Links

Pan American Unity mural

Article about other Rivera murals in San Francisco

Overview:

Post-WWII Mexico began to transform into a different country as the Aleman government began to cut back on some of the progressive policies of Cardenas' revolutionary era. The growth of foreign investment and industrialization also created changes in Mexican culture and geography as people poured into the big cities for the new opportunities that awaited them. Also the rise of the broadcast media, radio and especially television impacted the culture, bringing in new foreign influences. In this context the struggle for Mexican identity promoted by the Revolution began to take on a new significance as new the new media latched on to cultural icons and stereotypes to create a new modern vision of the culture.

The Mexican muralists formed by the Revolution had garnered the world's attention with their bold and powerful work. Inside Mexico theory faced challenges as the revolutionary fervor of the 1920's and 1930's was replaced by the cold war ethos of the post war period. In addition a new generation of artists began to challenge the artistic, aesthetic and political principles they espoused. Rufino Tamayo and other modernists began to explore Mexican identity using a different aesthetics, abandoning the explicitly political content that Rivera, Siqueiros and others proposed. Instead they wanted to create a unique Mexican voice that would not be linked to party politics but to explore the unique way that Mexican view the world, through a Mestizo lens that brings in elements of the folklore and ancient indigenous traditions and the ways that these had become enmeshed in modern life and culture.

This section of the course gets into an in depth analysis of Mexican art and its influence both in Mexico and abroad. This week you can examine the mural at the CCSF campus, Pan American Unity",. Thrpough this site you can begin to decipher some of the panels in this mural and link them to the political and artistic currents of this time period.

We will also explore the contributions of Orozco, Siqueiros and Frida Kahlo and their influence on subsequent generations of Mexican painters.

Trotsky in Mexico

Leon Trotsky, head of the Red Army and a major strategist of the Soviet revolution began to see his power erode after the death of Lenin. Trotsky and others argued that the capitalist powers could not allow the development of a communist society and would constantly working to subvert and destroy the revolution. He argued that the Soviets should use the momentum pf their revolution to support revolutions in Europe's capitalist countries as well and to commit to a permanent revolution that would avoid the consolidation of power in the hands of bureaucrats and self-serving administrators.

As Lenin's health declined in 1921, Trotsky began to have conflicts with Stalin and other leaders over his opposition to the bureaucratization the Soviet Union. By 1925 he was pushed out of power. He was exiled from the USSR in 1929 and began his wanderings throughout the world. In 1936, Diego Rivera persuaded president Lazaro Cardenas granted him asylum in Mexico as and moved into the blue house where Frida Kahlo's family lived. Trotsky was hounded by Stalin's agent in every country he landed in and in Mexico he finally achieved a moment of peace. In 1940, a group of assailants, including David Siqueiros attacked his house and riddled his room with bullets but failed to kill him. He has eventually murdered in his house shortly after by one of Stalin's agents, Ramon Mercader.

Trotsky's "Art and Revolution"

Look at the following link to read about the controversial mural, "Man at the Crossroads commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller that was eventually destroyed over the image of Vladimir Illich Lenin in the mural.

The Rockefeller controversy

The following is a poem that comments on the destruction of the mural:

I PAINT WHAT I SEE

A Ballad of Artistic Integrity by E. B. White

I Paint What I See

"What do you paint when you paint a wall?"

Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.

"Do you paint just anything there at all?

"Will there be any doves or a tree in fall?

"Or a hunting scene like an English hall?"

"I paint what I see," said Rivera.

"What are the colors you use when you paint?"

Said John D.'s grandson, Nelson.

"Do you use any red in the beard of a saint?

"If you do is it terribly red, or faint?

"Do you use any blue? Is it Prussian?"

"I paint what I paint," said Rivera.

"Whose is that head I see on my wall?"

Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.

"Is it anyone's head whom we know, at all?

"A Rensselaer, or a Saltonstall?

"Is it Franklin D.? Is it Mordaunt Hall?

"Or is it the head of a Russian?"

"I paint what I think," said Rivera.

"I paint what I paint, I paint what I see,

"I paint what I think," said Rivera,

"And the thing that is dearest in life to me

"In a bourgeois hall is Ingegrity;

"However,...

"I'll take out a couple of people drinkin'

"And put in a picture of Abraham Lincoln,

"I could even give you McCormick's reaper

"And still not make my art much cheaper.

"But the head of Lenin has got to stay

"Or my friends will give me the bird today

"The bird, the bird, forever."

"It's not good taste in a man like me,"

Said John D.'s grandson Nelson,

"To question an artist's integrity

"Or mention a practical thing like a fee,

"But I know what I like to a large degree

"Though art I hate to hamper;

"For twenty-one thousand conservative bucks

"You painted a radical. I say shucks,

"I never could rent the offices.

"For this, as you know, is a public hall

"And people want doves or a tree in fall,

"And though your art I dislike to hamper,

"I owe a little to God and Gramper,

"And after all,

"It's my wall...."

"We'll see if it is," said Rivera.

[First published in The New Yorker, May 20, 1933 during the controversy over Diego Rivera's mural in Rockefeller Center which was destroyed the following year on February 9, 1934.]

Questions to consider.

How did the Mexican muralist work in the United States influence artists here?

How does the mural Pan American Unity reflect Rivera's view of the future?

How did he imagine that Pan American unity would be achieved and what were the obstacles?

The Zapatistas

Zapatistas

The Sixth Sun Mayan Uprising in Chiapas

The Zapatista Rebellion

Chiapas: The Southeast in Two Winds

Photos essay of the Zapatistas

Mexican Graffiti Mural artists

The Zapatista Effect: The Internet and the Rise of an Alternative Political Fabric