Mexican Muralists and the Mexican Revolution - Page 2

Diego Rivera stands out, especially in the 20's and 30's for his murals in Mexico and in the US, some of which are at Dartmouth and The New School for Social Research. One in Rockefeller Center was destroyed because the same John D. Robber Baron who had commissioned Diego Rivera discovered that Lenin was a central figure (Surprise!) and destroyed the work.

The most amazing part of this history/ art book is the incredible number and richness of the reproductions. We grew up and were educated at a time when $100 would buy a few, poor color reproductions. In this book from Amazon for $18.87, there are an immense number of amazingly good color reproductions of the works and their architectural installations as well as some fine historical photos from the revolutionary period. One favorite of ours is on page 62, plate 54, Wall Street Banquet, 1928 by Diego Rivera from the Courtyard of the Fiestas, Ministry of Education, Mexico City. John D. and Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan and a 20's woman read a snake-like ticker tape, sip champagne behind a statue of liberty and are dwarfed by a bank vault. In plate 58, Night of the Rich from the same building; the rich sip champagne in a drunken orgy, a Diego Rivera self-portrait (He is often encountered as was Hitchcock in his work) smiles at a Mr. Moneybags and, in the background; the revolutionaries gather with their guns and bandoliers. It is Mexico.

Siqueiros paints on into the 70's and adds his works to architecture in a manner that makes both the work and the building become one. He hits the "modern" bell with his The New Democracy, 1944-45 in the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City. It is based on photographic studies of his wife, Angelica Arenal de Siqueiros, bare-breasted and straining against the chains that would deny freedom, all human and mechanistic and emotional in grand size and design. (plate 210, double page).

Even living in Mexico, my heart does not allow me to the altitude of Mexico City to see these murals in reality; but this wonderful book has become a daily, shared exploration of intricate and complicated murals and history that is Mexico and is..."central to the issues that surround the contemporary North American cultural phenomenon of diversity and difference. The murals represent a people's roots, their ethnicity, their shared sense of origin, in which the examination and re-appropriation of history can focus on the struggle for freedom, liberty, justice and, above all, identity."

Article Author: Howard Dratch

Howard writes on science, books, movies and news for Blogcritics and on his own blogs from the border of North and Central America.

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