Overview of Week One

 

 

Overview
This first section will explore the emergence of the Mexican mural movement in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution. This module will explore the origins of this artistic movement and the forces that prompted public art to promote a new aesthetic, which gave birth to a new generation of Mexican artists. The monumental works now located on the grounds of important government buildings and educational centers depicted a revolutionary view of Mexican history and identity, one derived not only from ancient indigenous cultures, but also from the 1910-1917 Revolution Links to an external site. -- an event that shook the foundations of Mexican society.

The rebellion led by Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa challenged the pillars of Mexican, the Catholic Church and landowners who owned vast haciendas. These latifundistas controlled the lives of millions of Mexican peasants, serfs and sharecroppers without possibility of advancement. The revolution unleashed new forces, including indigenous people, peasant farmers, factory workers and small ranchers. members of these groups took up arms after the collapse of the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship and after years of bloody revolution and civil war changed the landscape of Mexican society. ironically, after the battles ended, the Revolution did not alter the pre-existing economic inequalities. New elites emerged to take the reins of the new government and military leaders renounced revolutionary goals for those of order and control.

The 1910 uprising sparked a cultural revolution in Mexico as well. the Catholic Church and powerful economic elites, cultural innovators inspired different forms of cultural expression. People like artist, Geraldo Murillo, Dr. Atl began to propose a new aesthetic for Mexican artists in the country's art schools. He also encouraged artists to get involved in the country's political life, not just as observers but as activists. Revolution affected pushed artists into politics. indeed, revolution makes in near impossible to play the role of the neutral observer. artists began to demonstrate their new aesthetic even in landscapes and still life paintings. Mexican identity became ubiquitous in their work. (view Dr. Atl's work Links to an external site.)

The Revolutionary Mexico that emerged during the second decade of the 20th century was also a country in crisis. Military battles erupted between interest groups with shifting allegiances as the wealthy sought to reclaim their lands and power through any and all means. On the other side of the spectrum, Mexican workers began to organize into unions and indigenous groups mobilized to reclaim their ancestral lands.

Mexicans also began paying closer attention to world events especially to the rebellion in Czarist Russia, in the midst of WW1, which brought down the government and sparked a revolution than changed the face of Europe. The 1917 Russian Revolution, like Mexico’s was a popular uprising.. unlike the uprising in Mexico, however, the Russian Revolution consolidated power in a central and socialist government.

John Reed Links to an external site. described the events that led to the Bolshevik party taking power . After a four-year struggle with vestiges of the Czar's supporters and 21 invading foreign, the Soviet Union emerged, led by a government that embodied the ideas of Karl Marx, a German revolutionary philosopher. Marx's analysis of capitalism focused on class warfare, between the owners and workers . Marx believed that the working class in control of technology would guide these new “productive forces” into a socialist society, one that ended exploitation. He analyzed the division of labor throughout history and the ways that elites achieved dominance through control of the productive forces. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Links to an external site., a leader of the Bolshevik party and strategist of the Revolution, added to Marx's theories to fit what he saw as an evolution of capitalism from Marx's time.

Marx had predicted that revolutions would occur in the industrialized capitalist countries first due to the pressures on society that came out of the exploitive dynamic of industry. However it was in non industrial Russian and Mexico where the revolutions occurred. In this work Lenin argues that the merging of banks and industrial cartels give rise to finance capital. According to Lenin Links to an external site., in the last stage of capitalism, in pursuit of greater profits than the home market can offer, capital is exported. This leads to the division of the world between international monopolist firms and to European states colonizing large parts of the world in support of their businesses. Imperialism is thus an advanced stage of capitalism, one relying on the rise of monopolies and on the export of capital (rather than goods), and of which colonialism is one feature.

Lenin saw how industrial workers in industrial countries could be appeased by higher wages and therefore might not be the forces that would form the vanguard of the revolution. He saw that this capitalism weakest point was not in the industrial countries but in the poor dependent semi-feudal regions where capitalism had not evolved yet. Lenin argued that vanguard party of enlightened intellectuals and workers would lead the people to rise up against the capitalism and spark revolutions. His addition to Marxist theory did not actually contradict Marx's ideas but supported idea of the continuous development and evolution of productive forces as well as the forces against them.

In the Communist Manifesto Links to an external site. Marx and Engels envisioned a communist society, which would no longer contain the root causes of human misery and in which people could develop their human potential. this document became the cornerstone of a worldwide anti capitalist movement . 
In Mexico, the Partido Socialista Obrero, (PSO) or Mexican Socialist Workers Party, formed in the midst of the revolution of 1911. In 1919 it became the Mexican Communist Party. The party was founded to organize industrial workers, but it also attracted leading Mexican artists and intellectuals. the lively discussions in Russia influenced a new Mexican art movement. Artists began to experiment with forms of expression designed to transcend the concept of art as a just a commodity to be bought and sold.

The Russian Revolution Links to an external site. awakened the interest of artists and intellectuals because it told them they were historical actors whose work could change history. In 1919, Lincoln Steffens, a well-known US journalist known for his muckraking, visited the young Soviet Union and proclaimed: "I have seen the future and it works". He witnessed a historical moment in which the prevailing institutions where being overhauled and every aspect of social and political organization was being questioned.

By 1920, the government of Alvaro Obregon claimed it had institutionalized the Mexican Revolution. The slogans of the revolutionary forces, Bread, Freedom and Justice, however rang hollow. BY the 1920's, this institutionalized revolutionary government showed it had little interest in erasing social inequalities . instead, government repressive forces attacked the worker's movements and the very revolutionaries who put them in power. Although many reforms became incorporated in the new constitution, the newly organized workers and peasants faced a government hostile to changing the balance of power . Government spokesmen used nationalism and revolution in their speeches but did little to implement the heroic rhetoric.

The Revolution itself, however, unleashed a new language concerning Mexican identity. The old cultural elites gave way to revolutionaries intent on establishing a Mexican identity diverse of the country’s history, a mixture of European and indigenous cultures. Revolutionary Mexican artists delved into Mexico's folk art, indigenous traditions and the spirituality that forms the basis of the ever-evolving Mestizo culture.

The 1920's marked cultural renaissance in which artists and intellectuals cast off old colonial myths and extolled the virtues of the country's indigenous roots. Muralists, painters, poets, musicians, architects, writers and intellectuals began to search for a Mexican voice, an aesthetic to capture the ancient history and soul of Mexico in the midst of 20th century modernity and rapid social and technological changes.

Jose Vasconcelos Links to an external site., Minister of Education from 1920-1925, commissioned young Mexican artists to create massive murals on the walls of government buildings. He encouraged them to explore Mexico's diverse cultures and folklore. These murals represented a visual link to the revolutionary fervor and the mystique of this popular uprising. The murals promoted this emerging art movement, and gave it prestige by enshrining the works on the walls of important public buildings.

The artists retained their individual the techniques but addressed common themes. the murals captured the spirit of the revolution and collectively wove a tapestry of the new Mexican identity. Revolutionary artists placed the indigenous and mestizo traditions in the murals’ foreground, highlighting the dignity of manual labor, the reverence of the Mother Earth and resilience of the Mexican people . In addition these muralists dramatized the role of Mexican women in history, the economy and politics. previously, the indigenous, the poor and the women had no presence in official Mexican culture new aesthetic celebrated the ballet of manual laborers working in harmony, the grace and beauty of Mexican peasant women and the diversity and uniqueness of the handicrafts and popular art forms.

 

Links to murals: 

Rivera murals Links to an external site.