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DIEGO RIVERA BETWEEN MODERNITIES: STRATEGIES, NEGOTIATIONS, AND SHARED CATEGORIES

by

SABINE FADlA MABARDI

B. A. Simon Fraser University, 1969

THESIS SUBMIlTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Faculty of Arts (Special Arrangements)

O Sabine Mabardi, 1999 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY November 1999

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Abstract

The Mexican painter and muralist, Diego Rivera, travelled between centres and peripheries from 1907 to 1932. My dissertation examines how the complex relations between different modemities mediated Rivera's project to dominate what Pierre Bourdieu calls the "field of cultural production'' and to effect a shift in artistic attention from Paris to Mexico and the rest of North America. 1 explain Rivera's ultimately frustrated reception in Europe, his temporary success in the United States, and his dominant role in the construction of a post-revolutionary cultural identity in Mexico. Furthemore, 1 demonstrate how Rivera's domination of Mexican culture in the twenties, though largely based on his prominent poslion within rnuralism, was not limited to painting. He also played an important role in other spheres of cultural production, including literature. Rivera's relationship to the indigenous and popular in Mexico was informed by his earlier experiences with European primitivism(s) from 1907 to 1921, the year he returned to Mexico. He leamed the critical stance against bourgeois values and colonialisrn from Western primitivism, and the potential for differentiation and identity formation from the use of the popular and indigenous of the Russian primitivists. Rivera's representation of the autochthonous "primitive", both land and people, was an act of affirmation, an attempt at creating a modem, but Mexican, subject and culture. He showed this in his first murals and through his involvernent in other cultural areas. In his role as Mexican Folkways' art editor and educator, and as poet and "literary characte?, Rivera played a powerful part in the construction of a Mexican culture in which the indigenous and the popular were an essential component. His association with Mexican avant-garde writers and poets in the 1920s gave him an unusual outlet, and inspired the writer, Xavier Icaza, to

make him the main character in a 1926 work about the construction of a postrevolutionary culture and identity. The analysis of this work helps illuminate the contradictions and tensions involved in the elaboration of a cultural identity in the 1920s in a country recovering from the a m e d phase of the Revolution, and struggling with the impact on Mexican local traditions of a modernity, rnodemization and modernism from elsewhere. Rivera's drearn to extend Mexico's artistic influence to the North became a temporary reality when he was given the opportunity to paint a number of murals in the United States and fo show his work at the Museum of Modem Art in New York in 1931. My analysis of that exhibition uncovers the complex cultural relations of the early thirties between Mexico and the United States, and shows their intellectuals and artists around the oppositions culture/nature, and modem/primitive. My interpretation is from the perspective of both a sociology of art and

current Latin American cultural studies. Bourdieu's sociology of art allows for the examination of agency, contingencies, and strategic positioning in the cultural field. In addition, 1 draw on the theoretical advances of Latin American scholars in anthropology, sociology, art, and literature. These critics stress the need to consider the divergence and convergence between European and Latin American modemlies which enables them to avoid the simplistic and defective analysis of Latin American art and literature as a transplant from Europe. The ways the North (Europe and the United States) and the South (Mexico) construct each other, and respond to each other's construction, help explain the reception of Rivera's work abroad and at home, and Rivera's responses within these relations.

This dissertation is dedicated to the two most important

women in my life,

rny mother, Marie-Claire, and my sister, Dominique,

and to the loving memory of my father, Aimé.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the rnembers of my cornmittee, Rita De Grandis, Jery Zaslove, and Serge Guilbaut, for their help, and encouragement. I

leamed a great deal from them. 1 am particularly grateful to Rita for her support and patient guidance through these years. I was fortunate to receive a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, through Curare (Mexico City), which allowed me to go to Mexico City, and conduct archival research at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Rockefeller Archive Center at Tarrytown, New York, at Amherst Coliege and Smith College. 1 thank the art historians at Curare (Mexico City), particularly, Olivier Debroise, Francisco Reyes Palma, and James Oles for sharing their time and knowledge so generously with me. I thank also Tanis Brookes whose technical skills helped give this dissertation its final shape. 1 am grateful to the friends, colleagues, and relatives who have helped in many ways, and those with whom I have discussed parts of this work. Special thanks to Jean-François Mabardi for his helpful insights and critique. My colleagues and the administration at Douglas College were very supportive, and my family showed much concem, generosity, and patience. I could not have done this without them. Ralph Stanton was the most understanding and helpful companion in "the practice of everyday life" with a dissertation. It was his unfailing support that got me through.

vii

Table of Contents Approval

...................................................................................................

ii

................................................................................................. iii Dedication ................................................................................................ v Acknowledgements ............................................................................... vi Table of Contents ................................................................................... vii List of Figures ......................................................................................... viii Introduction ............................................................................................. 1 Part One: From Primitivism To lndigenismo ........................................... 26 Abstract

Chapter One: Rivera and European Primitivism(s)

....................... 26

Chapter Two: Rivera. the Indigenous. and the Popular

............... 66

Chapter Three: Rivera the Art Editor: Mexican Folkways .......... 106 Part Two: The Literary Avant-Gardes

................................................. 156

Chapter Four: Rivera the Poet: Estridentismo ........................... 156 Chapter Five: Rivera the Literary Character. Magnavoz 1926 ... 198 Part Three: The Potitics of the Primitive and The Mcdem

.................... 241

Chapter Six: Rivera at MoMA in 1931 ........................................ 241 Conclusion ........................................................................................... 295 Figures

.................................................................................................

308

Bibliography .......................................................................................... 345

viii

List of Figures Fig. 1 Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907 ..................... 308 Oil on canvas, 96 3h" x 92 1/2" (Reproduced in Picasso: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, a Sketchbook, frontispiece) Fig. 2 Diego Rivera, Zapatista Landscape-The Guerilla, 1915 .......... 309 Oil on canvas, 56.75" x 48.375" Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City (Reproduced in Barbara Braun, Pre-Columbian A f l and PostColumbian World: Ancient American Sources of Modem Art, p. 189) Fig. 3 Diego Rivera, Creacion, 1923 ................................................... 310 Encaustic and gold leaf, 708 x 1219 cm Anfiteatro Bolivar, Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, Mexico City (Reproduced in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, p. 236) Fig. 4 Diego Rivera, Detail of Central Section of Stairway Mural, First and Second Floors, 1923-28 ................................................... 31 1 Fresco Court of Labor, Secretaria de Educacion Publica, Mexico City (Reproduced in Pre-Columbian AR and PostColumbian World: Ancient American Sources of Modem Art, p. 196)

Fig. 5 Paul Gauguin, D'où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? O ù

allons-nous? 1897 ................................................................... 3 12 Oil on canvas, 4'6" x 12'3.5" Tomkins Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Reproduced in Pre-Columbian Arf and Post-Columbian World: Ancient American Sources of Modern Art, p. 86)

Fig. 6 Diego Rivera, Landscape (Majorca), 1914 ................................ 313 Watercolour and pencil, 50.8 x 32.5 cm Museo Diego Rivera, Guanajuato (Reproduced in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, p. 41) Fig. 7 Natalya Goncharova, Apple Trees in Bloom, 1912 .................... 31 3 Oil on canvas, 105 x 84 cm Collection Mrs. Morton E. Rome, Baltimore (Reproduced in Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism, l9OZ-1934, p. 59)

Fig. 8 Diego Rivera, Illustration for the pamphlet El repart0 de tierras, 1922 ........................................................................................... 314 Drawing (Reproduced in Diego Rivera Hoy, p. 71) Fig. 9 Vasily Koren, Picfure Bible, 1696 .............................................. Woodcut, 32.7 x 28.8 cm. (Reproduced in The Lubok, no. 18)

315

Fig. 10 Vasily Koren, Picture Bible, 1696 ............................................ 316 Woodcut, 35.2 x 28.6 cm. (Reproduced in The Lubok, no. 19)

Fig. 11 David Alfaro Siqueiros, cover of Vida Americana (illustration by Marius de Zayas), 1921 ................................................. 317 (Reproduced in Modemidady modernizacion en el arte Mexicano, 1920-1960,p. 42)

Fig. 12 Diego Rivera, Untitled, .Vexican Folkways, vol. 2, ne 2, JuneJuly 1926, p. 18. ....................................................................... 318 Drawing (Mexican Folkways) Fig. 13 Jean Charlot, cover for Mexican Folkways, vol 3, October/ November, 1925 ...................................................................... 319 (Mexican Folkways) Fig. 14 Diego Rivera, cover for Mexican Folkways, ne 8, August/ September, 1926 ..................................................................... 320 (Mexican Folkways) Fig. 15 David Alfaro Siqueiros, La unidad del Campesino e l Soldado y el Obrero in El Machete (April 1-15, 1924) ............................... 321 Woodcut (Reproduced in Art Journal, Spring 1993, p. 85) Fig. 16 Agustin Lazo, cover for Mexican Folkways, ng 8, Augustl September 1926 .................................................................. 322 (Mexican Folkways)

Fig. 17 Diego Rivera, cover for Mexican Folkways, vol 3, nP4, 1927 ..........................................................................................323 (Mexican Folkways) Fig. 18 Diego Rivera, Elmosquito americano, in Mexican Folkways, vo! 2, nP2, 1926 (p. 24) ............................................................ 324 Drawing (Mexican Folkways)

Fig. 19 Diego Rivera, cover for Mexican Folkways, vol 6, nQ1 , 1930 (Mexican Folkways)

... 325

Fig. 20 Advertising page of Rivera's frescoes in Mexican Folkways, vol. 1, nP2, August-September, 1925 (n.p.) .............................. 326 (Mexican Folkways) Fig. 21 Advertising page in Mexican Folkways, vol. 3, n92, 1927 (n.p.) ............................................................................ (Mexican Folkways)

327

Fig. 22 Advertising page in Mexican Folkways, vol. 4, ng 3, 1928 (n.p.) .............................................................................. (Mexican Folkways)

328

Fig. 23 Diego Rivera, Caligrama 'kadiador Estridencial", 1924, in lrradiador .................................................................................. (Reproduced in Serge Fauchereau, "The Stridentists" in AH Forum, 24 [February, 19861, p. 86).

329

Fig. 24 Jean Chariot, cover of Urbe, 1924 ............................................ 330 Woodcut (Urbe, super-poerna bolchevique en 5 cantos) Fig. 25 Ramon Alva de la Canal, Magnavoz 1926, 1926 Woodcut (Magnavoz 1926, 1926, n.p.)

..................... 331

Fig. 26 Aleksandr Rodchenko, Books (poster) 1925 ............................ 332 Photomontage (Reproduced in Rodchenko: The Complete Work, p. 156) Fig. 27 Ramon Alva de la Canal, untitled, 1928 Woodcut (Panchito Chapopote, p. 25)

...................................333

Fig. 28 Diego Rivera, cover of the Journal Krasnaya niva (Moscow) nQ12, 1928 ............................................................................... 334 (From a photograph courtesy of Mr. Alfred H. Barr, Jr. New York. Reproduced in Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, p. 275) Fig. 29 Diego Rivera, Agrarian Leader Zapata, 1931 ........................... 335 Movable fresco on steel reinforced concrete, 238 x 188 cm Museum of Modem Art, New York (Reproduced in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, p. 186)

Fig. 30 Diego Rivera, Liberation of the Peon, 1931 .............................. 336 Movable fresco on steel reinforced concrete, 152.4 x 243.8 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art (Reproduced in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, p. 78) Fig. 31 Diego Rivera, Sugar Cane, adaptation from a fresco at the Palacio de Cortés in Cuernavaca, 1931 (title used in the catalogue) ................................................................................. 337 Movable fresco on steel reinforced concrete, (measurement n/a) (Reproduced in Diego Rivera [1931], exhibition catalogue, n.p.) Fig. 32 Diego Rivera, Morelos Sugar Plantation. The Conquest is Converted into Permanent Feudal Exploitation, Palacio de Cortés in Cuernavaca, 1929 (title used in the book) ................. 338 Fresco (Reproduced in Portrait of Mexico, plate 202) Fig. 33 Diego Rivera, Uprising, 1931 .................................................... 339 Movable fresco on steel reinforced concrete Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Marcos Micha Levy (Reproduced on the cover of CURA RE: Espacio critico para /as artes México, otoiio de 1996) Fig. 34 Diego Rivera, Frozen Assets, 1931 .......................................... 340 Movable fresco on steel reinforced concrete, 239 x 188 cm Collection of Dolores Olmedo (Reproduced in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, p. 124) Fig. 35 Diego Rivera, Electric Welding, 1931 ....................................... 341 Movable fresco on steel reinforced concrete, 142.5 x 239 cm Collection of Mt. and Mrs. Marcos Micha Levy (Reproduced in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, p. 128) Fig. 36 Wortman, 'Vust squint one eye and see it corne right out." February 1, 1932 ...................................................................... 342 Cartoon (New York City World Telegram, Metropolitan Movies) Fig. 37 Diego Rivera, Self-Portrait-The Ravages of Time, 1949 ........ 343 Watercolour on canvas, 31 x 26.5 cm Collection of Marilyn O. Lubetkin (Reproduced in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, p. 193)

Introduction It is remarkable how often the name of Diego Rivera, and how many reproductions of his work, have appeared in North American rnainstream publications and the acadernic press in the last year. The vogue that his wife and fellow painter, Frida Kahlo, has enjoyed worldwide in the last decade and a half is now helping to bring him back into the lirnelight. New exhibitions of his work in Paris, in 1998,' and in Cleveland, in 1999, and a new biography in 1998, have elicited much publicity.2 Among the many long and short writeups, two very different examples published in American popular magazines in the fall of 1998 illustrate this new interest. Condé Nast Traveler published a very superficial review, "Modem Master", of Patrick Marnham's new biography, Dreaming with his Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera, accompanied by a srnall picture of the artist taken in 1933.~ This review was 1

The Paris exhibition, Diego Rivera-Frida Kahh as the title indicates is not a solo show, but rather a look at the work of the famous couple. The Catalogue, titled Diego Rivera-Frida Kahlo: regards croisés, particularly through its cover reproduction of a self-portrait of Kahlo, with Rivera "on her mind", and its introductory remarks, appears to ride on the wave of Kahlo's current popularity as a way of re-introducing Rivera. (Paris: Fondation Dina ViernyMusée Maillol, 1998). This, as is the history of exhibitions of his work in Paris, is telling of that city's uneasy relationship with Rivera, and the nature of his reception there. After the "Rivera affair", which resulted in his "excommunicationnfrom the dominant wing of the Cubist group that included Picasso, he had to organize an exhibition with members of the splinter group in 1918 in order to show his paintings. Then, the first time his work was shown again, in Paris, was not until 1952, as part of a large exhibition, titled Art méxicain, du précolombien à nos jours. Such a comprehensive show had been planned to tour France in 1940, but the war prevented the execution of that plan, and instead it took place in New York that year. Both big productions, then and now, were initiated by the Mexican government. 2

The exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art (with the collaboration of the Consejo Nacional para la Cuitura y las Artes and the lnstituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City) focuses particularly on Rivera's European years.

included among others on books about Mexican architecture, ancient Mexico, and Mexican cooking on a page with the prornising heading, "Hasta la vista, babyY4 In Elle magazine a colour reproduction of a section of a secretaria5 mural titled We Want to Work illustrates a haif-page review by Georgia Brown of Philip Roth's latest novel, I Married a Communist. If there is any relationship at al1 between the illustration and the subject at hand, it might be Comrnunisrn, since Rivera's communist status was controversial in the United States. A more subtle relationship might be the reference to the "ambitious ongoing history project" that the reviewer ascribes to Roth, presumably a written equivalent to Rivera's own visual history project6At any rate, the relationship is neither direct nor expected, and probably not even clear for most readers of Elle. If my assumption is correct, it is not the American public's knowledge of the Mexican artist that explains the proliferation of reproductions of his work. More likely, Rivera's prolific output, the variety of

-

-

--

-

Patrick Marnharn's Dreaming with His Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998) is apparently the first full-length biography to appear in 35 years. UnfortunateIy this otherwise very engaging and apparently well researched biography, doesn't reveai rnuch new material, and stresses the psychological at the expense of the political and artistic. This is no doubt due to the difficulty in getting access to Rivera's personal archives that have not been fully opened. By reducing Rivera to an opportunist, Marnham crudely simplifies what were very sophisticated responses that helped the artist navigate cornplex cultural fields that he dreamed of dominating. Another important book featuring Rivera came out in 1999: Anthony W. Lee, Painting On the Lefi: Diego Rivera, Radical politics, and San Francisco's Public Murals (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). "Hasta la vista, baby (Modern Master)", Condé Nast Traveler (October 1998). p. 70. The Secretaria is the building housing the Ministry of Education in Mexico City in which Riverâ painted three floors of murals. "A Knock-Down, Drag out Affair", Elle magazine (October 1998), p. 124.

subjects he depicted, the legibility of much of his work, among other things, seem to make him the pet-fect illustrator for almost anything, from dictionaries to university anthologies of Latin American ~iterature.~ A large reproduction of one of his murals even decorates the lobby of a new and trendy building in downtown Vancouver. In the end, Rivera gained the notoriety he so arduously sought, but not necessarily in the ways that he had imagined. ***

In this dissertation 1 do not attempt another comprehensive study of a specific period or genre of Rivera's production, such as his cubist or social realist painting, murals, easei work, or portraits, nor do I focus exclusively on his political involvement or persona1 life. Rather, my purpose is to detemine how his quest to gain and maintain domination as an artist, and to effect a shift in artistic attention away from Paris and towards Mexico and the United states8 was mediated by the relations between the contradictory and diverse spaces of modernity, modernism, and modemization. I study selected examples of his work in the context of specific manifestations of these complex relations between centres and peripheries over a period of roughly two decades, 1909-1932, from his departure to Europe to his return to Mexico, and finaily, to his retrospective at the Museum of Modem Art in New

7

The covers of books on muralism, where Rivera is only one of the muralists studied, often display a reproduction of a Rivera mural. Examples range from Jean Charlot's earlier account, The Mexican Mural Renaissance 1920-1925 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963) to the later book by Laurance P. Hurlburt The Mexican Muralists in the United States (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, f989), and the recent study by Leonard Folgarait, Mural Painting and Social Revolution in Mexico: Arf of the New Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

a

What could be referred to as his Pan American artistic utopia.

~ o r kThe . ~ production of Rivera's work, its reception, and the strategies deployed around these processes should al1 be apprehended as situated

within and between these spaces. This I attempt by focusing rnainly on specific aspects of his ambiguous involvement abroad and at home with the "primitive" and the modem and on his incursions into the literary world in the 1920s as he infiltrated every sphere of the Mexican cultural field. The

emblematic character of Rivera can better be captured through an exploration of the different facets of his creative prastices and the rnany parts he played on the Mexican cultural scene. Then, he also becomes a prism through which

to see the diverse tones of that Mexican cultural scene of the 1920s. To frarne the intercultural exchanges between the various modernities and traditions that intersected in Rivera's trajectory, I do not proceed exclusively from a specific art historical, literary, political, sociological, or anthropological perspective. Instead, I draw, in different measure, from al1 of these disciplines, as they become useful to illuminate particular aspects of rny

9

I use the terms "centre" and "periphery" extensively and loosely, to refer rnetaphoricallyto oppositional spaces between Mexico and its "outside", such as Europe-United StatedMexico, rnetropolis/margins, and North/South, West/East. I also use them to refer to "internal" spaces in Mexico that are in constant conflict and flux, such as the urban/rural, interior/capital, interior/ port city, etc. These spatial dualities are paralleled by other oppositions referring to the people that are expected to inhabit these spaces, such as mesiizo/indigenous or to their cultural production, such as high culture/popular culture. I do not use these dichotomies in the fixed way of dependency theories, that view the "centre' only in a negative light as contaminated and alienated, and the "periphery" as pure and authentic. I am aware that the borders of these spaces, or positions, are ever changing and, more often than not biurred, and by no means homogeneous. The terms "centre" and "periphery", used by many Latin Arnerican critics, are useful here, even indispensable. If the centre defines itself and its other through these oppositions, thereby creating a hierarchical and dependent system, the periphery, in turn, always responds to this, either by negating the centre, imitating it or negotiating with it in its own articulation of cultural difference. The spatial metaphor, centre/periphery, is as useful here as the time opposition, innovation/tradition, or the culturehature opposition, and I use them al1 in the following chapters.

analysis. This more h o l i ~ t i capproach '~ helps me better apprehend rny subject, and disentangle the constructions and oppositions that make up the cornplex cultural fields in which Rivera negotiated with tradition and innovation, whether in the Western centres of the art world or their peripheries. Though there has been an effort to look at culture through the lenses of various disciplines, or rather through reorganized discipline boundaries, so-called cultural studies still appear to privilege literature over the visual arts. For example, the importance of the Mexican Muralist movement is often acknowledged in analyses of Latin American culture, but, more often than not, it is denied the kind of analytical space reserved for literary movernents. In this reading of Rivera, I attempt not only to subject Rivera's visual work to critical analysis, but I also introduce and analyze literary aspects related to his domination of the Mexican cultural field. From the point of view of a relational sociology of art (practices), Pierre Bourdieu's concept of the "field of cultural production" as autonomous but related to other fields, including the "field of power", rernains immensely useful. lt allows Rivera to be studied from the shifting social conditions in which his work was produced and received. That includes his role as agent in the field and that of his patrons, and the institutions with which he dealt, including the state, as well as other elements that helped give shape to his responses. Particularly useful here, is Bourdieu's principle of dominant and dominated within the cultural field, whether in ternis of power relations

10

A term used by Scott Lash and Jonathan Friedman eds., Modernity and ldentity (Oxford: Blackwell. 1993),p. 29.

between classes, movements, art centres, or artists. I use more specifically Bourdieu's variants, dominant and aspiring (prétendant), to refer to the writer or artist who competes to gain the dominant position over, or along one or others who already dominate the field. This principle underlies much of my study of ~ivera.'' Bourdieu's concepts of strategy and trajectory are also particularly relevant and effective in this analysis of Rivera's reception in the successive centres involved and of his role in shaping and responding to it. For Bourdieu, strategies are not necessarily the product of an agent's conscious decisions, but, rather, they are shaped both by the agent's habitus and the interna1 and extemal conditions of the cultural field, at a given moment and in a given location. Bourdieu resuscitates the concept of habitus to help his theory "escape from the philosophy of consciousness without annulling the agent in its true role of practical operator of constructions of the real"." The complex notion of habitus can be defined generally as "a set of dispositions which generates practices and perceptions" in an agent.I3 These dispositions are acquired, among other factors, through upbringing, education and social class. The trajectory refers to the sequence of stages travelled by the artist 11

