernization. Beneath, bordering with the next scene, lies a crowded train platform. Under it is a pier used as shelter by a mass of sleeping bodies laying on the floor: the homeless and jobless, watched by a guard with his back towards the viewer. Finally, in an underground vault, there is a woman observing her jewels behind a protected cell, while a sentinel seems to be observing the viewer. On the left the figure of a faceless man is seated at a desk while, at the extreme right, two women who are talking, and an old man—which according to critic Benjamin Lerner “resembles John D. Rockefeller, Jr.” waiting for their turn. Although it can be read as criticism of the capitalist nation, alternative readings are suggested. Art critic Anne Blood cites the inclusion of Frozen Assets in the Fortune Magazine as evidence that the stress of Rivera in the Rockefellers was a recognition to their contribution in providing jobs for those who were affected by the Depression. In fact, this fresco was reproduced in Fortune magazine.
When revisiting the old exhibition in Diego Rivera: Murals for the Museum of Modern Art (2011), the reception reveals that Rivera’s appreciation is still unresolved. While Indych-López argues that the images taken from the Mexican frescoes were “pictoresque,” Leah Dickerman asserts that “there is a degree of graphic violence in these five panels that was highly unusual in the context of displays of a modern art museum not only at the time, but still today.” Dickerman points out the “repeated motifs of cutting and being cut,” which in Sugar Cane is revealed in the “curved knives used by the papaya and sugar-cane harvesters and the cutting switch of the foreman’s crop.” Dickerman goes further and makes a connection between the avant-garde cinema and Rivera’s visualization of the portable frescoes for his acquaintance with Soviet film director and theorist Einstein who once referred about his own films as “my moving frescoes.” For Lerner, the murals are too fragmented to propose a narrative while the panels are “fatally complete, not evocatively cropped.” About the New York-themed panels, writer Anthony Daniels says that they were inferior to those of Mexican subject and says that it “is not surprising, perhaps, because Rivera had not long been in New York when he painted them,” a complaint that in a way recalls McBride. Not for its violence but for its ideology, Daniels ends up sentencing that “[t]his exhibition is decidedly not for children.”
MoMA’s revival of the murals has not only opened up again a space to discuss Rivera’s artworks but has made them relevant in the present. For Lerner, since the thirties was the worst moment of the Depression-era, it makes sense to consider them in a “current crisis of value.” For writer Fey Berman, “it emphasizes the lack of an artistic reaction equivalent to the actual situation,” where there is an “evasion of that which is conflictive,” and the “dialogue exists only between artists and their buyers.”
Diego Rivera, as one of the “big three,” is perhaps one of the most controversial figures of the Mexican muralism, especially because his privileged position over the contemporary muralists is connected with politics, which complicates the appreciation of his aesthetics—for it is hard to separate his artistic achievements from the other. The post-Revolutionary government favored him most of the times, and though it is not explicitly explained, it seems it had to do with his romanticized treatment of the indigenous culture and the ambivalence in his compositions, where violence and social criticism is portrayed in more subtle ways than other muralists such as Orozco and Siqueiros. It was this feature that perhaps made Rivera the most suitable to be exported to the United States and become a global artist. He was also well connected. Since his stance in Europe, he was able to establish relations with artists from different art movements and politicians such as Minister Alberto Pani who became key to his involvement with the Mexican government. The U.S. and its intricate relationship with Mexico was propitious for a cultural exchange too. Despite his connections with the Communist party in Mexico, Rivera’s artworks gave space to accommodate multiple interpretations. This proved to be favorable for individuals, private and governmental organizations from both countries who wanted to use Rivera as a vehicle to promote an image of a less politicized Mexico in order to gain acceptance from the opposite side. Rivera himself resulted ambivalent. Once a part of the Communist party, he was willing to establish relations with the capitalist nation of the United States as seen from his involvement with the Rockefeller’s—who after the MoMA’s exhibition assigned him a mural. Although the channels were opened, this did not make easier his reception in the United States; his efforts to communicate with the audience was plagued of misconceptions. The criticism emerged from his restrospective at MoMA’s in 1931, and the readings done to Sugar Cane and Frozen Assets, are clear examples of his inability to fulfill the expectancies of the audience. On the one hand, his solution for the portable fresco was not well received—though years later Orozco achieves a better reception on its usage—and his decisions of recalling past works by simplifying the composition, were seen with suspicion. Both panels—one based in a mural at the Palace of Cortés and the other one, an original interpretation of New York—, which could have served as a platform to discuss about social divisions and labor injustices, were veiled by his invented media and what was expected from the artist. Rivera was not confronting the same audience from the early twenties that were learning about Mexican arts. His works in Mexico and his persona had already called the attention of some audiences in the U.S. and both were discussed in different articles about his artworks in periodicals such as Creative Art, Art Digest, and Fortune. This new audience wanted to be stricken by a more straightforward language than the one they felt he adapted for them. Perhaps, this uncertainty is what allows his artworks to be placed in contemporary conversations on transnational and national identities, politics and social discourses, as some contemporary critics suggested after the Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art exhibition, which in a way, confirms his position as a global artist, once more.