It permeates much of Bourdieu's work on art and Iiterature, but I particularly draw on his The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure o f the Literary Field. Susan Emanuel, trans. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996, (Les règles de l'art: genèse et structure du champ littéraire, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1992) and Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, edited and introduced by Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). l2 Bourdieu, The Rules of Art, op. cit. p. 180. Bourdieu wants to "unveil and describe the cognitive activity of the constructing of social reality which is not, either in its approaches (1 am thinking in particular of its activities of classification), the pure and purely intellectual operation of a calculating and rational consciousness." Ibid., pp. 179-80. 13

Bourdieu, Field of Cultural Production, op. cit., p. 5.

within the cultural field. It is detennined, not by a single design that defines and gives meaningful unity to the artist's life, but rather, by his/her continuous and vatying relationship within the cultural field. Rather than looking at childhood, education or social class, as processes that would have shaped Rivera's habitus, I focus on his condition of peripheral artist, a condition which became really obvious to him when he

went to Europe. Thus, the dispositions generated by his Mexican condition help explain his practices, relations, and positioning within cultural fields. Bourdieu's field is a structured and autonomous space-though other fields-with

it is related to

its own laws and relations of force in which an agent

occupies or tries to occupy, vacate or create a position. Like in the game of musical chairs, the occupants of these positions are constantly changing as situations dictate, therefore, also altering the structure of the field. Positions of dominance in the field of cultural production depend to a large extent on the capital (symbolic or economic, for example) of the producers, and the relations of forces with other fields, namely the field of power or the economic field. Thus, the chapters in this dissertation examine the way Rivera's strategies adapted to the specific conditions in each of the successive stages of a shifting and swerving trajectory within and between cultural fields. 1 should stress at this point that my intention is not to daim that Rivera's general responses were entirely original. Like other artists, he shared the views, and adopted the reactions of many of his conternporaries. However,

my purpose is to extricate and examine the specific shapes these took in his particular trajectory. As useful as Bourdieu's rnethodological framework is, in the case of a study on Rivera it requires a particular exarnination of Latin American, and more directly Mexican, modemity that takes into account the divergence of time and space between Europe, the United States, and Mexico. It is crucial, therefore, to turn to the theoretical developments elaborated by Latin Americanists because they introduce a perspective fmm the margins that addresses specifically these dislocations. These critics challenge Eurocentric interpretations by asserting that Latin American modemity differs substantially frorn Western modemity, and that Latin American cultures evidence a "multitemporal heterogeneity", or the "spatio-temporal" coexistence of the modem with the traditional.14 This applies most particularly to the Mexico of the twenties and thirties and to Rivera's interaction with the primitive in Europe, and the United States, and the popular in Mexico, in his construction of a Modern Mexican art. When studying the complex relation between innovation and tradition in Latin America, concepts such as hybridity, anthropophagy, and rearticulation combine to help explain the differences between Europe's modemity, and the "complexity of Latin America's own 'uneven modemity', and the new developments of its hybrid (pre-and-poçt) modem

nature^".'^

14

"Multitemporal heterogeneity" is used by Néstor Garcia Canclini in Culturas hibridas: estrategias para entrary salir de la modernidad (México: Grijalbo, 1989), p. 72. "Spatiotemporal" is used by Neil Larsen's, in Reading North By South: On Latin American Literature, Culture, and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), p. 198. John Beverley, and José Oviedo, "Introduction" in boundary2, volume 20, number 3 (Fall 1993), p. 5.

l5

According to Néstor Garcia Canclini, an anthropologist from Argentins residing in Mexico, constant strategic processes of reconversion absorb, reject, and mix the old and the new according to needs.16 A study of Mexican art that does not hinge on its heterogeneous character and which assumes that modemity is a unitary phenomenon leads to distorted perceptions that essentialize Mexican art as imitativefderivative, and defines it as a distinct and long-established "postmodem" art avant la lettre. Therefore, the notions of different modernities and cultural heterogeneity generated by "multiple dialectics of development"" (within the same country) are pivotal in this study which examines the cultural field at the intersection of the traditional (primitive and popular) and the modem in places as different and distant as Paris, Mexico and New York. On the discursive and theoretical levets, deconstructing heterogeneity, and reconstructing it as a category open to a (conflictive) "differential multiplicity of practices" other than Eurocentric formulations, serves to disam the "monocultural model" of the

est."

Modernity produced a culture that, propelled forward by the belief in progress and the rnyth of originality, rejected the traditions of the immediate past, and relentlessly pursued aesthetic innovation, often returning to much older traditions. In Latin America, however, the (immediate) traditions which modemization was not able to uproot and supplant are not rejected, but rather 16

See Garcia Canclini, Cuituras hibridas, op. cit., pp. 221-3 and 332-5.

" Ibid.,

p. 23.

Nelly Richard, "Cultural Peripheries: Latin America and Postmodemist De-Centeringnin boundary 2, op. cit., p. 161; and ''The Latin Americari Problernatic of Theoretical-Culturat Transference: Postmodern Appropriations and Counterappropriations" in South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 92, no. 3 (Summer 1993), p. 458.

rearticulated together with innovative imports. These cultural fields become Unlike the crucibles where alien models are reelaborated and reorgani~ed.'~

the mode1from the centre, Latin American modemity does not eliminate traditions, but instead negotiates the needed accommodation with these

tradition^.^' In Mexico, in the immediate years following the Revolution, this took on special significance, especially in the plastic arts, and Rivera, who had seen the impact of the primitive on modem art in Paris, gave his special

mark to this accommodation in his own painting. As Peter Wollen and Laura Mulvey suggest: [his] aim was to reverse the current of art history so that instead of the exotic or the primitive feeding into European art, the reverse would happen: the lessons of European art he had brought &ck with him would feed into the native Mexican tradition. To Joaquin Brunner's "cultural rearticulation", and Garcia Canclini's "cultural reconversion", Nelly Richard adds her "transcultural rhetoric of appropriation" -presumably

borrowing from Angel Rama's

"transculturationY~-al1processes that give modernity in the periphery its heterodox configuration. Rama's concept is a useful theoretical tool and strategy ernanating from the dependency theory articulated in the 1960s. -

19

---

Garcia Canclini, Culturas hibridas, op. cit., p. 78.

See George Yudice, "Postmodernity and Transnational Capitalism in Latin America", in George Yudice, Jean Franco and Juan Flores, eds., On Edge: The Crisis in Contemporary Latin American Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, l992),pp. 1-28.

'O

Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, "Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti" in Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), p. 89.

2 '

22

See Nelly Richard, "Postmodern Disalignments and Realignments of the CenterIPeriphery"

in Art Journal (Winter 1992), pp. 57-9, and "The Latin American Problematicnin boundary 2, op. cit., p. 52.

Transculturation is used to explain the modernization of the cultures of the hybridized peripheiy by offering an alternative to opposing choices of either copying the model or rejecting it completely. It allows for the articulation-or transculturation-of the "exotic cultural dominant" in local t e r m ~ . * ~

A common (mis)perception (Octavio Paz, for example) is that in Latin America the gap between the state of social modemization (or lack thereof), and the buoyant cultural modernism would produce a "defective" copy of European modernityz4lt is interesting to note how what is defined as "innovation" in Europe becomes "copy" of Western art when produced in the periphery. Rivera first became painfully aware of this bias in Montparnasse, in the context of his relationship with ~ i c a s s oThis . ~ ~modernist dichotomy of originaikopy has been rejected by current Latin American cultural theories, and replaced instead by the contention that the cultural irnports are "'received' and appropriated according to local codes of r e ~ e ~ t i o nDuring " . ~ ~ the period of the dependency theory the modeVcopy opposition, where the model originates in the centre and the copy is a product of the margins, was countered in Latin America by the mirror image of the centre representing the international, therefore, the fake versus the periphery representing the national, therefore, the authentic."

23

Neil Larsen, Reading North By South, op. cit., p. 122.

24

See Garcia Canclini, Culturas hibridas, op. cit., p. 65.

25

This is referred to here in Chapter One.

26

José Joaquin Brunner, "Notes on Modernity and Postmodernity in Latin America" in boundary 2, op. cit., p. 52.

" Richard,

"Postmodern Disalignments", op. cit., pp. 57-9.

This reversed construction, turns out to fit in with the image the North has elaborated of its own relationship with the South. The North pressures the South into development and, more importantly, into integration, both economical and political, with the North. However, when it cornes to culture, there is no pressure for change, as the metropolis is attracted by the combination of ancient and modem because it confirms its construction of the margins as (stili) primiti~e.~' The ways the North and the South construct each other, and respond to each other's construction also help explain both the reception of Rivera's work abroad, and his strategic moves to either affect

it or respond to it, and why despite his frequent interchanges with what is seen as the mainstream of twentieth-century art, Rivera as a Mexican artist represents an incursive presence within a mode1 of cultural values stil?$ependent on the pre-eminence of the ParidNew York axis.

1 examine some of the circumstances that frustrated Rivera's project of domination in Europe, and which led to a temporary and rnixed success in the United States, and resulted in thiç "incursive presence". I look, as well, at

some of the elernents that ccntributed to his eventually successful supremacy in Mexico where he became a cultural emblern. The two extreme poles, that

have characterized his reception, from mere incursion in the West to --

-

*'

Garcia Canclini, "Memory and Innovation in the Theory of Art" in South Atlantic Quarterly, op. cit., p. 423. That this is still the case in Mexico at the end of the century is confirmed by curators, art historians, and artists such as Olivier Debroise (at the time Director of CURARE) and Gerardo Suter who daim that "the characterization of Mexican art as solely exotic, colorful, or excessively expressionistic" is maintained by a Mexican government's intent on continuing the promotion of this image by sponsoring mega-shows such as "Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries" at New York's Metropolitan Museum in 1990. Mary Schneider Enriquez, "Mexico Suffering and Soaring", AH News (April 19963, p. 126. 29

Oriana Baddeley, "Diego Rivera, a Retrospective", in Art History 11 (June 1988), p. 274.

emblematic status in Mexico, found their reflection in art history where he, often, is either merely mentioned or dismissed, or then praised uncritically. A review of the writings that were published in Mexico over the years reveals a tendency to offer a simplified analysis, because Rivera became a national treasure, and therefore, it is assurned that he is an incomparable genius whose work and strategies do not have to be questioned. However, a number of criticai studies on Rivera's work have been published-mostly, as would be expected, from an art historical perspectivethat counter both biases from within and outside Mexico. Excellent monographs on Rivera's Cubist work have been published by art historians Ramon Favela and Olivier Debroise, and research on bis Mexican or American murals, where he has been exarnined in relation to other Mexican or American muralists, has resulted in recent works by Laurance Hurlburt and Leonard Folgarait. Another recent study exclusively concerned with Rivera's murals is David Craven's latest book on what he calls Rivera's "alternative modernism" or "epic modemism". These studies have been useful to me, and I am indebted to them for providing me with some precious material that would have otherwise not been readily availab~e.~' Rivera's national consecration, which was neither immediate, nor without controversy, is a tribute to Rivera's relentless pursuit of cultural 30

Diego Rivera: The Cubist Years. Text by Ramon Favela (Phoenix: Phoenix Art Museum, 1984); Olivier Debroise, "A Cubist at the Crossroads: The Evolution of Diego Rivera, 19141935." Crosscurrents of Modernism: Four Latin American Pioneers. Valerie Fletcher, ed. (Washington: The Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992): 84-99; Laurance P. Hurlburt, The Mexican Muralists in the United States, op. cit.; Leonard Folgarait, Mural Painting and Social Revolutian in Mexico: Art of the New Order, op. cit.; and David Craven, Diego Rivera: An Epic Modernist (New York: G. K. Hall, 1997).

domination. It is precisely aspects of that pursuit that I try to disentangle from the complex web of rnyths that sunounds him. While I do refer to Rivera's writings on art as an important part of my analysis, I stay clear of his own accounts of events that inform too many studies of the artisL3' My analytical framework allows me to add the inevitable complexities and contradictions that these studies have generally ignored, and avoid the reductionism of a purely biographical approach. It provides the means to study how Rivera negotiated with various modemities in order to pursue his project for differentiation from Western art and for persona1 and Mexican dominance on a hemispheric level. While I attempt to follow a revisionist approach like the critics mentioned above, my perspective, is less art historical specific, and more broadly based. Rivera's painting is not my only concem. I am also interested in his role as editor, poet, educator, and literary character (protagonist) because these more obscure facets of this rnultifarious personality contribute in a significant way to the understanding of how he became the paradigrnatic figure of certain cultural relations within Mexico, and between Mexico and the outside. Therefore, the spatial focus of my study is neither entirely extemal nor internal, but rather it stands at various points of intersection between the outside and the inside, between centres and peripheries.

31

For example, in the catalogue of the recent Paris exhibition, Christina Burrus writes 13 pages of introduction to Rivera in which she relies heavily on My Art, My Life. An Autobiography (New York: The Citadel Press, 1960) where Rivera recounted his Iife to Gladys March. Out of 11 footnotes, 9 are from that book. Christina Burrus, "Diego Rivera" in Diego Rivera-Frida Kahlo: Regards croisés, op. c it., pp. 33-43.

Rather than investigate specific aspects of his painting contributions, such as his Cubist production or his mural work in the United States, which have been more thoroughly covered, 1 have chosen to focus on less-studied aspects of Rivera's production, both painterly and literary. Unlike other studies on Rivera, my dissertation examines the artist's reception within different geographical, social, and cultural contexts in relation to specific concepts such as primitivism, indigenismo, avant-garde art and Iiterature, and Pan Americanism, therefore distancing itself from these other workç by its muitidisciplinary nature. My overall purpose is to show how these concepts are expressed and how they evolve around Rivera in the context of the relations between modernities in the most significant period of his life. The dissertation is divided into three main components, the first with three chapters, the second with two, and the third with a single longer chapter. The chapters follow Rivera in the spaces where he travelled and the positions he occupied in various cultural fields in an atternpt to show how his successive recepions conditioned his responses and shaped his subsequent strategies for domination over a period of two and a half decades: from his failed attempt to dominate in the French centre, to consecration at home, and on to his expansionist d r e a r n ~ . ~ ~ In Part One, entitled From Primitivism to indigenismo, 1 examine the differences between Rivera's experiences with primitivisrn(s) in the centre 32

Each stage examined here is not a comprehensive study of Rivera's overwhelming production, nor of al1 his relationships within the cultural field, but oniy of some works in connection with specific associations that rnay have been less explored than others. His stay in Russia in 1927-1928 needs to be studied further, but the availability of information on that stage of his life is, at this point, beyond the reach of this researcher.

(Chapter One), then with indigenismo in the periphery (Chapter Two) through their discursive ambivalence, and spatio-temporal convergence and divergence. My purpose is to show how these experiences with the discourse of European primitivism(s), and Rivera's subsequent failure to becorne dominant in Europe, shaped his relationship to Mexican indigenismo, and affected his attempt to dominate the cultural field in Mexico when he retumed.

I end Part One with an in-depth examination of his involvement as art editor in the magazine Mexican Folkways (Chapter Three), in order to illustrate and confim the findings of the first two chapters. In f9O7, Rivera went to Europe to learn from the European rnasters. However, after his apprenticeship in Spain, he went to Paris, where he joined the international crowd of Montparnasse, retuming to Spain periodically. When he left Europe, after fouiteen years, he had been exposed to many schools and styles, Futurism, Cubism, and especially the primitivism that informed rnuch of the art of those days. He had met the major players involved in primitivism including, of course, Picasso, with whom he had a complex relationship, and Russian neo-primitivists. It is there, and through his exposure to their art and the many discussions he shared with artists and intellectuals from France, as well as from "peripheral" European c ~ u n t r i e s ~ ~ such as Italy, Spain and Russia, that he discovered, or at least, became acutely aware of the barbariankivilized opposition. I argue that colonialisrn, 33 Within the hierarchical system of centre/periphery, 1 assume that these three countries were to various degree "peripheral' to Paris, the centre of modern art in the early 191Os. Hegel had considered Russia and Poland as countries on the margins, and, though the Mediterranean was for hirn the centre of the world, the lberian peninsula and Italy did not benefit from the status accorded the sea that bathed their shores.

racism, anti-colonialist and nationalist sentiments, the Great War, and other events that brought opposing ideologies to the surface, profoundly affected his reception there as an artist from the periphery, as they did his reactions to that reception. In Paris, he eventually realized that there was a dominant artist, Picasso, and a dominant school, the so-called School of Paris. He was not a European, and did not want to become one; already ihe centre had rejected hirn34so he retumed to the periphery. However, while he failed to dominate Paris, the experience was not wasted, on the contrary it gave him the European credentials he needed, and helped him gauge the potential for his domination of Mexican art. When he went back to his country, in 1921, he knew what he wanted to achieve there: to use everything he had leamed in Europe from Renaissance and modem art to paint Mexican murals. As he had discussed with fellow painter David Alfaro Siqueiros before he left, monumental or public art as opposed to easel work or private art would allow Mexico to distance itself from Europe. Mexico would lead in reviving and modernizing that old art f o m . Like Western artists the muralists would go back to "primitive" sources,

but unlike them, they would "appropriate" their very own archaic and popular sources. Mexican art would distinguish itself from European art by challenging its autonomy and individuality and replacing it by the engagé, public, and assurned collective character of mural ~roduction.~' Muralism would bring 34

Ironically, a few months before he left for Mexico, some of his work was included in a group show of French avant-gârde art, in Barcelona.

35

I Say "assurned' because as Siqueiros said: Yhere were isolated mural painters who showed a sporadic interest in the technique, but there was no coilective movement, nor was there any attempt to create one". "tntroduction: Some Questions About Mural Art in Mexico" (1962),in Art and Revoiution (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975),p. 7.As well, in the

Mexico and its art to world attention, and for the first time effect a change, if not a reversal, of the artistic relationship between centres and rnargins. Eventually led and monopolized by Rivera, it would place him in a dominant position at home, and bring him recognition abrcad. Rivera prepared the terrain by travelling through ltaly to leam from the frescoes of the Renaissance. When he arrived in Mexico and re-discovered his country without having experienced the Revolution, but from afar, he encountered a post-revolutionary regime, new nationalkt and anti-American sentiments, and post-revolutionary indigenismo. Moreover, he faced the lack of an "educated" public. While his European experience granted him weight among many Mexican artists and intellectuals, the public at large was not receptive to the introduction of modem painting.36So Rivera also became an educator both for a conservative bourgeoisie clinging to colonial-type art, and for a large, mostly rural and lndian population who, though rich in artistic traditions, was not versed in high art. Whereas his collaborators in Mexican Folkways focused on introducing the magazine's readers to the indigenous customs and traditional crafts, Rivera attempted to promote Mexican popular art as legitimate art in itself, and as a source for a Mexican version of modern art. This he tried both in writing, by including a series of articles, and visually, by filling the pages with his drawings and reproductions of his murais. For a decade, his highly visible

end, the painter's assistants were not acknowledged and the work was attributed only to the master creator. 36 H ~ first S mural was criticized for introducing ugly modern figures that did not suit the taste of the day.

presence in this bilingual publication was felt through many other means, and helped promote the image of Mexico as the source that could inspire a new American art. It also served to portray him as the dominant modem Mexican painter, and prepare his reception in the United States. Part Two, entitled The Literary Avant-Gardes, examines how Rivera attempted to dorninate the Mexican cultural field through his involvement with the literary avant-garde, more specifically the e ~ t r i d e n t i s t a movement ~~ (Chapter Four), and as the dominant literary character in a short work by Xavier Icaza (Chapter Five). In the 1920s in Mexico, the cultural field was very different from the European centres: it was not highly developed, particularly in the visual arts. There were few professional critics or publications dedicated to the plastic arts, few museums or galleries, scarce consumers, and little appreciation of modem art. Rivera involved himself with as many aspects of the cultural field as he could: he became critic, educator, edited a publication, appeared in many others as illustrator or writer, created his own "museum" in which he would be both artist and "curator" as he hoped to create a

In other words, he was a dominant participant in the

elaboration of a Mexican culture and identity. Though Estridentismo was an avant-garde group, mostly literary, some of its members were artists who illustrated the group's publications. Along with the usual manifestos and magazines characteristically produced

37 The

"Stridentists", or, as Carleton Beals called them, the "Noisemakersn. Mexican Maze (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1931), pp. 259-283.

38

On the public walls of his "museum" he wouid be the only one deciding what to "show" and in what context.

by avant-garde groups, Estridentismo provided an important service as a publishing centre. For example, the group printed Mariano Azuela's major novel about the Revolution, Los de abajo (The Underdogs). Originally influenced by European Futurism, the group çoon tumed its attention to the specific social context of Mexico. Rivera's connection to the group is particularly interesting and unusual, as it is mostly literary, rather than painterly. He appears to have been involved in the elaboration of the initial

Estridentista manifesto, and to have been held somewhat in the position of a guru by the group. 1 particularly examine his poetic contribution in the f o m of Apollinaire's calligrams in one of the estridentista publications, hadiador. The other unusual connection that Rivera had with the avant-garde is as a Iiterary character. He became the leading protagonist in the work of

Estridentista supporter, Xavier Icaza, entitled Magnavoz 1926.In his role as a literary figure, Rivera is better known for having inspired his Russian friend, poet and novelist llya Ehrenburg's first novel, The Extraordinary Adventures

of Julio Jurenito and His Disciples, published in 1922. Incidentally, the novel is not really about Mexico, but it contains a chapter about Jurenito's childhood in Guanajuato, echoing that of Guanajuato-born Rivera as related by the painter to Ehrenburg in Paris. The impact of the novel was such at the tirne, that it appears, for example, to have been instrumental in awakening the interest of Russian movie director, Sergei Eisenstein, in the wonders of Mexico, where he eventually went to film Que Viva ~ e x i c o ? ~ 39

"Mexico! And then the prototype of the Ehrenburg Julio Jurenito, Diego Rivera also appeared". S. M. Eisenstein, Beyondthe Stars: The Memoirs of Sergei Eisenstein, ed. Richard Taylor (London: BFI Publishing, 1995), p. 412. 1 thank Cuauhtémoc Medina for bringing this point to my attention. However, it was not until after he met Rivera, and saw

Icaza's work, Magnavoz, published in 1926, as its full title indicates, is I far less known than his Panchito Chapopote published two years ~ater.~'

devote a whole chapter to this little studied work because it reflects so well the cultural debates of that moment about the directions that both Mexican politics and culture ought to follow, including opinions from outside and within Mexico. The work expresses the tensions between nationalism and intemationalism, modemization and tradition, and indigenismo and avantgarde. But the main attraction here, and what makes this work directly relevant for my purpose, is the inclusion of Rivera in his dominant role over these debates. Magnavoz, an essay in the form of a play complete with Greek-type choruses and built-in audience, features Rivera himself as the major voice in the cultural quarrel that shook Mexico in 1925 and took up much space in the local press. Rivera is given pre-eminence through a most unusual device: while severai representative players in the cultural scene, both in Mexico and abroad, are given a voice, Rivera's is the onfy "voice" to have been given an unmediated physical presence, and a spectacular one at that. In Part Three, entitled The Politics of the Primitive and the Modern, 1 study in depth the intricate production and reception of Rivera's one-man retrospective in New York, in 1931 with the intent of showing how he trîed to

photographs of his murais, that Eisenstein went to Mexico. I mention again Ehrenburg's novel in Chapter Five. 40

Panchito Chapopote. Retablo tropical O relacion de un extraordinario sucedido de la heroica Veracruz (México: Editorial Cultura, 1928). Both this work and Magnavoz were illustrated by Ramon Alva de la Canal, a member of the group. He was a muralist, who served also as an assistant to Rivera.

carry out artistic domination to the United States as well. His project was to create an altemative art centre in the New World, where it would become relevant to the continent's image-new, industrial, and democratic-in

modem, architectural, monumental,

opposition to the image of the Old Worfd. To

distance itself from Europe, the American continent dreamt of unity between what its populations, particularly its artists and intellectuals, imagined as the pure and authentic nature of the South, with the civilized and alienated culture of the North. Rivera wanted to lead the building of that utopian vision around modem art. Completely overshadowed by Rivera's mura[ production in the United States, this important exhibition has not been the strbject of a serious study, and has been relegated to footnotes or brief mentions. Yet, the exhibition was the first one MoMA offered a Mexican artist (or Latin American, for that matter). It is part of a complex interdiscursive structure elaborated around the concepts of race, colonialism, primitivism, modemism, and the oppositions culture/civilization and nature/modemization, concepts developed in previous chapters. This last chapter on Rivera's reception in the UnitedStates, more specifically on the East coast, suggests that the context of this exhibition was, for the most part, infomed by cultural pan-Americanisrnitself based on the desire to unite nature and culture-and

corporate

patronage. Many of the basic concems identified in this dissertation are brought together around Rivera's attempt at artistic domination in the North within the patterns of cultural relations between North and South. When I started this project, the interest the West had in Mexican art was focused on Frida Kahto. Following the Whitechapel exhibit of Tina

Modotti and Frida Kahlo, in London, in 1986, and the publication of Hayden Herrera's vastly popular biography of Kahlo, in 1889, a huge vogue for Kahlo was bom. Many books, including her diary and letters were publiçhed, and the unavoidable posters, postcards, T-shirts, and other rnemorabilia were sold everywhere. Maybe because of her, or because the public tired of her, we, in the United States and Canada, seem to be entering a cycle of renewed interest in Rivera, paralieling a general curiosity about Latin American, and more particularly, Mexican art4' The growing Hispanic presence in the United States and Canada is no doubt responsible in large part for this interest. The inevitable articles in the press, exhibitions, and monographs that have appeared lately around the figure of Rivera, and will presumabiy continue to appear for a while, can be complernented and balanced by a study such as this. There are other recent events-not Rivera-that

unrelated to a renewed interest in

add relevance to my study at this time, such as the signing of

the North American Free Trade Agreement and the resurgence of indigenous rebellion in the province of Chiapas under the banner of Zapata. NAFTA can claim to be the result of many decades of an inexorable process for hemispheric integration, a Pan Americanism in which Rivera played an important cultural role. This, however, may not have taken the f o m in which -

41

-

- - ---

The popularity of Mexican art and a re-discoveryof its post-revolutionary culture extends to its music. A disc of the music of Silvestre Revueltas, an artist hardly heard of in Englishspeaking North Arnerica-but one of the three best known Mexican composers of new postrevolutionary music-has just been released, featuring "Sensemaya and other works". Revueltas, a conternporary of Rivera, wrote the score for the 1937 documentary on the fishemen of Patzcuaro, Redes (whose EngIish title is The 'Have),with cinematography by Paul Strand.

Rivera had drearnt; through NAFTA, Mexico will not lead either culturally or economically. The Chiapas unrest, on the other hand, is a rerninder of an unsuccessful Revolution, and exposes the failures of post-revolutionary indigenist policies to this date. What, in the 1920s and 1WOs, Manuel Gamio and José Vasconcelos, saw as the "lndian problem", and that they, and other Mexican intellectuals, including Rivera, tried to solve through their brands of indigenismo, is still an unsettled issue almost a century after the Revolution started. In the field of art history, new investigations have been motivated by the need to revise the history of Mexican art. Mexican critics are reassessing the way they look at conternporary art, but also at the art of those pioneering artists who dominated and changed Mexican art in a fundamental manner. This dissertation attempts to follow the sarne revisionist approach, though net only from an art historical perspective. On the very eve of the new rnillenniurn, as we feel we are crossing a threshold, we reflect on the epoch we are ieaving, and on how we understand it now frorn this imaginary transition point. Rivera is a very important and extremely useful twentieth-century personage-personage,

because he is more than an artist-through

whom to

enter into some of the complexities of rnodemity. At a tirne when globalization is pushing forward at the speed characteristic of our age, it is useful to look back at a man who spanned two continents, and severaf cultures, precisely when new discoveries and the application of new technologies fundarnentally affected the configuration of national and international relations. Rivera has allowed me to enter and exit through some of the many gates of the complex

field of Mexican culture, explore new areas, and clear part of the way for further research.

Part One: From Primitivism To lndigenismo

Chapter One Rivera and European Primitivism(s) Like Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, or Natalya Goncharova, and most important modem artists, Rivera travelled between "centres" and "peripheries", in his case, between Mexico and Europe, Paris and Madrid, Mexico and Russia, and Mexico City and New York. His worklike theirs-is

mediated by where he came from and where he went, how he

reacted to these different places, their people, their art, their artists, their institutions and how, in turn, these places and people reacted to him. When he went to Europe in 1907, at the age of twenty-one, there is little doubt that the recent graduate of the San Carlos academy had not yet formulated his future aesthetic and political project, at least, not in the terms that he would, after his fourteen years abroad.1 His artistic production, as well as his strategies towards becoming dominant, establishing an autonomous modem Mexican art, and shifting the attention of the art world from Paris to Mexico, must be examined in the context of his position within and between the cultural fields in which he produced his work. The interdependence between many parts of a world with increasing connections created intricate relationships and dialogues, and therefore, Rivera's social and aesthetic concems were not divorced from cultures in the centre. His project was

1 Rivera's stay in Europe from 1907 to 1921 was briefly interrupted in 1910 when he returned to Mexico for a few months. There he exhibited work he had produced in Europe.

informed not only by his personal locatedness within his country's cultural context, btit also by Mexico's spatio-temporal relationship-and own-with

therefore his

Europe and the United States. And these complex "relations

between core and periphery [were] not just relations of struggle, but of negotiations and [...] shared categories7'.* The time Rivera spent in Spain, but particularly in Paris, more specifically in Montparnasse, exposed him to many artists, local and foreign, and to the latest artistic rnovernents in the West. His experiences, in what was at the time the most active and creative Western centre of the arts, were shaped by the many crucial events and reactions that shook Europe in the first two decades of the century; namely, Einstein's theory of relativity (1905), the extent and brutality of WWI, the anti-colonial backlash among some intellectuals and artists,3 the Russian revolution and Communism, nationalism, and nascent fascism. The primitivism that underlies rnodemism would evolve into a complex and contradictory artistic expression of this conflicted era, and Cubism would emerge in the work of a rising star, Picasso. The year the young art student from Mexico crossed the Atlantic and disembarked on the European continent, the Spanish artist painted Les

Scott Lash and Jonathan Friedman, "Introduction: Subjectivity and Modernity's Other" in Scott Lash and Jonathan Friedman, eds., Modernity and Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993),p. 24.

3 John Berger notes that by 1900, through its incessant process of colonization, Europe could clairn ownership over large parts of the world. According to Berger, "between 1884 and 1900 the European powers added one hundred and fifty million subjects and ten million square miles to their empires". The Moment of Cubism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969), pp. 60-61. News of colonial injustices and inhumane treatment caused some European intellectuals to start reacting against their countries' colonialism in their writings and art. See Patricia Leighten "The White Peril and L'Art nègre: Picasso, Primitivism, and Anticolonialism", in The Art Bulletin, U X I I , 4 (December 1990), pp. 609-630.

Demoiselles dHvignon, 1907 (fig. 1), the emblematic work of rnodemist primitivism. In 1909, Rivera left Spain for Paris. Although, durÏng his European stay, he visited other countries,4 and periodically retumed to Spain, he spent an important part of his European years in Montpamasse. In this chapter, I explore Rivera's position on the European cultural stage, and the strategies, "negotiations", and "shared categories" between the various players to understand some of the conditions that prevented him from becoming dominant in Europe, and that would later detemine the place he sought when he retumed home in 1921.1 do so through the examination of the practices of primitivism that I attempt to reinvest of its political dimension. Primitivism in art is by no means a twentieth-century phenornenon-it

is part

of WestemlEuropean art tradition? However, it took on special significance, in the first years of the century, when African 'tribal art' entered the consciousness, and the work of European rnodernists, when colonial appropriation expanded from the geographical and econornic realms to the cultural domain, and Montpamasse "negroified itselY.6 Therefore, while there was, no doubt, a transgressive and critical dimension to some expressions of rnodemisrn, at the same time, the appropriation of the primitive, under the

He made brief visits to Belgium and England, and travelled to ltaly in the last few months before returning to Mexico. Adrian Piper, "The Logic of Modernism: How Greenberg Stole the Arnericans Away From a Tradition of Euroethnic Social Contentnin Flash Art, 168, (1993),pp. 56-8. 6 André Salmon, a French critic, wrote about the Montparnasse circle of the twenties to which

he belonged. Referring to one of the manifestations of colonialism in Paris, he implies in the following comments the inevitability of the appropriation of the primitive: "Comment Montparnasse échapperait-il aux effets contingents de la triomphale Exposition Coloniale? Américanisé, scandinavisé, Montparnasse se négrifia". Montparnasse (Paris: Editions André Bonne, 1950), p. 255.

29 guise of innovation, sewed as a strategy for domination and oppositional setdefinition. The impulses that anirnated modernist prirnitivisrn were, at odds with each other: they stemmed from a rejection of colonialism, but as well, they were party to the "disavowal of the scanda1 named 'Imperialisrn"'.7 It is through an examination of the power relations underlying primitivism that I assess the mitigated reception of the Mexican artist within Paris circles, and his cornpetition with Picasso, as I believe Rivera's confrontation with 'differenceyand 'exclusion' had a lasting influence on his later political and artistic engagement, and pursuits. This confrontation with

the implications of the concept of the primitive had a diaiecticai effect on his need to redefine his identity and that of his country, for, when he went back, post-revolutionary Mexico was in search of a new self-hood. As his European experiences brought to light the peripheral status that he and his country held, this heightened awareness would drive him to help elaborate a Mexican modem art distinctive from, and resistant to, Europe, and to attempt to lead an artistic shift on a hemispheric scale. An examination of European primitivism(s), and Rivera's relationship to its social and aesthetic manifestations, is indispensable for a better understanding of his later involvement, at home, with political and cultural indigenismo, and the artistic avant-garde. The undeniable relationship of primitivism to modemism,

Gayatri Spivak as quoted in Craig Owens, *Analysis Logical and Ideologicainin Craig Owens, Beyond Recognition: Represenfation, Power, and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 276.

colonialism, and the beginning of abstraction in artla in general, Europe's special fascination with Mexico, in particular,g and Rivera's discovery of his own "primitive" and "exoticJ1Mexico, underscore the need to carefully untangle these elements when revising the Mexican painter's attempt at changing the status of Mexico in the art worki, in the 1920s, and eventually, that of the American continent, in the 1930s. I first deal with European primitivism(s) because "the understanding of the concept of primitivism must begin with the countries that regard themselves as the cultural core [since] primitivism(s) are always legitimated in part by reference to what is seen as authentically primitiven.lo I examine the primitivism of colonialist Europe, particularly as expressed in paintings by Gauguin and Picasso, and writings by Apollinaire. I consider, as weil, its specific manifestations by artists from another peripheral area of Europe: Russian primitivism, specifically that of Natalya Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, manifested in Paris and Moscow in those years, and to which Rivera was introduced through his circle of Russian friends. To start my study with an analysis of "primitivism's manifold presenceJ'allows me to

Wilhelm Worringer in a doctoral dissertation on abstraction and empathy, written in 1906 and published in 1908, relates abstraction and primitivisrn. He suggests that ['the artistic volition of savage peoples, in so far as they possess any at all, then the artistic volition of al1 primitive epochs of art and, finally, the artistic volition of certain culturally developed oriental peoples, exhibit this abstract tendency". He calls this an "urge to abstraction". Worringer's was one of the first modernist theorization on the role primitivism played as a precursor to abstract art. From "Abstraction and Empathy" in Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, eds., Art in Theory: 1900-1990.(Oxford: Btackwell, 1992), p. 70. Modern fascination with Mexico had already started in 1520 when Albrecht Dürer first came into contact with Mexican art. Susan Hiller, "Editor's Notes", in Hiller, ed., The Myfh of Primitivisrn: Perspectives on Art (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 1. Daniel Miller, "Primitive Art and the Necessity of Primitivism to Art" in Hiller, ed., The Mflh of Primitivism, op. cit., p. 61.

31 "recontextualize modernity'"1-or rather modernities-in

Europe as different

spatio-temporaI manifestations from those of Mexico, and to later, assess the relationship between primitivism and indigenismo. l focus on Picasso's ambiguous involvement with primitivism in his Les Demoiselles, as well as on Russian primitivists in Paris, both in light of their own equivocal spaces within core and peripheiy, and the implications of these spatial relationships in determining Rivera's strategic moves. When Rivera first arrived in Paris in 1909, he went straight from the train station to the gallery Clovis Sagot where he saw paintings by Picasso, Derain, and Braque? Later, he met Picasso, and other Cubist painters and poets, as well as critics and dealers associated with them. He started his friendship with Guillaume Apollinaire, the 'theorist' of Cubisrn,13 and, later, adopted Picasso as his new "master". An extraordinary convergence of events placed the young Mexican painter in the midst of what art history considers the most revolutionary moment of Western art since the Renaissance: Cubism. Cubism became the instrument that attacked reason and conventional structures. It changed the way artists dealt with representation. In time, Rivera embraced Cubism, and, while still in Europe, eventually gave it a Mexican twist with his choice of subjects, treatment of colours, and innovative technique to introduce outdoor nature into still-life

Torgovnick, Marianna, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects. Modem Lives (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), 1990 p. 1 93. Bertram Wolfe. La fabulosa vida de Diego Rivera, trans., Mario Bracamonte (México: Diana, 1986), pp. 58-9.

l 3 As with other artists of the time, Apollinaire's interest in primitive art, including ancient Mexican art, had started prior to World War 1. Deborah Root, Cannibal Culture: Art, Appropriation, and the Cornmodification o f Difference (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), p. 56.

representations.14 The most farnous example is the often-reproduced Zapatista Landscape, 1915 (fig. 2). While Rivera would have found the

"dialectical materialism"15 of Cubism highly suitable to his aesthetic and political aims, after a while, however, he found the depiction of popular Mexican crafts more suitable than that of general mass-produced studio objects which often appeared in Cubist compositions. In Zapatista Landscape he substituted the sarapP6 for the bottle. A comparison with Picasso is useful. The Spanish painter was not only Rivera's Parisian "master" by his own admission-and

eventually his rival-

t u t he was also canonized as the ultimate cubist who painted the landmark primitive work Les Demoiselles. Besides, like the Mexican painter in Europe, Picasso produced his art in voiuntary exile. Both came to the "civilized" centre, precisely because they felt they needed to learn from the "source". They found themselves immersed in the centre whilst it was consolidating, or rather, updating its self-image as modem by appropriating what it considered primitive-or "needed" to consider primitive-in

its colonies. The fast-paced

changes of the first decades of the century drove the estranged Westemer to look with nostalgia for the apparently unalienated primitive, for simple and peacefui images now more readily available from the colonies. Modem progress created a need for the primitive; modem culture craved nature.

l4 A technique he accused Picasso of stealing. See John Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. 2: l9O7-19I7 (London: Jonathan Cape), 1996.

15 John Berger, Success and Failure of Picasso (1 965). (London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, 1980), p. 56. 16 Traditional and colourful woven blanket generally striped. Other Mexican objects are depicted in the painting as well.

33 Both Picasso and Rivera were, of course, profoundly shaped by their experience as outsiders looking back on their own outside from a centre to which they did not belong. However, if both were outsiders, and from countries on the periphery of modernization, one significant difference is that Picasso came from the European nation that had colonized Rivera's. Their respective relationships to primitivism therefore, would be shaped rather differently. Their formative years in countries that lived through dissimilar spaces and temporalities on opposing sides of colonization, and later, their specific experiences in the centre would prepare them differently for their dealings with the "primitive". The primitivism of Les Demoiselles17 departs radically from earlier expressions, for exarnple, Gauguin's. Picasso's emblematic work of modemist primitivism. and the first acknowledged cubist work-"a

bridge

between modernist and pre-modernist painting, a prima1 scene of modem prirnitivism"18-is

an extremely complex painting that has consequently been

widely debated. Not surprisingly, these discussions of Picasso's depiction of prostitutes with stylized African and lberian faces, or masks, offer a wide range of opinions regarding its aesthetic and/or political meanings as an avant-garde benchmark. The painting and the readings that try to make sense of this work, provide, therefore, a good basis for an examination of the intertwined discourses of primitivism and modemism. How is the prirnitivism

The original title was Las senoritas de Avifiyo (after a Barcelona brothel). but it was frenchisized to refer to the French city of Avignon, against Picasso's wishes. 18 Hal Foster. "The "Primitive" Unconscious of Modem Art", October34 (Fall 1985). p. 45.

34 of Les Demoiselles different from that of Gauguin's work executed earlier in Brittany and in Tahiti, and with which Rivera was also familiar? Gauguin's primitivism is the representation of what he perceived as the idyllic way of Iife in Tahiti. His is not a critical look at the effects of colonization, but rather his own fantasizing about a pristine primitive culture, away from the civilized centre to which he belonged, and of which he had grown tired. Gauguin's primitivism is the pure pleasure of exoticism; colonial politics are not at issue here, at least, not in a critical way. "For me, barbarism is rejuvenation" he wrote.19 In the tradition of modernist recuperation, Gauguin extracted the cultural elements that appealed to his senses-tropical nature, sensuous half-naked women, and vibrant colours-because

they

represented the opposite of what he had left in France. He idealized them, and constructed an imaginary culture, from which the realities of colonial life were apparently absent. Or were they? The effects of colonialism were not represented in this idyllic portrait of Tahitian culture, that "paradise of Oceania"?O However, was Gauguin's depiction of exotic women, and a primitive culture, not the expression of colonial desires-sexual economic-that

and

had eventually contributed to justifying full domination by the

West of its colonies? Gauguin neither completely rejected the cultured

Maurice Denis, "From Gauguin and Van Gogh to Classicism" in Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison eds., Modern Ar? and Modernism: A Critical Anthology (New York: Harper and Row, 1987),p. 54.

20 Quoted in Herschel Chipp, Theories of Modern A r t A Source Book(8erkeley: University of California Press, 1968), p. 79.

35 metropolis, nor could he fully belong to the natural margins of his chosen place of exile.21 In 1922, a year after his retum to Mexico, Rivera went to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec on a trip financed by the Minister of Education, José Vasconcelos. After his long sojoum in Europe, that southern tropical region to which he had never travelled before, became Rivera's Tahiti, or maybe, his Brittany, or his Peru.22 He came back from Tehuantepec dauled by the indigenous people-especially the women-the

colours, and the shapes; the

exoticism of it al1 fired his imagination. The change of style introduced in his unfinished first mural, Creacion, 1923 (fig. 3), upon his retum from Tehuantepec, bears witness to the effect the trip had on the artist; he completed the central portion of the mural by surrounding the rather rigid Pantocrator with luxuriant vegetation and wild animals.23 This experience in a most exotic land in his own country, profoundly affected Rivera's subsequent depictions of his people, especially the indigenous people.24

21 Nancy Perloff, "Gauguin's French Baggage: Decadence and Colonialism in Tahiti" in Elazar Barkan and Ronald Bush, eds., PrehÏstories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 19954, pp. 226-69.

22 Gauguin's first 'foreign' exposure was in Brittany. He was fascinated by the culture of his rnother's ancestry, the Peruvian culture.

23 There appears to be some influences of both Gauguin and Henri Rousseau's 'naïve' style in this work. Ironically, Rousseau clairned to have been to Mexico, a daim that is unsubstantiated. Could this portion of the mural have been a parodic reference to the problematic copyhnodel dichotomy? 24 Jean Charlot reminisces about the stories that a fascinated Rivera told upon his return from Tehuantepec. The Mexican Mural Renaissance: 1920-1925(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1963), pp. 143-5.

Was Rivera influenced by Gauguin's primitivism? Maybe. For example his tropical scene of wornen in the panel of the Secretaria entitled Xochipili, cc. 1925 (fig. 4) could be seen as somewhat reminiscent for example, of

Gauguin's

D'où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous? [Where

do we corne from? What are we? Where are we goingq, 1897 (fig. 5) -25On the other hand, that portrayal by the French painter of women in the jungle, which like in Rivera's Xochipili, incorporates a statue-like figure (Xochipili, the God of Spring and flowers), is clearly influenced by pre-Colurnbian art from Peru.26 Where does the influence start? In any case, as the change of style in Rivera's f irst mural clearly demonstrates, the catalyst was complete immersion in the world of Tehuantepec, just like for Gauguin it had been the regional primitivism of Brittany, and especially, the tropical paradise of Tahiti. Gauguin's attraction for this island in the Pacific stemmed from a rejection of his own European society, as well as a longing for a foreign part of him-his Peruvian mother. However, Rivera's fascination with the Tehuantepec geography, peopie and customs-a

fascination that, no doubt, in his case,

originated with a rejection of Europe's cultural hegemony-was

more strongly

brought about by the discovery of a paradise and a people he had "come home" to and could cal1 his own. Rivera went on painting Tehuana women in scenes of everyday life in the first panels of the Secretaria. What matters, I think, is not so much whether Gauguin's paintings directly influenced Rivera, but rather, that the exposure the Mexican painter had to Gauguin's primitivisrn

25 In the following pages, al1 translations in square brackets are mine, unless specified.

26 Barbara Braun demonstrates the influence of pre-Columbian art from Peru on Gauguin. "Paul Gauguin: Searching for Ancestors" in Post-Columbian World: Ancient American Sources of Modern Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1993),p. 88.

heightened his experience in Tehuantepec, and pointed him to the potential of exotic sources of his own. But. the wornen and men Rivera painted-unlike Gauguin's figures which are "isolated in their existential solitudey'-always fit within "a historical continuity and are al1 related to each other.27 While Gauguin's scenes may appear blissful, Picasso's Les Demoiselles does not depict any paradise, for sure. But what kind of relationship with the primitive does the representation of its women express? The painting acquired its emblematic status by becoming part of the permanent collection of The Museum of Modem Art in New York, but, more specifically, when it was made the central piece of the very controversial exhibition "'Primitivism' in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modem" in 1984, at that same temple of Modemisrn.28 William Rubin, curator of the show, wrote an essay for the catalogue that lays out the theoretical underpinnings of the exhibition. The essay is as controversial as the show itself. The juxtaposition of African sculptures and works of modem art, both in the exhibition and in the publicity, constructs a history in which appropriation of the primitive by modem artists becomes natural 'affinities' between the art of Africa and the West, with Les Demoiselles as the most notable e ~ a r n p l e . ~ ~ Besides Rubin's article the painting was subjected to many layers of modemist and postmodernist readings, more specifically postcolonial and

27 Olivier Debroise, Diego de Montparnasse (México: Fondo de Cultura Econhica, 1979). p. 122 (my translation). The painting was first exhibited in 1916, but Rivera, like al1 Picasso's friends. would have seen it in his studio that they often visited. 29 The show and the catalogue provoked extensive debates among critics, such as Hal Foster, Thomas McEvilley, Hilton Cramer, and many others.

38 feminist. These readings, including Rubin's, respectively view Les

Demoiselles as progressive, transgressive, or regressive, or sornetimes, a mixture of these as they are applied to different levels of the work. If Rubin celebrates the painting's aesthetic and creative appropriation of African art characterized as showing affinities with Western modem art, Patricia Leighten adds and stresses a political, more specifically anarchistic and anti-colonialist reading, which, it is argued, informs the painting? A closely related analysis by David Craven even links it to the work of two other anti-colonialist artists,

Antoni Gaudi, and Diego Rivera.31 Others read the painting as an example of the rnisogyny that characterized the avant-garde (Rosalind Krauss, Craig Owens, Marianna Torgovnick), or they analyze it as a painting in collusion with European imperialism (Hal Foster). Whatever the assessment, there is general agreement as to its importance as the picture which started, or rather "provoked"3* "the moment of Cubisrn",33 and as a symbol of primitivism. Patricia Leighten does not criticize Rubin's formalist analysis-or anyone else's for that matter-and

daims that she is just adding another

layer, of a politicaI nature, to the previous multiple readings of this painting. She suggests that, since African art had been available long before 1907, the sudden interest by visual artists to incorporate it into their work points to the

30 See Leighten, "The White Peril". op. cit., 609-30.

31 See David Craven, T h e Latin American Origins of "Alternative Modernism". Third Texf25 (Winter 1993/94),pp. 29-44. 32 "It was the spontaneous and. as always, primitive insurrection out of which. for good historical reasons the revolution of Cubism developedn. Berçer, Success and Failure of Picasso, op. cit. p. 75.

33 After the title of John Berger's book.

politicization of the African question, in Europe, and particularly in France? Picasso's dismantling of canonical artistic principles connotes an equivalent dismantling of society. And the prevailing society of the day, as Leighten painstakingly illustrates, was one of barbarism and violence in the naine of a civilizing cnisade. So Picasso's painting can be seen as an "anarchist strategy of inversion levelling 'savages' and civilizedW.35Picasso was more interested in the whole question of Africa than on the precise forms of a specific tribal mask.36 Long before Leighten, John Berger had already suggested that Picasso's main concern in Les Demoiselles was with "challenging civilisation"37 rather than with solving questions of f o m . This painting is "the result of aggression, not aesthetics"; here Picasso uses the primitive, not as the model against which to compare the atrocities of conternporary modernity, but to shock his audience with the grotesque, the ugly, and the violent.38 The primitive in Les Demoiselles is definitely not the exotic, utopian paradise depicted by Gauguin. Besides, by exploding the spatial ways in which the West had traditionally represented the world, this cubist painting challenges the West itself and its cultural hegemony. The violence of the picture could be attributed in part to Picasso's anarchism, frorn his youth in Barcelona.

34 Leighten, ''The White Peril", op. cit., p. 622.

35 Ibid., p. 616. 36 As is well known Picasso's masks are fragments of many rnasks put together, rather than copies of specific masks. 37 Berger, Success and Failure of Picasso, op. cit. p. 73. 38 Ibid., p. 73. Berger shows how this painting. though widely acknowledged as the first cubist work, does not exhibit the utopian, optimistic future of pre-war Cubism. Could it be a prophetic work anticipating the degeneration of colonialist Europe into World War I?

Spanish anarchism was violent and its proponents believed that the desired future would be reached, not through a process of continuous struggles, but t hrough instantaneous violent destruction.a9 The lberian masks in Les Demoiselles are not analyzed by Leighten. However, I believe that her reading of the work as an expression of Picasso's anti-colonialism, would be strengthened by the examination of the possible political and cultural meaning of the juxtaposition of lberian and African 'masks' in the painting. Picasso as an outsider from a European periphery was, more than anyone likely to be acutely aware of the racist attitudes of colonialist France." So in this painting, the artist extended his denunciation of the European's outright barbaric behaviour toward Africa to include its more subtle discrimination against métèques, the minority group of foreigners to which he belonged in Paris. Black Skin White Masks could become the white skin "dark" masks of Les Demoiselles. In the sixties, when European colonies were seeking, or obtaining, their independence, Frantz Fanon drew attention to the construction of the African peoples, or the "masquerade" built up by colonialist discourses.4~Picasso, in Les Demoiselles, painted several decades earlier, covers his white prostitutes with 'dark' (African and Iberian) masks possibly to deconstruct the hypocritical discourses of the Europeans hiding behind the dichotomies primitive versus civilized, body versus mind.

39 See Berger's aiialysis of Spanish feudalisrn and specific type of anarchism in Success and Failure of Picasso, op. cit., pp. 15-27. Berger reports that in 1907 and at the beginning beginning of 1908, "two thousand bombs exploded in the streets [of Barcelona]", ibid., p. 26. 40 Berger's analysis of Picasso's "outsidemess" in France is quite perspicacious. See Success and Failure of Picasso, op. cit. and The Moment of Cubism, op. cit. 41 See Fratiz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earfh (New York: Grove Press. 1963).

By juxtaposing African and lberian masks Picasso draws a parallel between two equally important originary sites, two different sources of the missing elernent that the Western modem subject needs to becorne wh0le.~2 While it is true that the cultures of tribal Africa and of the ancient lberian civilization are both from the periphery (in Eurocentnc terms), they are, however, from different peripheries according to a spatial scale of barbarism/civilization related to their distance from the centre; they represent different shades of darkness, different stages of barbarism. There is also a temporal hierarchy; the African art borrowed is contemporary/tribal while lberian art belongs to antiquity, and therefore, legitimizes Picasso's roots in a "certified" civilization. In her lengthy article, Leighten chose to completely ignore the original draft Picasso made for Les Demoiselles. That first version did not hide the prostitutes behind 'masks', and included the depiction of two white males, a customer and a medical student taking notes-it

is assumed on the subject of

syphilis, a disease which apparently greatly worried Picasso. The removal of the males, or the transformation of one male into a female, and the addition of the rnasks are too significant to an understanding of the final version not to include them in an analysis of the painting. Marianna Torgovnick labels this first sketch "a memento Mori, an exercise in syphiliphobiaV.43Furthermore,

42 Torgovnick calls this "going home" or "going primitiven, "a metaphor for the return to origins". Going Primitive, op. cit. p. 186. The desire to go home, return to his roots would have been even stronger for the Spanish artist in exile than for other artists. Even in 1966, Berger suggests that Picasso "has feit increasingly exiledn. Success and Failure of Picasso, op. cit., p.15. 43 Torgovnick, Gone Primitive, op. cit., p. 102-4.

she points out that, in spite of the disappearance of the male figures,44 the final version with the masks has retained the original codes about a disease which rnedical "science" had traced back to Africa.45 Not surprisingly, issues of gender are linked to the racist implications of this "sexualization of the masksn46which confirrn Rosalind Krauss' contention about the deep-seated misogyny of the avant-garde? The transformation of the male representing Picasso as a rnedical student into one of the masked prostitutes rnay strictly reflect the influence of African masks the artist saw after producing the first sketch, or again, it may add another conflicting reading about sexual ambiguity, about rejecting conventionally accepted sexuality.48 Picasso, if he believed in the myth of the noble savage, would long for what he would perceive as the harrnonious relationship of the primitive with nature and sex, a relationship that had been adulterated by modernity. The appropriation of that primitive state assumes a linear universal history which denies the "primitive" its own origins and development, while allowing the Western artist to be transported to another timereclaimed as

44 Craig Owens refers to Leo Steinberg's study of this displacement of the role of the male visitor from the first sketch to the viewer of the final painting, where the painting "propositions" the viewer. "Representation, Appropriation, and Powei' in Owens, Beyond Recognition, op. cit., p. 100. 45 Ibid. Torgovnick's assertion that the codes of the original sketch are present in Les

Demoiselles is reinforced by Picasso's own words: "basically a picture does not change [from previous stages ...] the first vision remains almost intact, in spite of appearances." Quoted in Berger, Success and Fai'lure of Picasso, op. cit. p. 35. 46 Ibid.. p.119. 47 Owens considers this attitude so fundamental to the avant-garde that he suggests that it is "the price, perhaps, at which a vanguard position was purchased. " Owens, "Analysis Logical and Ideological" in Owens, Beyond Recognition, op. cit., p. 276. 48 See Michael North, "Modernism's Airican Mask: The Stein-Picasso Collaboration" in Barkan and Bush, eds., Prehistories of the Future po.cit., pp. 270-89.

that of his own origins-still

in evidence in another space, like Africa. While on

the one hand, the Iberians-from

an ancient civilization--evolved into the

Spain from which Picasso came, on the other hand, Africans-contemporary tribes-were

seen as having remained in that originary time. The latter were,

thus, denied their own history. Agreeing with Leighten's analysis of Picasso's anti-colonialism, David Craven emphasizes this aspect, and includes the Spanish artist along with fellow Barcelonian and separatist Antoni Gaudi, and the Mexican Diego Rivera, as important constituents among anti-colonialist artists,49 or "alternative modernists" of the teens and twenties in Europe. The three artists,

who lived at different times in Barcefona and were involved with the local anarchist and avant-garde circles, produced work, including Picasso's Les Demoiselles, Gaudi's collage in the Parque Güell, and Rivera's Zapatista Landscape, of a f ragmented, "conf licted", and 'Y ranscultural" nature? W hile these similarities in the way the three artists treated the modem, and their use of the "primitive" is undeniable, I believe their "anti-colonialism", as expressed in their "alternative modernism", differs substantially because of the relative locations that they and their respective nations occupied in relation to the centre. The hierarchical levels of space and time to which I alluded earlier are at play here too. Rivera's anti-colonialisrn might have been influenced in part by the anarchistic circles he frequented in Barcelona, but the primary 49 Yt was then [frorn 1895 to 19041 the distinctly anti-colonial modernism of Barcelona, with a Latin American accent, that first gave us Gaudi and then helped to spawn Picasso's

Demoiselles d'Avignon plus the 'Anahuac Cubism' of Diego Rivera, as Justino Fernandez has aptly labelled it". Craven, "The Latin American Origins of Alternative Modernism", op. cit., p. 36. Ibid., p. 39.

motivation for his Zapatista Landscape came from the news of the struggles in his country, and al1 that the nirai armed resistance conjured up from afar for hirn as a Mexican. lndeed Mexico's revolutionary aspirations were very different from the Catalan's "nation" desire for independence from Spain, and, even further removed from the expressions of shame and anger that European intellectuals and artists showed towards the colonial hegemony in which their countries were engaged. Picasso was both a "noble savage and a revolutionary bourgeois" John Berger contends.51 Not really in touch with the political world around hirn, Picasso was however convinced that he was a revolutionary because the bourgeois in him "idealised" the savage in him.52 The Spanish attist defined himself as a savage in opposition to the French people among whom he came to live. These considered him exotic which made hirn feei the more savage, and, as a noble savage, he was then able to criticize those who looked down on him.53 In order to achieve self-definition, he used the civilizedbarbarian opposition, and subvetted it. This exemplifies the universality of the related opposition, culturehature; as Hal Foster argues, and others before him, both "primitive" and more advanced societies view themselves and others based on this 0pposition.5~Mexican society was no exception, neither was Rivera who, conscious of his peripheral status, exaggerated it like Picasso did. His nurnerous outrageous stories about

Berger, Success and Failure of Picasso, op. cit., p. 129.

52 I bid. p. 129. 53 See Berger. Success and Failure of Picasso. op. cit., chapter one. 54 Foster, T h e "Primitiven Unconsciousn,op. cit. p. 61.

45

"savagery, cannibalism, [and] the various ways of stewing hurnan flesh" would eam him the nicknarne "le tendre cannibal" [the tender cannibalistl.55 One day

in Paris, when he decided to regularize his affair with Marevna Vorobëv, he improvised an Aztec ceremony, with Aztec gods, in front of soma of his f riends.se Hal Foster's reading of Les Demoiselles differs substantially f rom that of Leighten, or Craven. To varying degrees, the latter two see Picasso as anti-colonialist. Through a Foucauldian lens, Foster analyzes primitivism in t e n s of "power-knowledge", as a "rnetonym of imperialismn.57Gauguin and Picasso are heroes of rnodemist histoiy because they 'Yurned the 'trauma' of the other into the 'epiphany' of the same".58 If for Gauguin and Picasso primitivism, as an aesthetic practice, tended to disavow difference, for other artists concerned about imperial practices, primitivism was deliberately linked to colonialism, and thus, politicized. The progressive, regressive and transgressive strategies described in these various readings of Les Demoiselles do not preclude each other. They are representative of the irreconcilable forces, the critical and the conservative, the looking fotward and the looking backward, culture and nature that are so profoundly intewoven in modernity and modernism. It was thus these deeply contradictory impulses, including such conflicting facets of primitivism as exemplified in Les Demoiselles, that Rivera discovered when

55

Debroise, Diego de Montparnasse, op. cit., p. 40.

56 Ibid., p. 81.

57 Foster, "The "PrimitivenUnconsciousn,op. cit. p. 47.

58 Ibid., p. 56.

he arrived in France. Picasso's picture exposes paradoxical expressions of

primitivism as demonstrated by his racist and anti-racist expressions, his attraction by-even identification with-the

savagery, outsidedness, and

exoticism of Africa, his fascination with the rnagical In its representations, his repulsion by Africa's "darkness", and his aversion to France's own savagery tcwards its colonies. As early as 1905, Maurice Vlaminck claimed that Picasso was the first artist to realize the potential of appropriation from African and Oceanian art for a novel and revolutionary art. "This 'moment of discoveiy', itself mythic, binds together the imperialist conditions of possibility with the appropriative strategies of modemism".59 The appropriation of "primitive" art into Western art, a process by which fragments of other peoples' cultures were assimilated without any understanding of, or regard for them, became thus linked with colonialist practices.60 Many modemists, who like Picasso chose to stay in exile in Paris, "could approach such indigenous traditions from the outside, estrange and appropriate them for their own devious ends, roam [...] across a whole span of cultures in euphoric, rnelancholic liberation from the Oedipal constraints of a mother tongueV.61Creativity, one of modemism's most persistent myths,

serves to cover up the essential modernist requirement for appropriation. When, at the beginning of the century, the market for art grew, and art made form its principal concem, artistic production increased, and innovation

s9 Susan Hiller, "Editor's Introduction" in Hiller, ed., The Myth of Primitivism, op. cited, p. 12. 60 Ibid., p. 12. 6 ' Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of Aesthetics (Cambridge. MA: Basil Blackwell. l99O), p. 321.

became crucial.62 Apollinaire, as the ardent apologist and "theorist" of Cubism until 1918,63exemplifies the modernist reluctant admission to appropriation, and the need to view it as sirnply a borrowing of f o m s made to appear universal. First, in 1907, he dismissed the interest in the primitive as "arornatics" that just sewed to spice up what he called "the beauty of Europell.64 Five years later, in 1912, he denied al1 traces of primitivist, or other foreign influence, on new French painting which he claimed to be "bom spontaneously on French soilV,65thus establishing the originality, and the specific national pedigree of French art. Then, in 1918, when "tribal" art had to be reckoned with as an important element in modern art, he stressed that its "essential interest iies here in the plastic forrn aloneW.66 The same need for originality which drove Apollinaire to dismiss the appropriation of the "primitive" as of fundamental importance for modem art will be demonstrated again, many years later, this time in the United States, when Abstract Expressionism will be made to descend directly from European

62 This point is central to a pioneer presentation by Kenneth Coutts-Smith made in 1976, and published as "Some General Obsewations on the Problem of Cultural Colonialism" in Hiller, ed., The Myth of Primitivism, op. cit. pp. 14-31. 63 Though the famous art dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, draws attention to Apollinaire's

"complete lack of plastic sencibility", the amateur critic's opinions which appeared so often in the press, were influential on the French public's reception of modern art, and its perception of the role of primitive art on modern art. Quoted in Francis Steegmuller, Apollinaire, Poet Among the Painters (London: R. Hart-Davis, l963), p. 143. 64 From an articie on Matisse published December 15,1907 in La Phalange, and reprinted in translation in Harry E. Buckley, Guillaume Apollinaire as an Ar? Critic (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981). p. 168.

65 From an article published in Les Soirées de Paris in May 1912, and reprinted in translation in ibid., p. 180-1.

66 From an article published in Les Arts à Paris, Juiy 15, 1918, and reprinted in translation in ibid., p. 228-9.

48

Surrealism. Any involvement with, and, especially, influence from the Mexican rnuralist movement, which stood up as an alternative to the modemist project of the European avant-gardes, and to American regionalisrn, will be brushed aside.67 Muralism, and especially Rivera's work, were characterized as essentially nationaliçt, the most visible expression of a cultural nationalism caused by a local post-revolutionary situation. However, cultural nationalism was by no rneans a strictly Mexican phenornenon, as Rivera saw first hand. In Europe, the revival of interest in the primitive, not surprisingly, went along with cultural nationalism. The same need to "maintain [...] sameness through alterity"68 that explains the renewed attraction to the primitive other, gave rise to the glorification of the national and the racial self. Apollinaire wrote about his discovery of a Geman museum that exalted the Geman spirit, and "[hlow inestimable would be the value of a museum where one could trace Latin culture from antiquity through the Middle Ages and up to Modem times!"69 Undoubtedly, this theme would have been a subject of discussion arnong the friends of Apollinaire, including Rivera. European cultural nationalism expressed the need to respond to the threat of relativism, and reaffirrn Europe's cultural superiority. For Rivera and the Mexican muralists, it would be both a provocation that could not go unopposed, and an

67 See Chapter Three in Oriana Baddeley and Valerie Fraser, Drawing the Line: Art and Cultural Identity in Contemporary Latin America (London: Verso, 1989), pp. 77-98. 68 Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (N-QW York: Routledge, 1993), p. 129.

G9 L'Européen (December 13, 1902),reprinted in translation in Katia Samaltanos, Apollinaire, Catalyst for Primitivism, Picabia, and Duchamp (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1984), p. 34.

example that could be followed to form their own brand of cultural nationalism. Following a recent trend of anti-bourgeois and anti-materialist sentiments expressed by Latin American modemistas at the end of the 19" century, Rivera shared with some European modemists their opposition through their art to bourgeois culture and ~ a l u e s . 7The ~ primitivisrn introduced in their work by Picasso, and other modemists, challenged the classical formalisrn favoured by the acaderny. This new anti-classic and anti-academic language that Rivera leamed frorn the modemists, and from Picasso's Les Demoiselles in particular, gave him a basis from which to launch an

"alternative rnodernism". He would remain a modem painter in Mexico, but would shed modernism as practiced in Paris. It was not only the aesthetic formal nature of bourgeois art that Rivera, and his colleagues, questioned. They also wanted to create a modern art that reflected their own modemity, and affirrned their cultural difference and identity. Like the European avantgardes, Mexican artists wanted to integrate art into a new life praxis,71 but the conditions of possibility were different in Mexico and in Europe, and the cornplex relationship between both modemities inevitably affected the way 70 Latin American modernisrno, a movement of the late 1800s with sympathies for French Symbolism, is not related to European modernism. However, it shared with European modernism its strong anti-bourgeois stance. Ruben Dario, the Nicaraguan poet, who is considered to have started the movement, expresses his feelings against conventional bourgeois culture, and modern materialism in his short-story "El rey burgués" [The Bourgeois King]. He says: "El arte no viste pantaiones, ni habla en burgués, ni pone los puntos en todas las ies." [Art does not Wear pants, nor does it speak in bourgeois-ese, nor does it dot the ils]. Quoted in Jean Franco, La cultura moderna en América Latina (1983),Sergio Pitol, trans. (México: Grijalbo, 1985),p. 36. 71 1 make a distinction between modernism and avant-garde based on Peter Bürger' Theory

of the Avant-Garde (1974), Michael Shaw trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 1 expand on the relevance of Bürger's theory in the Mexican context in Part Two.

artists from the periphery responded to their circumstances. Mexico's modemity would require avant-gardist strategies that would not only challenge the academy and bourgeois values, but also the actual production of art, and its ownership. Mexican artists claimed the right to be producers of art rather than mere consumers of European art. European Modemisrn

represented the modem experience as expressed culturally and socially at that historical stage of its own technological, scientific and economic

advances. Consequently, European modemist practices, even in their avantgarde forms, could not represent the very different Mexican experience with modernity. In Paris, Rivera was not isolated from what was happening culturally elsewhere. These were years of great cultural effervescence, in Europe as well as in Latin America. The tremendous concentration of intellectuals, writers and artists that came to Paris from everywhere, their constant travels back and forth between the various countries and continents ensured a flow

of information, and a great exchange and fermentation of ideas. Emigrés and "homeless" artists abounded in the then capital of Modemism.72 Whereas Picasso-the

rnodemist from a country somehow on the

rnargins of modernity but now living in the centre-expressed his alienation at modernization by searching for the primitive, other artists also from European margins, celebrated it as progress, a step f o ~ l a r dthat would incorporate their countries into the centre. Futurism emerged in Russia and Italy, countries both spatially and temporally on the European periphery where modemization

72 Torgovnick, Gone Primitive, op. cit., p.192.

had made uneven incursions. 1909, the year Rivera arrived in Paris, was also the year Marinetti published his Futurist Manifesto, not in an ltalian paper, but in Le Figaro? Many artists and intellectuals were attracted by one of two poles that represented the extreme positions of the t h e : "archaisrn and futurism, the tam-tam of the primitives and the wonders of the industrial

ers"," but more often than not, they oscillated between the two, and sometimes combined thern.

So, like elsewhere, primitive art was a growing concern in the preRevolutionary Russia of the late teens, and for the Russian artists who had gone to work in Paris. They were interested in folk, native crafts, and childrenfs art.75 From the costumbrismo to which Rivera was exposed in

Spain would naturally follow an interest in folk art that his Russian friends would help stimulate? Whenever back in Paris, he and his Russian 73 The manifesto was published February 22. A year later, his Manifesto of Futurist Painting, and his Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting were also published. The influence of Futurism was felt in Latin America in the 1920s, and its connection to Mexico and Rivera will be mentioned here in Part Two. 74 Octavio Paz, quoted in Klaus Müller-Bergh, "El hombre y la técnica: contribucion al conocimiento de corrientes vanguardistas hispanoamericanasnin Revista lberoamericana, vol. 48, no. 118 (En-Ju, 1982),p. 176. Rivera experimented with Futurism as he did with Cubism, in fact combining them in some of his work.

75 Aieksandr Shevchenko, "Neoprimitivism: Its Theory, Its Potentials, Its Achievements. 1913" in JOhn E. Bowlt, ed., Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism, 19021934 (New York: The Viking Press, 1976), p. 41. This compilation of original documents translated from Russian is invaluable. 76 Diego Rivera: The Cubist Years. Text by Ramon Favela (Phoenix: Phoenix Art Museum, 1984), p. 9. Costumbrismo is a genre in painting and literature that depicts aspects of everyday, traditional activities of the "popular classes", ibid., p. 46. Works generally produced by travellers to Latin America in the l g t hcentury are described as costumbrista. The genre appealed to some Latin American artists, including Mexicans, who adopted it at the end of the century. See Stanton L. Catlin, "Traveller-Reporter Artists and the Empirical Tradition in Post-lndependence Latin American Artn in Art in Latin Arnerica: The Modern Era, 1820-1980, Dawn Ades (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 48, and Dawn Ades, "Nature, Science and the Picturesque" in ibid. p. 84.

52 cornpanion, Angéline Beloff, often visited with expatriate artists from Russia, who like him and many other foreigners, were attracted by the vitality of Paris. These Russian artists, for example Lev Bakst, Diaghilev, Natalya Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov were from the margins of Europe, an amalgam of various nationalities on the border with Asia. They shared with the Mexican artist their ideas about the movements that were fighting against academicism in their country, and about their re-discovery of their country's traditional art.77 Goncharova, who went to Paris with Larionov in 1914, had just written the preface to a catalogue for a large exhibition of her paintings in Moscow in 1913.78 ln it, she acknowledged her debt to Western painting--especially for showing her that al1 arts originated in the East-and

reclaimed the art of her

own country, by which she meant 'Yrue art [...] not that harboured by outestablished schools and societies".79 For her, the West had just "vulgarized" the art from the East.80 She proclairned the end of Western art, and the imminent dominance of Russian art-a

shift, she later asserted, had already

occurred. She elevated Aztec, Asian and Negro art, among other non Western cultures, to "independent" art at its finest point, rejected individualism, and advocated for literariness in art.81 Though she did not use the word "primitiveyy-and maybe consciously avoided it to distance herself from the Parisian type of primitivism-she

made it quite clear that she

77 Wolfe, La fabulosa vida de Diego Rivera, op. cit., p. 66. 78 Natalya Goncharova, "Preface to Catalogue of One-Man Exhibition", 1913, in Bowlt, ed., Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, op. cit., p. 54.

79 Ibid., p. 56. 80 Ibid.. p. 55. 81 Ibid., pp. 57 and 58.

intended to draw from local, national sources. These theoretical questions undoubtedly scored points with the Mexican artist from a periphery where

precisely that "independent" art-in

this case Aztec art-was part of his very

own national heritage. Goncharova's repeated assertions about the primacy of the East in terms of art, of Western art's derivative character, and her claim that Moscow was "the most important centre of painting" would no doubt appeal to Rivera.82 It appears that this relationship between the Mexican and the Russian artist would not have been Iirnited to theoretical discussions. There is no doubt that these would not only have fostered Goncharova's appreciation of Aztec art, but also stimulated the enthusiasm of both artists for the "exotic" nature of their respective cultures. His 1914 Landscape (fig. 6) of Mallorca bears extraordinary resemblance to Goncharova's Apple Trees in Bloom,1912 (fig. 7). The same exotic, luxuriant, paradisical vegetation explodes in both paintings. The year of Goncharova's retrospective (1913).three important events

occurred that stress the growing interest in traditional art foms in Russia: the "Second All-Russian Folk Art Exhibition" in St. Petersburg, a substantial exhibition oficons in Moscow, initiated Dy the Institute of Archaeology, and an exhibition of lubki, or traditional woodcuts organized by Larionov.83 These events rekindled among Russian artists an awareness and keenness in local crafts that had been displayed in 1870 by the Abramtsevo art colony, itself

83 Shevchenko, "Neoprimitivismn,op. cit., pp. 41 and 301, note 2. On the luboksee Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art: 1863-1922 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1962),p. 97, and The Lubok: 1fh-18'" Century Broadsides (Moscow: "Sovietsky Khudozhnik Publishing House, 1968).

inspired by William Morris' movement in England.84 That same year, in Paris, a friend of Rivera's, Nathalie Ehrenburg,85 put together a large show of

"Popuiar Russian Art in Images, Toys and Spice Breads" to go along with the Salon d'Automne.86 The simultaneity of cultural events in two different countries pcints to the general attraction to things Russian and popular. It was in 1913, that Rivera introduced a balalaika in one of his still-lives, and in 1914

that elements of Mexican folk crafts appeared in his work. Finally, in 1915, these elements (like a sarape) and references to the amed struggles waged in his country (like a rifle) clearly distinguished Zapatiçta Landscape-a work of Rivera's 'Anahuac CubismY-from other cubist paintings.87 The sarape with its striped pattern of various colours, more than any other object of folklore, would reprssent the historical sedimentation of Mexican identity. Later, the Soviet filmrnaker, Sergei Eisenstein, would express "the juxtaposition of ancient and modem, Aztec and Hispanie" through the use of the sarape in his

Que viva Mexico!The stripes of the Mexican blanket 'Yransfomied the bodies of his Mexicans into cubistic pillars".88

84 The English painter and wiiter (1834-1896) participated in the renaissance of the decorative arts in England. Abramtsevo was the name of the estate where a colony of

Russian artists lived and produced crafts inspired by native, mainly peasant, traditions. Gray, The Russian Experiment, op. cit., pp. 9-14 and 20-3.

85 llyia Ehrenburg, her husband and one of Rivera's closest friends, wrote a book in which the main character was inspired by the Mexican artist. The novel, written in 1922 and mentioned in the Introduction, is discussed briefly here, in Part Two, Chapter Two. 86 Favela, Diego Rivera, op. cit.. p. 70. Apollinaire also showed interest in dolls and puppets "not only because of their naïveté but also for their ethnic character. They reflected the spirit, the habits, and the customs of a nation." He also wrote in the preface for Les Mamelles de Tirésias, in 1917 that "The popular arts are an excellent source of inspiration." Later, he also talked about the fashion for "naïve and peasant art." Samaltanos, Apollinaire, op. cit., p. 34.

87 'Anahuac Cubism' was coined by the Mexican art critic, Justino Fernandez. 88 Peter Conrad, Modern Times. Modem Places (London: Thames €4 Hudson, 1998), p. 359.

Goncharova and Aleksandr Shevchenko shared the same concerns. In bis 1913 manifesto, Shevchenko, an advocate of Neoprimitivism who had been to Paris before Goncharova, exalted modemization "by the hand of man the creatot?

Innovation was a concem, but the old vemacular, which still

exerted an attraction for its simple foms and its vivid colours, was acknowledged as the bases from which the new was regenerated.90 The neoprimitivists' fascination with the primitive lay in the appeal of "its sirnplicity, its harmony of style, and its direct artistically true perceptiveness of life [not natureIn.g1For thern, the primitive was all-inclusive and deeply rooted in the national; it stood for the art produced by Russian peasants, children, as well as ancient art from the East. In a reversal of the opposition barbarism/ civilization, it was clearly established that the "barbaric" East wins over the socalled civilized West. Anything from the West had been inspired from the East in the first instance, and therefore, provided justification for abandoning Westem art as a source of inspiration.92 Realism as "a conscious attitude to life and its understanding" replaced naturalism.93 Shevchenko's demands on art include composition without which he considers that "monurnentality-the highest achievement in art-is

irnpossible".94 Though the Russian artist was

not in Paris at the time, his ideas no doubt were the subject of many

89 He studied there between 1906 and 1909. Bowlt, Russian Afl of the Avant-Garde. op. cit.. p. 41 and 45. Ibid., p. 47. 91 Ibid.. p. 46.

92 Ibid.. p. 49. 93 Ibid., p. 50.

94 Ibid.. p. 51.

discussions that Rivera-the Mexico-and

soon to becorne emblem of monumental art in

his artist friends had in Paris cafés, in the Russian and French

languages. When Rivera went back to Mexico, he wrote about the retablo, like Shevchenko had written about fabrics, the lubok, and the icon.95 The icon and the retablo.96 two expressions of popular art with their religious inspirations and the "primitive" quality of their design and production, rnust have appeared strikingly similar to the returning artist, and the lubkimust have reminded hirn of José Guadalupe Posada's popular broadsheets. The kind of art Shevchenko envisaged was art for art's sake, an art that was eclectic and always free to change, and he strongly opposed art in the service of anything or anyone but the artist.97 Rivera, at least at a later date, would disagree with that last aspect of neoprimitivist theory. However, when he went to Russia, in 1927, he praised the icon and the lubok that Shevchenko repeatedly talked

about in his rnanifesto, and that reminded the Mexican artist of some of his country's own popular art foms. An early drawing (fig. 8) Rivera made for a pamphlet in 1922 has an eerie resemblance to two early lubkifrom 1696 (figs. 9 and 1O)?

If the lubok was a picture bible, then this illustration for a Mexican

95 "Primitive art forms-icons, lubki, trays, signboards, fabrics of the East, etc.-these are specimens of genuine value and painterly beatity". Shevchenko, "Neoprimitivism", op. cit., p. 45.

96 Rivera wrote about the retab:ethat he referred to as "the true and only pictoric (sic) expression of the Mexican people"-in the third issue of the bilingual magazine Mexican Folkways. See here Part One, Chapter Three. g7 Shevchenko, "Neoprimitivism", op. cit., 52-3.

tierras is sandwiched between two sentences: "El reparto de tierras a los pobres no se opone a las ensefianzas de Nuestro Senor Jesucristo y de la Santa Madre Iglesia" and "El pueblo mexicano peleo y sufrio diez afios queriendo hallar la palabra de Nuestro Sefior Jesucristo" n h e distribution of the land to the poor does not run

98 Rivera's illustration for El reparto de las

pamphlet is a post-revolutionary "picture bible" for the profoundly religious and illiterate rural people.99 In fact, Orozco claimed that status for murals. He suggested that "[l]os buenos murales son realmente Biblias pintadas y el pueblo las necesita tanto como las biblias habladas." [good murals are really painted Bibles and the people need them (the Bibles) as much as it needs spoken BiblesJ.100 Throughout his European stay, Rivera's experience with European primitivism(s) was therefore, rather varied, from Gauguin, Picasso and Apollinaire to Goncharova, from Tahitian exoticism, African sculptures and masks, to icons and lubki. But, while the art that fascinated the primitivists was mostly African and Oceanian, as well as "Oriental", some interest in preColumbian art was expressed, even earlier on in the movement,'o' as we saw with Natalya Goncharova's recognition of the "independence" and importance of Aztec art among the arts of other archaic civilizations. We did not have to against the teachings of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Holy Mother Church. The Mexican people fought and suffered ten years wanting to find the word of Our Lord Jesus Christ]. Illustration in Diego Rivera Hoy (México: SEP, 1986), p. 71. The illustrations of the lubki, bo!h picture bible woodcuts by Vasili Koren, are from The Lubok, op. cit., nos. 18 and 19. 99 This pamphlet was written during the pre cristero rebellion (1926-1929) whose "issue was state secularization in opposition to traditional Catholicisrn, which constituted the framework through which peasants' rights and their world views were articulated". William Rowe and Vivian Schelling, Memory and ModerniQc Popular Culture in Latin America (London: Verso, 1993), p.158.

Quoted in Carlos Monsivais, "Diego Rivera, creador de publicos" in Diego Rivera hoy, op. cit., p. 1. There is no doubt thai Rivera's presence in Paris, and his own budding curiosity for the art of the amient civilizations of Mexico, had something to do with the growing interest in that art among the artists in his Parisian circle. Rivera's theatrical story-telling of (alleged) Aztec legends and customs to his Paris friends are recorded in several recountings of his European stay, and memorialized in llya Ehrenburg's novel, Julio Jurenifo, where parodic references to cannibalism are made several times. llya Ehrenburg, The Extraordinary Adeventures of Julio Jurenito and His Disc@les (1922), Anna Bostock, trans., (Philadelphia: Dufour Editions, 1963).

58 wait for George Bataille to relate, in 1928, his fascination with violence in Aztec society,102 or for André Breton to corne back from Mexico in the late 1930s to read in his book Mexique (1939) about the sudden Western predilection for that art. Earlier, André Derain appropriated Aztec forrns when he began sculpting, and Apollinaire, whose brother lived and died in Mexico, expressed some interest in Aztec art. The latter started to write about his new attraction when he reviewed in Paris-Journal, in May 1914, the Paris exhibition of the Mexican painter, Dr. AtI.l03 In 1915, he wrote in Le Mercure de France: "ln Mexico, the Aztec, the Toltec or Chichemec gods are resurrected. Blessed idolatry, if only it could revive the sense of this noble plastic beauty that the Mexican Stone carvers once possessed to such an elevated degree and which almost al1 other peoples have l o s t " . ' ~This was, not only, recognition by the French critic of the aesthetic validity of some pre-Columbian art, but also, a cal1 to (European) artists to return to an art induced by mystical inspiration-a

cal1 which was sure to particularly challenge his friend, the

Mexican artist. His extensive exposure to the European vogue of the popular, the ethnic, the primitive, the old, helped Rivera realize that Mexico had potential. He would discover the extent of that potentiai on his return. His country enjoyed a rich popular peasant culture of its own-that

could rival

"L'Amérique disparue" is the text written by Bataille for the catalogue of the exhibition by the same name. It was published two years after the inauguration of the exhibition. It was republished as "Extinct America" in October 36 (Spring l986), pp. 3-9.

O3 'Le Mercure de France" (1 er novembre, 1915) reprinted in Samaltanos. Apollinaire, op. cit., p. 39. Gerardo Murillo Comado, an early pioneer of Mexican motifs in art, adopted the Nahuatl name Atl, meaning "water". lo4 "Le Mercure de France", op. cit.. p. 41.

Gauguin's Pont-Aven, and any African masks-a

nature no less exotic than

Tahiti or Matisse's Morocco, and retablos and wood blocks no less popular than Russian icons and lubki. As if that was not enough, it could also boast not only one, but a few ancient civilizations as its legitimate roots, cornplete with outstanding vestiges. Suddenly, the Mexican culture, if reclairned, showed the potential to equal, or surpass, the Gemanic or Latin cultures, so keenly glorified in Europe. Rivera could dream, like Apollinaire did for Latin culture, of a live "museum" of Mexican culture. The fascination with Aztec art soon travelled elsewhere through the auspices of another Mexican, Marius de Zaya.

On the other side of the

Atlantic, in New York, the cultural community witnessed a manifestationrather unique for those years-of this nascent interest ir: the potential of preColumbian objects for modem art. In October 1916,just three years after the (in)famous Armory Show which was instrumental in introducing modem art to the United States public, there was an exhibit of Rivera's work in New York. A few of his paintings were hung at Marius de Zayas' Modem Galley-a of photographer Alfred Stieglitz's 291 gallery-along

branch

with "Mexican Pre-

Conquest Art1',juxtaposing objects of Yine art" with what would have until then been the purview of an ethnographic museum.105 This small-scale exhibition

was an early demonstration of a modernist obsession with finding affinities between primitive and modem art-a

preoccupation that was aggressively

105 de Zayas was a Mexican writer and cartoonist whose family had emigrated to New York after political disagreement with the Mexican government. He knew rnany modern artists in Paris, including Rivera, and is credited for being instrumental in bringing European modern art to the United States. He was associated for a while with 291 and organized several shows of modern art from European provenance, including works from the most farnous cubists. The Gallery exhibited paintings by Rivera in two group shows, in February and September 1916.

60

reaffirmed in 1984 with the monumental MoMA exhibition on primitivism.'o6 In 1915, 291 had already taken the lead with an exhibition of Negro sculpture brought back from Europe by de Zayas. In 1916, the gallery organized two group shows of modern European painters, including works by Picasso and Rivera; the second one, one month before the Rivera exhibit, showed the works of these artists along with three African sculptures. In the circular introducing the launch of the Modem Gallery, in 1916, the owners expressed their objectives: "To these products of rnodemity [which the gallery offers its customers] we shall add the work of such primitive races as the African Negroes and the Mexican lndians because

we wish to illustrate the relationship between these things and the art of today".'07 What makes these three exhibitions and, particularly, the 1916 exhibition of Rivera and Aztec art, particularly relevant is the juxtaposition of the ancient and the modern, and the introduction of the New World primitive in connection to the African primitive and to the modem. The second show included Rivera and other modem artists along with (only) African art, therefore signalling an affinity between the Mexican artist and the tribal art that had entranced the Paris artists. The inclusion of Rivera's work in the first two exhibits, and the mention of ancient Mexican art as that of another "primitive race", suggests that the curators didn't seem to make a distinction between tribal contemporary art and ancient Aztec sculptures. They thereby implied that, for the appropriation of the "primitive", the context was

Marius de Zayas, "How, When, and Why Modem Art Came to New York in Arts Magazine 54 (April 1980),p. 93.

Ibid., p. 93.

61

immaterial. It could also be a strategy by the curators, and. possibly, the artist, to prepare the ground for the next show where the affinities between the art of the "Mexican Indians" and Rivera's would be demonstrated, or more appropriately, insinuated. In Rivera's show his specificity was erased by the implications of the previous exhibitions, and therefore, the expressions of the art he had produced was misrepresented. The so-called primitive elements

introduced in Zapatista Landscape were not ancient, but contemporary; neither the sarape nor the rifle was influenced by Aztec art. Both came from Mexican popular and revolutionary iconography, and therefore, are not "abstracted" out of their cultural significance as in the case of the borrowing of an African mask in a European painting, but on the contrary, included with al1 the weight of their specific cultural context.

Soon after the 1916 show of Rivera's work and pre-Colurnbian pieces at the Modem Gallery in New York, a rapid succession of significant events in Europe and Mexico precipitated Rivera's retum to his country. He had broken up with many of his artist friends, including Picasso.108 The controversy around Zapatista Landscape, created by Rivera's suspicion of Picasso's possible "copying" of a certain technique devised by the Mexican painter, started the rift between the two artists. "1 am sick of Pablo," said Rivera. "If he pinches something from me, people will rave about Picasso, Picasso. As for me, they'll Say 1 copy him. One day either I'll chuck him out or l'II shove off to

108 A conflict which ended in the splitting of the cubist "groupnis referred to as "l'affaire Rivera" which is recounted in Debroise, Diego de Montparnasse, op. cit., pp. 85ff., and in Favela, Diego Rivera: The Cubist Years, op. cit., pp. 143-51.

Mexico".109 Rivera's comment to his girlfriend, Marevna, is revealing in temis of his realization that the centre and the periphery were not considered culturally equal, but rather in ternis of mode1 and copy, and that, as a peripheral artist, if he stayed in Paris, he would not be able to compete on an equal footing with his famous rival."O Picasso would be dominant and Rivera wouid remain just a pretender. However, as a painter in the New American continent he cou!d hecome its Picasso. A Mexican critic said that Rivera's "contributions to Cubism are, today, undeniable. He was not a docile foliower of Braque or Picasso, but, had always been an original man, with his own thoughts, innovative ideas, independent positions" (my translation)."'

However, in spite of this, or maybe

because of it,ll* it had becorne obvious, that at that moment, his contributions would not be recognized appropriately, and that he would not enter the history O9 Marevna Vorobëv, Life with the Painters of La Ruche, Natalia Heselstine, trans. (New York: Macmillan, 1974), p. 95.

Debroise hints at another example of who copies from whom. He wonders whether Picasso's portraits "con dos ojos en el mismc perfil" [with two eyes in the same profile] might not be borrowed from Rivera's earlier "cubist portraits", Debroise, Diego de Montparnasse, op. cit., p. 92, note 8.

"Las aportaciones de Diego al cubismo estan, hoy fuera de duda. No fue un facil seguidor de Braque O de Picasso, sino, desde siempre, un hombre original, con pensamiento propio, con ideas novedosas, con posiciones independientes." Jaime Labastida, "Diego Rivera por éI mismo" in Plural, 276 (Septiembre de 1994), p. 73.The Cuban magic/marvellous realist writer, Alejo Carpentier also acknowledges the original contributions Rivera made to Eui'opean painting. He says: "Am cuando hubiera hecho cubismo, su cubismo presentaba una fisonornia propia, exotica, por la utilizacion de elementos decorativos, de texturas, que evocaban los objetos folkloricos mexicanosnr h o u g h he painted cubist works, his Cubism had its own exotic expression, in the decorative elements, and textures he used, that evoked Mexican folkloric abjects], "Diego Riveranin Plural, 21 1 (Abril de 1989), p. 36.

l2 Ramon Gomez de la Serna claims that "El gran pintor, que tantos triunfos ha tenido en Paris, donde tuvo su puesto a la derecha de Picasso por derecho propio."[The great painter, who had so many triumphs in Paris, where he earned the right to be placed by Picasso's right side.] in lsmos (1931), (Buenos Aires: Editorial Brdjula, 1968), p. 321.

of European art, except as a footnote. In the case of a non-European artist, appropriation from a European source was considered to be copying, whereas in Picasso's case, appropriation was hailed as genial, because, having been adopted by Pans, he was justified to borrow from elsewhere. Furthemore, as Sally Price suggests, specifically refening to the Spanish painter's appropriation of African art, "Picasso's artistic genius has, in Western eyes, allowed his "copy" to best the "original" on which it was modelledn.113 Though it is well known that Rivera was invited to corne back home, there is no doubt that this bias, and the general disregard Paris showed toward hirn would be instrumental in precipitating Rivera's decision to leave Paris and return to Mexico. "Rivera is not at al1 negligible" is the only mention of the Mexican painter in a review of the 30" Salon des Indépendants by Apollinaire, ardent admirer and promoter of Cubism and part of Rivera's circle. In this short sentence he denied the artist any mention of his nationality, or a description of the work ha contributed to the 1914 exhibition.114 It is interesting to note how, in spite of Rivera's long and personal involvement with the

Montparnasse crowd, the number of exhibitions in which he participated, the large number of outstanding cubist works he produced in Paris, and his Sally Price, Primitive Art in Civilized Places (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1989),p. 96. For an excellent analysis of the implications of the modelkopy dichotomy for Latin American art see Nelly Richard, "C~lturalPeripheries: Latin America and Postmodernist De-centering" in boundary 2, (Fall 1993), pp. 156-61. Again, regarding the issue of modekopy, Debroise remarks about pointillism that Picasso started introducing some in his paintings at the same time that Rivera did in La terraza de café, and he suggests that there is no telling which of the two artists "fue el verdadero renovador" [was the real innovator], Debroise, Diego de Montparnasse, op. cit., p. 75, note 3. Guillaume Apollinaire, Apollinaire on A r t Essays and Reviews, 1902-1918, LeRoy C. Breunig, ed., Susan Suleiman, t r a m (New York: Viking Press, 1972), p. 365.

64

painterly "dialogue" with major artists-including

Picasso-he

did not achieve

the status that other 'Yoreigners" had.115 Apollinaire claimed, in 1916, that the Cubists he knew were Latin, meaning "al1 French, Spanish, or Italian".116 His staunch belief in "Latin" superiority could not accommodate an artist from the

New World, not even from the "Latin" part of the continent. Rivera, if not completely ignored, was not acknowledged as he deserved, and maybe Guy Brett has the final answer to this lack of proper recognition: "The West could not seduce Rivera, so it ignored him".117 It is remarkable that for the occasion of the 1998 Paris-based exhibition of Rivera's and Kahlo's work seventyseven years after Rivera left France, the European primitivist discourse has changed little. Christina Burrus, the commissaire général of the exhibition, answers her own question regarding the reason for organizing the show by writing in the catalogue: "What the work of these two artists offers us is a chance to discover, in the mirror of their work our aboriginal selves; what we were before we became what we are".l18

Until 1914 his work was hung in at least 9 exhibitions in Paris, including a one-person show, and a number of other shows in other European cities. He does not appear to be included in any show in Paris between 1914 and 1918. Of course those were the war years during which some of the cubist painters, including Rivera, exhibited at the Modern Gallery in New York. In 1918, after the conflict among the cubist painters, and the split into two groups, Rivera found himself in the opposing camp from Picasso and Reverdy. Ostracized from the dominant group, he had to participzte in a group show organized by a critic from his own group, Louis Vauxcelles. Many of the writings about Rivera describe him in Paris as a man who argued and fought a lot with his friends, even scared them, and broke friendships easily. This of course could have had an impact on his reception there. 116 Guillaume Apollinaire, Paris-Midi, December 9, 1916, reprinted in translation in Apollinaire, Apollinaire on Art, op. cit., p. 448. 117 Guy Brett, "Unofficial Versions" in Hiller, ed., Myth of Primitivism, op. cit., p. 115. l8 Diego Rivera-Frida Kahlo: regards croisés (Paris: Fondation Dina Vierny-Muée Maillol, 1998), p. i.

65 The primitivist discourses that Rivera encountered while in Europe, and, from a distance, in the New World, presented challenges, and caused provocations to which Rivera would respond, in some way or other. The next chapter will be concemed with these responses in the context of indigenismo, and whether Rivera's work in Mexico, reflects, adapts, or rejects European

prirnitivism(s). If primitivisrn allows for the definition of Western art as civilized, does primitivism become necessary to confirm Mexico's civilized condition?

Chapter Two

Rivera, the Indigenous, and the Popular As is well known, Rivera's tour of ltalian Renaissance frescoes in ltaly at the end of his European sojoum was crucial in helping him prepare his return, and particularly, elaborate his work as a muralist.1 Rivera, along with other artists in the Parisian circles, like Fernand Léger and Picasso, and some of the Russian neoprirnitivists had already been dreaming of monumental art,2 but in the case of the Mexican artist, the trip to ltaly validatvd that dream. However, what I propose to do here is not to study the Italian experience, but rather to examine the "extrernely complex phenornenon" of Mexican nativism3 against the modem Western prirnitivism(s) analyzed in the first chapter. My purpose is to detennine how Rivera rearticulated in his work what he had learned from European primitivism, both in aesthetic and political terms, with the nascent postrevolutionary indigenismo that he found when he retumed. in 1922, a few months after his retum to Mexico, Rivera travelled to Yucatan with other

Picasso had already travelled to ltaly with Jean Cocteau in 1917 to work with him, and Diaghilev's Ballets Russes on the design of both sets and costumes for Cocteau's ballet Parade (music by Erik Satie). See Picasso: The ltalian Journey, 1917-1924, Jean Clair, ed. (New York: Rizzoli, 1998). In 1913, Aleksandr Shevchenko called monumentality "the highest achievement of Art", Aleksandr Shevchenko, "Neoprimitivism: Its Theory, Its Potentials, Its Achievements", in John E. Bcwlt, ed., The Russian Avant-Grade: Theory and Criticism, 1902-1934 (New York: The Viking Press, 1976), p. 51. 3 Guy Brett, "Unofficial Versions" in Susan Hiller, ed., The Myth of Primitivism: Perspectives on Art (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 128.

artists on a tour organized by the soon to become Minister of Education, José Vasconcelos, to introduce thern to great monuments left by one of Mexico's ancient civilizations, the Mayas? Vasconcelos recruited these artists to help him with his ambitious plan to foster a new Mexican culture. Later in the year,

Rivera went O ! Tehuantepec where he saw the "exotic essence" of contemporary Mexico. Coincidentally, these two trips provided the painter with a potential Mexican version of two important sources from which Western primitivism had drawn: the archaic and the tribal or folk. Rivera's Mayans or Aztecs, on the one hand, and the people and art from Tehuantepec and rural Mexico, on the other, would become, respectively, his lberian and African (tribal) masks.

I first review the background of Mexican post-revolutionary indigenismo, as expressed by some intellectuals and officiais, during the period that concerns us here, the 1920s, to understand the prevailing cultural framework in which Rivera operated when he retumed to Mexico. Though the term indigenismo is generally used to describe an amalgam of social and ethnic assumptions and corresponding cultural policies that became officially known as such later, I use it here to refer to a process started earlier, but given new meaning after the revolution. Then, I examine the ways Rivera represented his people in his painting, and how this representation evolved, within the context of the collective imaginary of post-revolutionary Mexico. I

Besides vestiges of ancient civilizations, he also had a first taste of organized resistance among peasants in a province that would soon be governed by a socialist, Felipe Carrillo Puerto.

try to situate Rivera's representation of the Mexican people (Indian-mestizopeasant-worker) within Mexican discourses on identity, race, ethnicity, class, and nationality, and in relation to his experience in Europe. I briefly survey his major murals to 1940 to show the evolution of Rivera's representation of the "indigenous", but focus my discussion on his earlier responses to it, that include the two first major manifestos of Mexican Muralism of 1921 and 1922, and Rivera's first mural, Creacion. My purpose in this chapter is to show parallels and differences between the construction of the "primitive" as seen in the previous chapter and that of the "indigenous" by Rivera. in the early decades of the century, the awareness of alterity, heightened by the extent of interconnectedness reached between countries and continents, the greater realization of the repercussions of colonialisrn, and the growth of anthropology expressed itself differently in Europe and Latin America. While on the surface Latin American nativisms might appear to be the reverse side of Western primitivisms, the issue is far more complex as the former were both an adaptation and a rejection of the latter, and the result of oppositional, as well as reflective, processes fraught with ambiguities. European primitivisrns were translated in different ways in Latin America, where it was no more a uniforrn expression than in the West. For example, the 'anthropophagous' model of the Brazilian modemists deployed strategic devices distinct from the Mexican muralists, for exarnple, to redefine the primitive. The "Manifesto Antropofago" (1928) proposes a reversal of the oppositions colonial/colonized and civilized/barbarian, where the colonizedbarbarian-primitive lives up to its cannibalistic image by eating up and

absorbing useful elernents of the colonial-civilized-modemto, in tum, produce a national artistic expression that is hybrid, but not imitative. On the other hand, the muralist movement's reversa! of these same oppositions in rearticulating the primitive involved the almosi cornplete association of the national and the indigenous.5 Countries with highly visible lndian populations, like Mexico and Peru, focused on the lndian in search of a national identity. The resulting indigenismo became a most crucial pillar in the formation of a corresponding cultural identity. In the Mexico of the 1920s, intellectuals' earlier romantic perception of the indigenous peoples was replaced by a need to understand their culture, as a means to reach back to part of their own origins, and to acknowledge the social problerns their country faced with growing rnodemization. Indigenismo, itself evolving f rom the Porfiriato to the Obregon years replaced the romantic lndianismo of the 19th century. Primitivism does not inforrn Mexican muralism, or Rivera, at least as generally expressed in the West. While art nègres described the primitive art the European so eagerly appropriated, négritude, a term coined by Aimé Césaire, defines a sense of self-identification, of self-rooting vis-à-vis colonial

5~ean Franco, La cultura rnoderna en América Latina (1 983),tr. Sergio Pitol (México: Grijalbo, l985), p. 95. Deborah Root suggests that the place given Aztec art in European prirnitivism, especially arnong the Surrealists, is indistinguishablefrom the other exotic sources of the primitive. According to her "Aztec art could be subsurned under the category of nègre, along with modern jazz and Oceanic art, al1 of which were believed to be sources of primitive unconscious, or dreamlike experience." Cannibal Culture: Art Appropriation, and the Cornmodification of Difference (Oxford: W estview Press, 1W6),p. 56.

alterity. The concept of negritude is closer to that of mexicanidad (mexicanismo). It is not primitivism but more like nativism which in Latin Arnerica, and more particularly in Mexico, ranged from indianisrno, a romantic vision of the indigenous in opposition to hispanismetwo extreme views reflecting the lingering ravages of the trauma of the Conquest-to indigenismo, a socialiy rooted nativism. It is the cultural mexicanismo, or cultural indigenismo of the 1920's that 1 explore here. Mexican culture as expressed in its literature and arts had not been able to create a proper Mexican subject because the latter had not yet asserted its specific authority. Uneven modemization had produced an unevenly modernized subject.7 Both the "barbarous" Indians who lived in a different temporal reality, and the new working masses-many mestizos grown out of urban modemization-had

of them

to be reckoned with in this

cornplex business of identity. While the lndians were considered a "problem", they also became the raison d'être of the new culture, providing it with a subject and a public on which to exercise its civilizing (humanizing) mission.

Julio Ramos, Desencuentros de la modernidad en América Latina: literatura y politica en el siglo XIX (México: Fondo de la Cultura Economica, f989), pp. 68 and 84.

The humanizing process started in Latin America by modemistas8 such as the Cuban José Marti, and taken up by the Uruguayan José Enrique Rod0,g was suddenly accelerated and put into practice in Mexico when the a m e d phase of the revolution ended, and the spiritual phase started. Some artists, through îndigenismo, began to elaborate a Mexican subject who would

be different from others-from

'them' as opposed to 'us'-and

this meant

incorporating the indigenous components. This autochthonous discourse included the construction and promotion of, not only, the contemporary Indian, but also of the Mexican landscape, past civilizations dug up through recent anthropological ventures, the status of the mestizo, and popular Mexican art and traditions. It served as a strategy that would eventually help give artists and intellectuals the social authority they required.10 The Revolution-that

had brought the autochthonous to the surface-had

finaily

Modernisrno, not a translation of modernism, can be considered as the first actual artistic movement, mostly Iiterary, in Latin America. It was born in 1888 with the publication of Rubén Dario's novel Azul. Modernisrno emerged after a widespread crisis of challenges to traditional religious and moral beliefs. It can be defined as a first attempt at promoting a humanist and erudite artistic tradition, and at giving the writedartist in Latin Arnerica a distinctive, professional status. Its adherents rejected the Castilian tanguage and Spanish culture in favor of a vernacular language, and the influence of the exciting and stimulating new French cultural developments. It is not to be confused with the Brazilian avant-garde rnovement of the same name thât appeared in the t 920's. For more on rnodernismo see Jean Franco, La cultura moderna en Arnérica Latina, op. cit., pp. 29-54. "La multitud, la masa anonima, no es nada por si misma. La multitud sera un instrument0 de barbarie O civilizacion segun carezca O no del coeficiente de una alta direccion moral." r h e multitude, the anonymous mass, is nothing by itself. The multitude will be an instrument of barbarism or civilization depending on whether it lacks or not the coefficient of a high moral direction]. Jose Enrique Rodo, Ariel (1900), edited, with an introduction and notes by Gordon Brotherston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967, p. 56. All translations in square brackets in the text and footnotes are mine unless specified. I expand on Arielism in Chapter Five and Six. Ramos, Desencuentros de /a modernidad, op. cit., p. 235.

provided Mexican culture and intellectuals with the means to deploy a refashioned "spectacle of the Mexican beingH.i For many Mexican intellectuals, the lndian was, not only politically, but also culturally, both a "problem" and an asset-the

main asset in fact-in

the

forging of the new nation. More specifically, the contemporary lndian was a problem, while the ancient lndian was an asset. The nation, mainly composed of m e s t i z o ~the r blend of Spanish and Indian-had

to contend with a large

indigenous population, which was seen as a hindrance in the process of modemization, itself perceived as an indispensable parallel process to the establishment of an economically and cuiturally independent nation. So, while politically and socially the Indian was considered an obstacle, his culture was highty valuable, in fact vital, for post-revolutionary Mexico, in terms of constructing both a personal and national identity. The archaic civilizations uncovered by recent archaeological projects became a focus, while the folkloric aspects of the contemporary Indians proved the continuity of these ancient local traditions, and therefore the legitimate claim to these civilizations.

To solve the contradictions inherent in this perception of the lndian as an obstacle to economic progress as well as an asset to nation building, indigenistas like the anthropologist Manuel Gamio, a student of Franz Boas, argued for a re-evaluation of the lndian that would differ from that of the

Alfonso Reyes quoted in ibid., p. 228.

hdigenismo of the Potfiriato.12 Both trends were based on racial

categorization, however the latter focused on biological differences, and the former on social and cultural classification.'3 During the years of the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz some positivist intellectuals considered the lndians inferior, and feared them (like they did the Chinese and the "Negroes") for their alleged resentment, and ultimately, the uprising this resentment was sure to induce. More "raciologically liberal" minds, like that of Justo Sierra, would view the lndian as redeemable through education.14 lt is this tradition-though

expressed differently-that

Garnio and José

Vasconcelos followed.15 Considering the inevitability of the lndian presence,

l2 Eduardo Matos Moctezuma in his introduction to a book dedicated to the works of Manuel Gamio mentions the famous Mexican anthropologist alongside Rivera in the sarne sentence as exponents of nationalism. He says "un nacionalismo que, entre otras manifestaciones, quedo plasmado en los murales de Orozco y Rivera, la musica de Carlos Chavez y la antropoiogia de Manuel Gamio; su libro Forjando patria. Pro nacionalisrno respondia a esa necesidad de reafirmar los valores de Io mexicanonfa nationalism that, among other manifestations, was molded into Orozco's and Rivera's rnurals, the music of Carlos Chavez and the anthropology of Manuel Gamio; his book Forging a Nation. Pro Nationalism responded to that need to reaffirm the values of the Mexican], in Manuel Garnio, Arqueologia e indigenismo, introduccion de Eduardo Matos Moctezuma (México: SepSetentas 24, f972), p. 8.

l3 For a study of indigenismo in Mexico before the Revolution, see Mariin S. Stabb, "lndigenism and Racism in Mexican Thought: 1857-1911" in Journal of Inter-American Studies, 1 (October, 1959). 405-23, and Luis Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México (México: El Colegio de México, 1950).

Stabb speaks of "raciologica1 liberalism". Stabb, "Indigenism and Racismn,op. cit., p. 422. l5 It is, however, worth noting that La raza cosmica written by José Vasconcelos-one of the rnost influential Mexican intellectuals of the post-revolutionary period-reveals a lingering racism of its author towards the Chinese. La raza c6smica: mision de la raza iberoamericana (1 925), (México: Espasa-Calpe Mexicana, 1966).

the only solution was to fuse the races into a "cosmic race'l-Vasconcelos' euphemism for "de-indianizing" O "de-indigenizingn16the Indian. The integration envisaged by post-revolutionary officiais would be achieved through a comrnon education; with the 1917 Constitution the lndian would become a citizen with equal rights, that is, equal to the rights of the majority population, not equal rights within their own specificity. The unspoken result of such policies was that political equality would eliminate any possibility of difference; as they joined the modem citizenry, the indigenous populations would not be allowed to maintain their way of life. Their integration would increase the rnajority mestizo population and create a homogeneous, and therefoty, governable and modemizable nation. This was achieved to a rernarkable degree: between 1921 and 1930, the indigenous populations decreased rather fast-and cornmunities-while

therefore, so did the rural

the mestizo population - and therefore, urban

settlements-increased

steadily.17

If the ultimate objective was the eventual disappearance through integration of the indigenous populations, that objective was not meant to include the old art of their ancestors, or the contemporary production of indigenous 'folk' art. Indian art, old and new, would become the legitimate expression of post-revolutionary Mexico. The 'new Mexican' would inherit the

See Guillermo Bonfil Batalla. México profundo: una civilizacion negada (México: Grijalbo, 1989).

Charles Cumberland, Mexico: The Struggle for Modernity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 367.

artistic tradition of the indigenous peoples from whom they were made to be descendants, thereby erasing the ruptures, hibridization, and heterogeneity that characterized this legacy. In this case, unlike the kind of appropriation practiced by European primitivists, the appropriation was legitirnated by heritage, rather than by affinity. In his studies on the social anthropology of indigenous populations, Garnio rejected aspects of their culture, for exarnple, their contemporary religious and medical practices as unscientific. However, he "scientifically" analyzed the art of the Aztec and Mayan civilizations to determine that they were comparable aesthetically to that of the GrecoRoman civilization and understandable by cornparison with it.18 In France, Apollinaire had wanted to follow a similar process with African sculptures that he admired as beautiful enough to merit a place alongside Romanesque sculpture. He wanted these sculptures to be classified rationally because only "when their provenance and [. ..] epoch [...] are well known" will it be possible to "judge their beauty and compare them to one another".lg So Gamio, using a European yardstick to validate Mexican

art, would root it in local past civilizations, and scientifically measure it against the European "model". Once it had passed the test, and was legitimated, it

l8 See Manuel Gamio, "Forjando Patria" (1916) in Arqueologia e indigenismo, op. cit. In ''The lndian Basis of the Mexican Civilizationn, Gamio distinguishes the social from the cultural. While "Socially, the Latin American republics are made up of elements ranging from the most primitive to the ultra-modern; culturally, one finds many different stages of civilization" in José Vasconcelos and Manuel Gamio, Aspects of Mexican Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926), p. 130. Guillaume Apollinaire, Les arts à Paris (15 juillet. 1918), reprinted in translation in Harry, E. Buckley, Guillaume Apollinaire A s An Art Criiic (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981, p. 229.

would become "unique", yet "universal". Apollinaire, the modemist, and Gamio, the cultural anthopologist, share discourses that, as James Clifford would argue, "assume a primitive world in need of preservation, redemption and representationn.20 Gamio, himself legitimated by his American apprenticeship with Boas, gained notoriety in Mexico, and was an important official spokesperson for Mexico in American academic circles. In 1926, along with other prominent Mexican intellectuals, he participated in the series of the Harris Foundation lectures at the University of Chicago. These lectures were intended to promote "a better understanding of other nations through wisely directed educational effort?" Unlike the more hurried and irnprovised practices of his political colleague, José Vasconcelos, Gamio believed in a "thorough investigation" of "the true characteristics and aspirations of the widely different social groups" in Mexico. To effectively grasp the present "living conditions" of the Indian, this investigation had to be preceded by a profound understanding of the "archaeological-historical evolution" of the indigenous populations.22 The lndian became an object of knowledge, and only on such scientific basis could an appropriate education be designed for the native peoples.23

20~amesClifford, "Histories of the Tribal and the Modern", The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-CenturyEthnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 200. 21 See Vasconcelos and Gamio. Aspects of Mexican Civilization, op. cit. on the page facing the title page (n. p.).

22 Gamio, 'The lndian Basis of the Mexican Civilization", op. cit., pp.133-4.

23 Ibid., p. 136.

This concem for the scientific apprehension of heterogeneous groups, distinguished by their "race", and then divided along a geographica! axis, urban/rural/coastal region, led to a proposal for an educational system based on the specif ic economic and geographical needs of each group/area. However, the response to heterogeneous needs was only meant to achieve eventual "unity, by lifting them al1 to the saine plane of civilization".*4 "Redeeming the masses1',25homogenizing the country, was also the goal of Vasconcelos. However, it was not necessarily employment that the Minister of Education had in mind, but rather redemption by elevating the masses to the universal spirit. Mexican indigenismo evolved over time, but it essentially remains the ways of seeing-or

conceiving-the

indigenous elements, that is,

how others, including first the Spaniards, then the criollo, and finally, the mestizo saw the Indian. It was, and is "a political theory and practice designed and orchestrated by those not Indians in order to achieve the 'integration' of the lndian peoples into the nation1'.*6It never was about how the lndian perceived himself, or what he wanted for himself, but how the imaginary Mexican ("us") believed the "problem" should be solved. Ultimately, indigenismo always was about constructing a collective identity. The lndian people were present in large visible numbers; they could not be eliminated,

24 Ibid., p. 154.

25 Ibid., p. 150.

26 My translation. "Una teoria y una practica politicas disefiadas e instrumentadas por los no indios para lograr la "integracion" de los pueblos indios a la nacion." Bonfil Batalla, México profundo, op. cit. p. 172.

but neither could they be fully absorbed. They were unknown and a threat, they were the object of fascination and contempt, they were a hindrance, but they were needed. So the indigenous eiement appears to have been an important part of the psyche of post-revolutionary Mexiczn intellectuals such as Gamio and Vasconcelos. Some of Edward Said's fundamental observations on what he refers to as "Orientalism" can be applied to their indigenismo. "Orientals [read Amerindians] were rarely seen or looked at; they were seen through, analyzed not as citizens, or even people, but as problems to be ~ o l v e d " . * ~ But, as Luis Villoro in his excellent historical study of indigenismo demonstrates, the lndian was at the same time the problern and the solution, the sin and the redemption, in the crisis of self-identificationof the Mexican mestizo, the hybrid result of the traumatic clash of the Conquest.28 In terms of hierarchy, the white man was superior, and the lndian inferior. To make the notion of the mestizo acceptable, since he constituted the majority group, it was then believed that the hybridization of the two resulted ii: the best of each being mixed in him.29 The myth of the mission of the mestizo who, as a "race" and a social class (the liberal bourgeoisie), was the best able to embody the new identity and nationality, would grow to eventually include the formation of

27 Quoted in Colin Rhodes, Primitivism and Modern Art (London: Thomas and Hudson, 1994), p. 80. 28 See Villoro, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo, op. cited.

29 Ibid., p. 173.

the "cosmic racen.3* This sets the background in which the rnuralists, and in particular, Rivera, started producing their work. The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia was another event that had an impact from afar on the Mexican exilé in Europe. Having lost the opportunity to iive through the Revolution in his own country Rivera wanted a chance to witness the social changes that he and his Bolshevik friends in Pans had been dreaming about?' He tried to travel to Russia that year with his friend, the painter Arnedeo Modigliani. but to no avail; they were refused the papers they needed for the trip. Nevertheless, his discussions on the role of art with his fellow Mexican artist, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and with the French physician and art historian, Elie Faure-who the fresco-provided

suggested the medium of

a theoretical frarnework that pointed to a more

meaningful direction for Mexican art, and a potentially promising role for him in particular.32 Fortuitously, the invitation extended to Rivera by the new Minister of Education-that

is, to visit ltaly in order to learn from Renaissance

paintings a lesson that could be adapted to post-revolutionary Mexico-

30 Ibid. p. 173-5. 31 Relations between the USSR and the rest of the world had broken. Olivier Debroise, Diego de Montparnasse (México: Fondo de Cultura Econ~mica,1979), pp. 95-6.Besides Rivera's many Russian friends mentioned in the previous chapter, there were Anatoli Lunacharsky, who would be in charge of culture in the new Soviet regime, and among hiç acquaintances were Leon Trotsky and his wife, as well as Vladimir Lenin. Ibid., p. 36.

32 Faure is often mentioned as being the person who gave Rivera the idea of painting frescoes, but many artists and writers were talking about monumental painting then. Apollinaire, for example, praised in 1914 "the picturesque frescoes and sculptures of a church near Argentan (Mesnil-Goudoin) executed by two artisansn. Katia Samaltanos, Apollinaire: Catalyst for Primitivism, Picabia, and Duchamp (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1984), p. 34.

provided the necessary practical and financial support.33 Siqueiros-who been involved in the Mexican Revoiution-and

had

Rivera, started discussing the

issue of a new Mexican painting when the two men met in Paris in 1919. Though he was away frorn the upheavals in his country, the effect on Rivera of the assassination of Emiliano Zapata, also in 1919, cannot be

underestimated. The urge to retum grew stronger. Besides, if Gaudi was right, and "originalidad es volver al origen" [originality is achieved by retuming to the origin]," then Rivera had to prove his originality by continuing his

search for his roots. He finally joined his fellow intellectuals in that search when he ended his self-imposed exile, and retumed to his country in 1921. It was in May of that year that his colleague Siqueiros published his manifesto 'Tres llamarnientos de orientacion actual a los pintores y escultores de la nueva generacion arnericana" in Vida Americana (fig. 11), from Barcelona.35 This important document elaborated with the acknowledged help

33 A recent exhibit of Picasso in Venice and its catalogue examine a less known period and aspect of the painter's work. Picasso visited ltaly in 1917. He familiarized himself with the spirit of the Renaissance and also came back with sketches. Picasso: The ltalian Journey 1917-1924, Jean Clair, ed. (New York: Riuoli, 1998).This might have been one more reason for Rivera to spend some time in ltaly later. 34 Antoni Gaudi, quoted in David Craven. " The Latin American Origins of "Alternative Modernismsnin Third Text, 36 (Autumn 1996), p. 36. Translation in the original. 35 Translated as "A New Direction for the New Generation of American Painters and Sculptors" (1921) in David A. Siqueiros, Art and Revolution (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975),pp. 20-3.This was the only issue of the magazine that Siqueiros published there while on consular assignment from Mexico. Rivera contributed an illustration.

of Rivera,36 is crucial in understanding the rnuralists' initial theoretical interpretation and adaptation of the Western experîence with the "primitive". It might appear paradoxical that Siqueiros' cal1 to American artists was made frorn Europe-albeit

from one of its peripheral centres, Barcelona. By then,

neither Siqueiros nor Rivera had yet returned to Mexico. Therefore, this first appeal-unlike

the later 1922 manifesto-is

not concemed with contemporary

indigenous people, but rather with the potential offered by the appropriation of local sources of the primitive. It is an appeal to Mexican artists to abandon their national aesthetic ways,37 and join the new universal trend. More specifically, Siqueiros exhorts thern to apply the iesson leamed by primitivists (rneaning European) through their new empathy for the human qualities found in "Negro Art and Primitive A n in generalW.38To achieve this, Mexican attists must discontinue their "lndianism, Primitivism, and Americanism", and t um instead to the Amerindian artists "Mayas, Aztecs, Incas, etc." who were the original inhabitants of these parts? The universal art that would supplant the national art, Siqueiros adds reassuringly, would retain the inevitable expressions of "our racial and local elementsn.40The Mexican practices he

36 Siqueiros acknowledges that "(w]ithout the intellectual aid of Diego Rivera I would have been unable to formulate my "Call to the Artists of Arnerica". "Rivera, the First Practical Exponent of our AN' (From the book Ours is the Only Way, Mexico, 1945) in Siqueiros, Art and Revolution, op. cit., p. 76.

37 This is addressed, no doubt to the kind of art produced by artists such as Dr. Atl and his followers.

38 Siqueiros, "A New Direction", op. cit., p. 22. (Italics in the original). 39 Ibid., p. 22. 40 Ibid., p. 23.

condernns (Indianism, Prirnitivism and Americanism) are not defined except as "lamentable archaeological reconstr~ctions",~~ presumably antithetic to creative production. He ends with a curious condemnation of "our poets" whose beautiful work does not reflect "thetrue values we seek in our worKl.42 Siqueiros' (and Rivera's) first rnanifesto is informed by a will to universal modem progress both technological and aesthetic. Not surprisingly, it is heavily influenced by Cubism and Futurism, and promotes the importance

in painting of creating a firmly constructed framework of "spatial volumes".43 Though he urges American painters to leam the trade from the old (European) masters, Siqueiros dernands "new subjectS1consistent with the new "marvellous dynamic agen.44It is a civilizing document that believes in the superiority of a new epoch. The indigenous element is not contemporary, but another source of renewal in a local and racial primitive. The mention of race is significant as the element that binds not only the primitive civilized Indian to the present indigenous populations, but also the mestizo, of a hybrid, and therefore, uncertain identity. This becomes evident in some indigenist thought of the time, as we shall see later.

The European primitivism of the early decades of the 20th century stands in opposition to the art engendered by the primitives of the

41 Ibid., p. 22.

42 Ibid.. p. 23. Chapter Two, in Part Two here. explores Rivera's relationship with postrevolutionary literary movements and especially with their poets. 43 Ibid., p. 22. 44 Ibid., p. 21.

Renaissance. Instead of offering the viewer a familiar-that

is an easily

! visually approach other decodable-rnethod of representation with which O

cultures, primitivism preserves, and even exacerbates, the indecipherability of the unknown-or Other-in

an effort to challenge traditional Western cultural

values.45 When Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, his fnend, the French critic André Salmon, suggested that Picasso inevitably presented us with an appearance of the world that did not conform to the way in which we have leamed to see it [...] For the first time in Picasso's work, the expression of the faces is neither tragic nor passionate. These are masks almost entirely freed from humanity.46 For Rivera, however, the situation in the periphery was fundamentally different, and his aesthetic and political strategies reflected the geographicai and temporal differences between Picasso's France and Rivera's Mexico." Rivera's art that he specifically wanted to address to his people had to be easily decodable, and invite identification. Therefore, the strategy of appropriation of f o n s , symbols, and figures from indigenous life were intended to be familiar, to provide a sense of proud belonging, to visually

45 Rhodes, Primitivism in Modern Art, op. cit., p. 74-5. 46 As quoted in ibid., p. 91.

47 The Aztec civilization was "interruptedn by the Conquest precisely at the time when Renaissance painters were filling the walls of officiai buildings with public art. Unlike the sources of Western primitivism such as Africa and Oceania, Rivera's borrowings were, not only from his own geographical area, but also closer in time than, say, Egyptian, Etruscan or lberian art. The folk elernents Rivera borrowed were also local compared to the distance of African tribal art from Europe.

represent the myths of the revolution." When, at the end of the 1920s Rivera chose to delve deepe: into the Aztec past, the realism of his painting sewed

the purpose of creating rnyths from the past that would help consolidate or reactivate the rnyths of the revolution.49

But, sornething else distinguishes Westem primitivism(s) frorn Rivera's mexicanization of modem art. Whereas for Picasso, and the European modemists, the appropriation of primitive alterity is, in part, a longing for some lost edenic moment, for Rivera, and other Mexican rnuralists, the return to the originary people is more specific. It airns at linking with a past that is meant to provide historical continuity, a continuity which was felt had been violently broken by the Conquest, a break so poetically characterized by J.M.G. Le Clézio as the "pensée interrompue", "interrupted thought", the silencing of a people whose thought will never be recuperated.50 In fact, Rivera's mexicanization of modern art could be seen as the inverted process of Westem appropriation-inverted anthropophagy. His aim was to reverse the current of art history so that, instead of the exotic or the primitive feeding into European srt, the reverse

48 in a 1928 article published in Variedades, in Lima, the Peruvian critic, José Carlos

Mariategui, described Rivera's work-undoubtedly referring to his rnurals at the Secretariaas being " m a grandiosa representation plastica de [los] mitos [de la revoiucion]" [a grandiose plastic representation of [the] myths [of the revolution]]. "Itinerario de Diego Rivera" in El artista y la época (Lima: Biblioteca Amauta), 1959, p. 97. 49 Laura Mulvey with Peter Wollen, "Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti" in Laura Mulvey, Visual

and Other Pleasures (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), p. 96.

s0 J.MG. Le Clézio, The Mexican Dream or The Interrupted Thoughf of Amerindian Civilizations (1 988),Teresa Lavender Fagan, trans. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993).

would happen: the lessons of European art he had brought back with him would feed into the native Mexican tradition.51 However, it was not just what an American critic characterizes as "a ruthless hunger to devour evetything in the outside world",5* but possibly an early example of what Angel Rama would later cal1 'Yransculturation". As wel!, it could be seen as an attempt-naïve

at best, presumptuous at worst-at

visually recuperating the "thoughf' where it was interrupted. In the case of European artists, primitivism heiped them retum to the

pre-rational and widen the gap between imagination and reason. This would present a diiemma for Rivera since Mexico was still a pre-modern country looking precisely to enter the age of modemity and reason. He might have rejected the academicism of his predecesson, but he also had to take the spatio-temporal specificity of Mexico into consideration. Muralism had to be literary; unlike the case of European modem art, in Mexico, there were no art critics to speak of that would decode the images in the murals for the public. The choice of the mural as a medium was not only dictated by widespread

illiteracy, but also by the lack of institutional infrastructure, including the scarcity of museums and galleries, the restricted market, the shortage of patrons, and the few and poorly trained art critics. And the intended public was largely 'non-literateY.53

5' Mulvey with Wollen, "Frida Kahlo and Tina Modottin, op. cit., p. 89. 52 Artweek, (May 21, 1928), n.p.

53 llliterate by Western standards. The indigenous peoples of Mexico were versed in their own culture, of course, but not "sufficiently" so in the Spanish culture.

The second manifesto drafted by Siqueiros in Mexico in 1922 is the official document proclaiming the principles of the newly created Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors. As a coilective document asserting the beliefs of a collective group of visual workers it is signed by the artists who belonged to the syndicate, including Rivera. The text, entitled

Manifiesto del Sindicato de Obreros Técnicos, Pintores y Esc~ltores,5~ delves right into the lndian question by declaring in its first sentence that the syndicate "directs itself to the native races humiliated for centuries".ss It also addresses the soldiers, workers, peasants, and intellectuals. That first paragraph distinguishes five groups of which the last four are considered "classes" in the Marxist tradition, and the first one is referred to as "races". The confusion between these two concepts-race

and class-continues

throughout this short document. Later, the soldier is Indian, and the race becomes "ours". It is quickly established that there is one race (though it started out referring to the native races in the plural), that it is "essentially Indian", and that it produces "noble work". Therefore, the distinctions between 'the Indian', 'the Mexican', 'the people' and the 'race' are blurred to the point of becorning a single entity with the artists, the defenders and representatives, as 'Yhey" goes through a gradua1 metamorphosis and becornes "we".

54 Translated as "A Declaration O! Social. Political and Aesthetic Principles" in Siqueiros, Afi and Revolufion, op. cit., p. 24.

55 Ibid., p. 24. The following references are taken from ibid., pp. 24-5.

The document clearly defines the artistic abilities of the native race/us/the Mexican as distinct and unique, and "the most wholesorne expression in the world", thus establishing a national legitimacy of its own, and its resultant access to the universal scale where it is found to be superior.

The new declared proletarian class is now invited not to create art, but to leam from a new type of art, which will be public, monumental, educational, and for the people. The collective character of the ownership of this new art is made clear, but that of its production is not specified. The new art is rneant to refled the new order that will result from the Revolution. However, in no way is the text assuming that the new order has already replaced the old one; it calls for a stmggle through public, educational, ideological art. When Rivera retumed to Mexico in 1921, the country was starting to settle down after 10 years of a devastating civil war which, fundamentally, was brought on by the impact of modernity and modernization: rural versus urban interests,56 and the indigenous way of life versus increasing Westernization. At the same tirne, the Revolution had threatened the interests of the United States in Mexico.57 The twenties becarne the decade of political, economic, and cultural reconstruction, or more precisely, nation building and modernization, and the beginning of détente with the United States. But, as

56 A distinction that Guy Brett believes is often ignored by museums of modern art when dealing with the works of early modern artists. "Unofficial Versions", op. cit., p. 115. This distinction is even more crucial in analyzing the work produced in Mexico, where the division behveen rural and urban spaces was significantly sharper, especially in the 20s. 57 See Alan Knight, US.-Mexican Relations. 1910-1940: An lnferpretation (San Diego: University of California Press, 1987) for a study of how the neighbour to the north affected the course of Mexico during those years.

could be expected, nationalism and internationalism CO-existedwith great difficulty, creating ambivalent and c~ntradictorysituations. The contrast between the simultaneous presence of local versions of divergent European trends such as primitivism and futurism appeared even more accentuated, and more incongruous in Mexico. Was the country to look backward or forward, inward or outward'? It seerns the country had to do both to "catch up" to the rest of the world. Suddenly, several stages of history appear to be happening sirnultaneously; a late Revolution, by Western standards, was faced with globalization and fast-paced technological changes. Nation building was a prerequisite to modemization. It required the creation of a Mexican community as imagined by the new political and intellectual leaders, a community that would integrate disparate groups, including the large and diverse lndian population, culturally distinct, and mostly non-literate.58 While the contemporary lndian remained a "problem", his ancestors would play a significant role in the "forging" of a new national identity. What had given rise to shame, the Indian, suddenly became a source-if exactly of pride-at

not

least, of redemption. Through the lndian "race", the large

majority of Mexicans, that is, mestizos, had rediscovered an alterity that would lead al1 the way back to a very old origin in antiquity: the Aztec and Mayan civilizations. This originary foundation would root the 'new Mexican' down, and give him his proper place in history. Ironically, the re-discovery of the lndianness of Mexico was induced in part by the interest of the United

s8 Literacy will rise slowly from Mohto 39% The Struggle for Modernity, op. cit., p. 367.

between 1921 and 1930. Cumberland, Mexico:

States in Mexican archaeological sites, and by Western primitivism. However, unlike European primitivists of the early decades of the 20th century, Rivera

based his borrowing of Aztec art on readings and studies of that civilization. His interest was not primarily fuelled by that art's formal attractions, but by the meaning behind the themes and styles, a meaning that could be recovered in the present to configure the future. When he was in Europe, he had already studied the Mexican codices on which he relied heavily. But the codices to which he referred were a re-creation of the originals by early Spanish settlers that were more easily available, and contained texts written in Spanish.59 Therefore, though he attempted to understand the way the Aztec civilization worked, his depiction of it is, paradoxically, mediated by, among other things, the colonizer's interpretations of it. It is important to note that, according to Guy Brett, the original codices were basically lndian land claims.60 This may have had a greater influence than we know on the emphasis Rivera put on depicting the earth, the land and agrarian refon, especially in his rnurals at the Secretaria and at Chapingo. If the exotic objects borrowed by Western primitivists proved the existence of "an earlier stage of human culture, a common past confirming

59 Stanton L. Catlin and Betty Ann Brown have demonstrated Rivera's use of images from these codices in his murals. See Stanton L. Catiin, "Political lconography of the Diego Rivera Frescoes at Cuernavaca, Mexicon, Henry A. Milton and Linda Nochlin, eds., in Art and Architecture in the Senice of Politics (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1978), pp. 439-49; and Betty Ann Brown, T h e Past Idealized: Diego Rivera on the Art of the United States During the 1930s and After" in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective (Detroit: Detroit lnstitute of Arts Founders Society; New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1986), pp. 139-55. Brett, "Unofficial Versions", op. cit., p. 123.

Europe's triumphant present",6~then, for Rivera, the Aztec culture would prove the legitimacy of the present, and perhaps more importantly, Mexico's triumphant future. Rivera shared with the primitivists the hope that the irnaginary past of "integrated, cohesive, social totality"-in civilization-would,

his case, the Aztec

in the future, replace the fragmented present.

But Western primitivism and muralism differ in another way, more specifically in their strategic approaches to the comrnodification of art. If we agree that by incorporating "the ritual function of tribal art" the European prÏmitivists believed in producing a "marginal cornmodity"-thereby

escaping

the fate of a museum's "lifeless commodity"62-than we could Say that Rivera, and his fellow muralists, chose to prevent their art from becoming a profitmaking item by 'going' public, by producing monumental murals in public spaces. Muralism may have offered a solution to another problem faced by the European avant-gardes. If art is Yhreatened by the amoral and quantitative qualities of money" which compromise its "role as moral and critical commentary upon modem lifefl,63 muralism, as public art,may have atternpted to regain that potential role. However, that potential was eventually rnediated-and

even neutralized-by

prolonged state patronage, and the

specific didactic objectives of the muralists.

61 Clifford, The Predicament of Culture, op. cit., p. 228. 6* Michelle Wallace, "Modernism, Postmodernism and the Problem of the Visual in AfroArnerican Culture", in Russell Ferguson et ail, eds. Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992). p. 48.

63 Daniel Miller, "Primitive Art and the Necessity of Primitivisrn to Art" in Hiller, ed.. The Myth of Prirnitivism, op. cit., p. 53.

The posture of Western primitivists and that of Rivera towards the old or the exotic "othet' stem from different concems and strategies. And, while it is important to analyze the social predicarnent of a postcolonial culture on its own terms, the links and cornparisons with the metropolis are inevitable by the very nature of the relationship of interdependence between centre and margins.64 Therefore, we must take into account the "dialogue" that Rivera maintained with the centre. This dialogue was usually a strategic response, or an alternative stance, and while, at times, Rivera appears to have responded to cultural directions in the centre by going along with them, in fact, he was reacting to them from Mexico's marginal position. For example, the çtart of

the second phase of his mural painting career (1928)-with portrayal of the Aztec civilization-surely

his extensive

corresponds to a sudden fascination

in Parisian artistic circles with preGolurnbian artistic expressions, that until then had seemed attractive only to a small group of European artists. At first, it may seem that Rivera was just following the new European trend: the appropriation of a new object of desire, the Aztec object. However, such appropriation by European artists would prove provocative and challenging-if

not threatening-for

a Mexican artist, especially as Paris

piesented its first major exhibit of pre-Columbian art, "Exposition de l'art de l'Amérique1'in 1928.In the catalogue, "L'art précolombien", George Bataille compares Mayan and Aztec art. He suggests that Mayan art is such that it

e4 Michael Taussig argues that "alterity is every inch a relationship, not a thing in itself [...] an actively mediated colonial relationship meeting contradictory and conflicting European expectations of what constitutes Indiannessn. Here we can substitute "Mexicanness" for "Indianness". Mimesis and Alterity (New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 130.

caused "Arnerican civilizations to be placed beside the great classical civilizations".6s However, he considers Aztec art-the

art of "the Mexicans,

properly calledY1-to have been produced by people, who at the time of the Conquest, were "only recently civilized barbariansll.66 In Bataille's Hegelianinspired system of hierarchy the Aztec civilization is the lowest in preColumbian America, presumably a characterization that would justify the need for the European civilizing process started at the end of the 15th century. However, if he admires the art of the Mayans, and makes them the honour of equating them with the "great classical civilizations", what actually fascinates him are the sadistic Aztecs, "only recently civilized barbarians". He is seduced

by their "mad violence", their joyous cannibalistic spectacles, their fearlessness of death. Bataille was not bewitched by African masks but by Aztec skulls; it was not the magical powers of Negro sculptures that attracted him but the bloody human sacrifice of the Aztecs.67 The title of Bataille's article, L'Amérique disparue, sums it al1 up. Once Paris had established the legitimacy of that civilization and declared it "disappeared", the stage was set for it to be reclaimed, and who was going to reclaim it first, the Old or the New World, Western or Mexican artists? Rivera started his first serious depictions of the Aztecs and the Conquest in the frescoes at the Palacio Nacional that same year. For a Mexican artist like

65 George Bataille, "Extinct America" (L'Amérique disparue ,1929) in October, 36 (Spring 1986), p. 4.

66 Ibid.. p. 5.

67 The only two illustrations that he includes are reproductions of skulls and sacrifice borrowed from the Codex Vaticanus.

Rivera the double provocation would have been irresistible: he had to prove that the Aztec civilization was great, and had to capitalize on this new seduced audience of European artists by rnaking extensive use of Aztec motifs and themes from the Mexican rnargins themselves. Bataille and others were fascinated by the violence they saw expressed in the Aztec civilization,

a behavioural pattern that was supposedly unacceptable in Western ternis, and it was that "negative" aspect of the Aztecs that they stressed in their interpretation of it. This might have prornpted Rivera to exclude violence from his own depiction of the Aztecs' everyday life, and instead, stress the violence of the Spanish conquerors. Who were more violent, more barbarie, the Indians or the Europeans? If Mexicans were to find their proper place in universal history, starting with the Aztec civilization, it was crucial to first recapture it in order to affirm its national belonging-a

genealogical line to authenticate the new national

identity. These ethnographic objects of Western desire that were suddenly so much praised, and appropriated by European artists, would join the ranks of previously found treasures as "universal masterpieces"68 and possibly-like so manÿ artifacts before them-find

their way into Western rnuseums. We

could assume that it was against such a threat that Rivera started what would become an extensive collection of pre-Colurnbian art, housed in its specially built museum, Anahuacalli. Those ethnographic objects would be kept in the

G8 Clifford, The Predicament of Culture, op. cit., p. 228.

country, protected from foreign pilfering, and raised to the distinctive category of national treasures before being declared "universai" treasures. The retum to origins is fundamental to both European and Mexican artists in the first decades of the century. While it appears to be bom from the crisis in identification created by the dramatic changes in the concepts of space and time, this phenornenon expressed itself differently in both places. What can be described, in Paris, as primitivisms, needs to be explained differently in Mexico, and, in similar ways, as that of another periphery, Russia. In the first case, Western European artists responded to "the threat of othemess and relativism"69 by appropriating into their art the forms of a "primitive other" colonized by their countries. In the case of marginalized cultures, like Russia and Mexico, some artists attempted to enter history, and claim their proper place in it by demonstrating their own distinct and ancient roots in an oider legitimating civilization, which, in the case of Mexico, was that of the Aztecs and the Mayans. If for Picasso his lberian roots would admit hirn into civilization, and upgrade his roots from tribal to archaic, for Rivera it would be the pre-Columbian civilizations of Mexico that would allow him, and the Mexicans, to enter (modem) History.70

69 "Generally perceived as prima1 and exotic, the primitive posed a double threat to the logocentric West, the threat of otherness and relativism." Hal Foster, 'The Primitive Unconscious of Modern Art", October34 (Fall, 1985)' p. 56.

70 Gauguin, on the other hand. did not need Brittany, Tahiti or Peru to enter modernity. As a European, he was within history, and his appropriation was part and parcel of the centre's prerogative to revitalize and keep dominance in artistic matters.

A number of scholarly works on Rivera's murais have examined his depiction of Aztec life and symbols.71 What I propose to do here instead, is to examine his representation of the contemporary Indian/Mexican subject in his earlier frescoes. Rivera's construction of 'lndianness' or 'Mexicanness' in his murals exhibits significant changes between 1922 and 1929. In his large 1929 triptych at the Palacio Nacional, Aztec life rather than contemporary Mexican life is represented more prominentiy than in previous works. The earlier murals need to be exarnined in light of the various stages of an evolving indigenismo, itself linked to changes on the political, social and cultural scenes. Several phases of Rivera's treatment of the indigenous element emerge as well in his work of which the initial period includes his first single mural Creacion in the Anfiteatro Bolivar at the Preparatoria, the Secretaria mural series, and the Chapingo frescoes.72 If I focus particularly on the former, it is because it represents Rivera's first major work after his retum

71 Among thern Catlin. "Political lconography of the Diego Rivera Frescoes at Cuernavaca,

Mexico", op. cit.; Brown, ''The Past Idealized: Diego Rivera's Use of Pre-Columbian Imagery": and Barbara Braun, "Heritage and Politics" in Pre-Columbian Art and the Post-Columbian World: American Sources of Modern Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams. Inc. Publishers, 1993). 72 The Escuela Nacional Preparatoria in Mexico City was the elite post-secondary institution where most of the era's intellectuals were fomed in the last years of the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship, including the ateneista generation, and therefore, José Vasconcelos and Diego Rivera. The Secretaria de Educacion is a cloister-like structure built in 1921-22 to house the important revamped Ministry of Education on whose open, but covered, corridor walls Rivera painted some of his most visited murals. The Universidad Autonoma de Chapingo, originally a seventeenth-century Jesuit convent, and later a presidential residence, became an agricultural college in 1920. lt provided Rivera with the challenge of painting the ceilings of the chapel, an opportunity his rival Orozco would have only a decade later at the Hospicio Cabahas in Guadalajara.

from Europe, and because of its obvious concem with shades of darkness. The Spanish writer, Ramon G6mez de la Sema, describes his friend Rivera as if he was carrying a huge weight, that of "la responsabilidad de la creacion" [the responsibility of creationl.73 Later he suggests that the full force with which the artist threw himself into his work when he retumed to México allowed him to be "creador que redime con su creacion de un modo incruento" [creator who, with his creation, redeems in the manner of an offeringl.74 His Creacibn was aptly named, for he started unloading the heavy burden he was carrying in Europe, and began his first attempt at creating a new identity for his people whose heterogeneity overwhelmed him. In Creacih (1923) at the Preparatoria-a

transitional work-Rivera

introduces some indigenous figures in what appears to be an ailegorical work on universal culture. However, what is striking in this mural are the skin colour and the facial features of the figures represented, a most obvious early reference-in

what is still a rather classically inspired work-to

the multiracial

character of Mexico. When writing the official description for it, Rivera remarked that he alluded directly to "our race through the chosen representative elernents, and their location and hierarchy within the composition: from the pure autochthonous type to the Spanish (Castilian) passing through representative mestizos".75 Many years later, he referred to

73 Ramon Gornez de la Serna, lsmas (1931), (Buenos Aires: Editorial Brujula, 1968), p. 31 6. 74 Ibid., p. 326. 75 Diego Rivera, "Las pinturas decorativas del anfiteatro de la Preparatoria", published in the Boletin de la Secretaria de Educacion Publica (18 de enero de 1923). Reprinted iri Diego Rivera, Arte ypolifica, Raquel Tibol, ed. (México: Grijalbo, 1979), p. 29. (My translation).

the therne of this mural as "a racial history of Mexico through figures representing ail the types that had entered the Mexican blood stream, from the autochthonous lndian to the present-day half-breed Spanish IndianW.76 The Pantocrator, or emergent man-whether like figure, or as the hybrid new Mexican-appears

interpreted as a Christto be rnestizo, but it is not

clear. His face iç noticeably darker than his body. The Adam and Eve figures were described as a mestizo couple by Stanton C a t h who at the same time characterized Eve as an indigenous woman while Rivera is silent on the rnatter.77 Rivera assumes that the relationship between the levels of Indiannness, and the various virtues and creative forces that he depicted have a significance according to the "location and hierarchy" he assigned them. This assertion does not make it any easier for the viewer to distinguish the degree of "lndianness" or "Spanishness" of the figures in the mural. However, his descriptions that are intensely concemed with the syrnbolic assignation of shades of colour and racial degrees of purity are in themselves revealing of his concem with the issue of race. In Creacion, the "indigenous" figures are those representing Faith: "india purisiman78[very pure Indian], Tradition: "obrera india" [working-class Indian], and Justice": "tipo indio puro" [pure lndian type], and to a lesser

76 Diego Rivera with Gladys March, My Art, My Life (New York: The Citadel Press. 1960), p. 130. This so-called autobiography was written from notes taken by March between 1944 and 1957, and may not always be reliable. 77 Stanton L. Catlin, "Mural censusn in, Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, op. cit.. p. 237-9.

78 The following quotes are from ibid.. and the translations are mine.

degree, Fable: "rostro sutil moreno macerado" [subtle-featured face in macerated brown colour]. Justice, represented by a "pure" lndian would appear to condemn the Western legal system prefening to it natural justice, as ideally exercised by the indigenous people. It is rather significant that Wisdom, at the top on the feminine side (Earth), is described as a "figura recia de india suriana" [the strong-featured face of a Southem Indian], while on the opposite masculine side (Water), Science is described as being of ''tipo arion [Aryan type]. This is obviously, a symbolic illustration of the nature/culture, European (Spanish)/American (lndian) dichotomies. The women representing culture (Dance, Song, Comedy, Erotic Poetry) are creoles (native born of European ancestry), while Tragedy wears a mask, possibly indicating that true Mexican culture has been hiding, and masquerading under false European pretenses. At the time, the reception of this first Rivera mural was expressed in typical contradictory ternis based on the Mexican struggle of the day between the poles of local and foreign cultural influences. It was either l'futuristic", "intensely nationalistic" (Manuel Maples Arce), of ttArnericanisticstyle" (Antonio Caso), and as done "within a purely organic Mexicanisrn free of unhealthy and fatal picturesqueness", or it was "pseudocubistic" (José Clemente Orozco) and a work of 'Yuturistic jokes".79 A more recent critic interprets it as an attempt at combining these local and foreign influences. While I agree with Hans Haufe that there is strong evidence of European

79 The quotes, some of which are unidentified, are taken from Jean Charlot, The Murai Renaissance, 1920-7925(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963),between pp. 146-9.

fonnal devices in Creacion, and while it may "exalt [...] the moment of a future universal culture, in which European and Arnerican elements are harmoniously amalgamated",8° 1 believe that, Creacih fundamentally expresses Rivera's groping with the whole issue of race that suddenly confronted him when he retumed to his country. Alejo Carpentier writes that the faces Rivera painted expressed "un caracter racial en vez de ser simples retratos" [a racial nature, rather than being simple portraitsJ.81 Like other Mexicans at that time, the painter was essentially trying to define a new identity. The overwhelming presence of the Indian, revealed by the Revolution, became a central concem, especially for those intellectuals who had experienced European cultural hegemony first hand during their European sojourn, as did Rivera. His first mural is his personal struggle with the issue of Mexico's Indianness, and his first attempt at engaging the public in that discussion. Like Picasso's Les Demoiselles, Creacion either shocked or delighted its public with the primitiveness of its figures and modem painting style,82 however, unlike the Picassian landmark, it was not an expression of "outrage",*3 but an exploration in self-definition based on cultural and racial

80 My translation. Hans Haufe, "Rivera, la historia y los mitosnin Goya V, no. 207 (noviembre-diciembre de 1988),p. 151. 81 Carpentier explains that Rivera scandalized his public because they offered " m a vision personal de la realidadn[a personal vision of reality], Alejo Carpentier, "Diego Rivera", Plural, 211 (abri1 de 1989), p. 41.

82 It mostly shocked students who were studying there. In fact, Alejo Carpentier refers to the "atmosfera de hostilidad" [the atmosphere of hostility] in which Rivera's work was received. Ibid., p. 42. 83 According to John Berger, The Moment of Cubism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969), pp. 72-3.

concems. More than exalting a "future and universal culture", I believe Creacion is Rivera's first attempt aî constructing a contemporary Mexican culture that the Revolution was creating, a culture that would stand up-rich and hybrid-to

any European culture. In Creacion, Rivera endeavoured to

position himself and his country culturally. So in this first mural, whose title suggests the creation of both the Mexican subject and Mexican culture, he showed a preoccupation with the racial issue, created I believe, by his first impression of contrast with Europe in ternis of visible or phenotypic differences. Later, at the Secretaria (1923-1928), on the first floor, Rivera first depicted contemporary Mexicans, workers and peasants, but mostly rural Indian figures, engaged in their everyday life of work and traditional festivities. The Mexican folklore he introduced represented his own re-discovered contemporary and "exotic" culture. Here he started to use some elements of the Aztec civilization, mostly symbols of Nahuatl culture. However, the niurals on the second floor are no longer an idealized depiction of rural lndian life. On the contrary, they are a story of ths hardships the indigenous people endured, and the social improvements brought on, or rather intended, by the Revolution, for Rivera believed the Revolution would continue and triumph. The concern here is not so much with folklore but with the folks whose life was a struggle. When he became more aware of the social situation, and the post-revolutionary regirne started to consolidate the ideology of the revolution, his earlier preoccupation with race faded and was replaced by that of classes in his depiction of the rich and the poor, the exploitation and the continued

struggle. At Chapingo (1926-1W i ) ,Rivera described the peasant, his land, the agrarian nature of the country, and the uneasy relation of rural Mexico with modernization, as weli as the new, or future, agricultural order. In the next phase, with the frescoes at the Palacio de Cortés in Cuernavaca (1930-1W l ) , and the large triptych inside the Palacio Nacional (1929-1930 and 1945-1951), Rivera launched a massive re-writing of Mexican history. He re-constructs a history and pre-history (pre-Conquest) of the country from a Mexican (idealized) perspective by reverting the civilized/barbarian opposition, finding an originary validation in the (mythologized) Aztec past under the watch of Quetzalcoatl (the plumed serpent and god of creation), explaining the present reality by linking it to the atrocities of the Conquest. He then brings to the fore heroes of struggles for independence and the Revolution, and closes in the Palacio Nacional, by depicting the (utopian) promised land of socialism with the universal hero, Karl Marx, who ushers the Mexican people into their bright future.84 As I look back at Picasso's Les Demoiselles with its underlying codes, and its fears about diseases from the black periphery I venture to suggest that in the murals, Rivera subverted the tropes of barbarisrn by portraying the Spaniards as barbarians and Cortés as syphilitic.

In a third phase, the murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts depict workers no longer identified as Mexicans, but where Aztec forms are

84 A few themes from both the first and second phases were reproduced with some changes on movable murals for Rivera's retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. These will be examined in Part Three, Chapter Six.

intertwined with the modem machine. In a fourth phase, the murals of the Hotel Reforma offer a satirical depiction of the way Rivera perceives the American "tourist" vision of Mexican Indianness. Finally, the

Pan American

Unityfresco of 1940 at the City College of San Francisco may well be Rivera's Swan Song in his dream for the realization of a hemispheric artistic association led by Mexico.85 The indigenous for Rivera, like the primitive for Picasso, was a key to "the e~sential",~6 the essence of the Mexican. But in his initial stage, Rivera's muralism borrowed from contemporary folk life, only later tuming to the archaic past, that originary space where indigenous people had been neither contaminated nor subjugated by the Spaniards. Along with other modems, Rivera must be viewed, "as needing the primitive and as inventing the primitive that fit their needsn.*7So, while the need is there in both cases, the difference between them is found in the kind of primitive chosen, and the treatment given it. While in Europe Rivera shared with European modemists the alienation from modem and urban life that made them turn to what they perceived idealistically as the unalienated world of the primitive. In the case of the Mexican artist the primitive became the rural Indian. But instead of decontextuaking or abstracting foms of lndian culture in his paintings, he uses techniques of modern art to construct an idealized, enchanting, and

85 Later murals do not enter in the scope of this study. 86 Marianna Torgovnick. Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), p. 151.

87 Ibid., p. 174.

colourful lndian society as on the first floor of the Secretaria. It is difficult to determine whether he was succumbing to a modemist reaction to the exotic, or whether it was part of a strategy to tame his new patron, Vasconcelos, and rnaybe his new public, so that he could later introduce the critical work depicted on the second floor. If we see European primitivism as "a process of the recontextualization of images"88that have been extracted from sornewhere else, then Rivera's images of the indigenous could be said to have subverted or countered that process of appropriation by retuming the images to their "own", even if idealized, context. While he may follow the European process by abstracting indigenous culture in order to construct it as Mexican, he however, then subverts it by reclaiming the specificity of tirne and space othewise purposely transcendent in European appropriation. The primitivist "technique du dépaysement" of the depicted unknown is substituted by the indigenist technique that presents the familiar and recognizable. While Rivera shares with Western artists a need for the primitive to resolve a 'ccrisisin identity", he does not "need to demarcate subject [West] and object [non West]",89 but rather one subject (Mexican) from another (European). lndigenismo in Rivera's art is a kind of nationalist primitivism, or the appropriation of the local primitive archaic and/or folkloric for the purpose of defining borders and nationalities that have been negated. The same

88 Miller, "Primitive Art and the Necessity of Primitivism to Art", op. cit., p. 61. 89 Torgovnick, Gone Primitive, op. cit., p. 157.

"passion for closely marked and definable beginnings and endings that will make what cornes between them coherent narrations" that explains "our interest in the primitive"90 animates Rivera and the European primitivists. But for Rivera the interest is not driven only from personal existential angst that questions the established order of the centre, like in the case of Picasso, but as part of a collective need not to question, but rather, to construct a new identity. Cultural indigenismo in the Mexico of the Menties was not so much an act of resistance to, and subversion against European primitivism as seen in the more recent art of some African countries, but more an act of affirmation. While subversion is mocking and irreverent, the art based on a need for affirmation is guided by the resolve to build a culture that will prove equal or surpass the culture against which it tries to assert itself.

The ancient lndian civilization, particularly the examples of ancient art it had left behind, provided the originary grounding for national legitimacy, and the folk art produced-mostly

in rural areas-demonstrated the continuity of

that artistic tradition, which was dreamt of as uninterrupted by the Conquest. That sorest of al1 experiences was seen as responsible for a hybridity and heterogeneity that created endless anxieties for the "new Mexican" in the search of an identity that could finally resolve the contradictions and re-unite the fragments. In his first mural stage Rivera borrowed from the popular and foikloric rather than the archaic. He did not give the metropolis the "mask or

Ibid., p. 245.

[...] gnnning skull"9l by which it acknowledges sorne peripheral areas. Instead, he forced it to reckon with a conternporary people, and although this people might appeal by its "exoticism", it must be accepted as a people in its own right. In the next chapter, I study the full production of Mexican Folkways. That magazine. which contributed to a large extent to the construction of cultural Mexicanness, as well as to Rivera's notoriety, especially outside Mexico, provides important clues to the understanding of the Mexican "primitive". The magazine functioned as a museum that "collected" mainly rural Mexican folklore between its pages, while Rivera, in his role as ait editor, used it as a forum to teach about modem and popular art, mostly derived from urban production.

91 Franco, La cultura moderna, op. cit., p. 360.

Chapter Three

Rivera the Art Editor: Mexican Folkways Mexican Folkways was published in Mexico by Frances Toor, an American resident in Mexico who had graduated from the University of Califomia, and had fallen under the spell of Mexican folklore when she first came to Mexico in 1922.1 The bilinguzl magazine-whose remained singularly untranslated-appeared

title, however,

between 1925 and 1937, though

by 1933, it had effectively ceased to be a quarterly.2 What makes this magazine interesting for my purposes is the focus on the popular and the indigenous. The publication was specifically provided for the education of politicians, intellectuals, and artists in Mexico and the United States, at a tirne of intense and confticted political relations between the two countries, and of mutual cultural discoveries between the North and the South? Relevant as well are the relationship between the publication and the Mexican govemment, and the involvement in the magazine of the intellectual

Helan Delpar, The Enormous Vogue o f Things Mexican (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1992), p. 36.

2 There were effectively 32 regular issues between 1925 and 1933, and 3 special ones between 1934 and 1937. In each of the following years: 1925, 1927,1928,1929, 1930, and 1932 the magazine published four numbers. In 1926, the second year, there were six numbers, and In 1933, there were only two. In each of 1934, 1935, and 1937 the magazine published a total of three special numbers. In 1931, publication was suspended for the whole year. In her foreword, Toor refers to Dr. Manuel Gamio, the influential anthropologist, and then sub-secretary at the Ministry of Education, as considering the magazine to be the first one to "present the masses of the Mexicans to the American peoplen, Mexican Folkways (MFfrom here on), vol. 1, no. 1.

community in Mexico-that

is Mexican artists, writers, and anthropologists in

particular, as well as their Amencan counterparts in ternporary residence in the country. In short, Mexican Folkwayç provides invaluable visual and written testirnonies on the cultural edifice, and the complex cultural relations in which Rivera became a dominant player. However, what makes the magazine even more relevant for this study is the fact that Rivera himself was art editor for rnost of the magazine's life. I examine here his influence on the cultural scene through Fo/kways,and what the magazine reveals about his, and other contributors' views on the complex question of the Mexican cultural indigenismo or Mexicanismo of the period4 A study of the magazine helps shed some light on the evolution of Rivera's role in the indigenist debate, as well as to what extent the Western primitivism(s) to which he was exposed while in Europe might have deterrnined his approach to the indigenous and the popular in Mexico. In other words, it helps understand how Rivera-as

an artist from the periphery-responded to his

European exposure to modem art, and adapted his experience to the circumstances in his native country while pursuing his own goals. I try to uncover this through an analysis of inclusions, exclusions, and changes in the magazine-whether

of artists, authors, board members, articles,

Because of the long and comptex evolution of indigenisrno in Mexico. it is important to specify the particular historical time under scrutiny. The following articles help to put each moment in the history of indigenismo in perspective: Martin S. Stabb, "lndigenism and Racism in Mexican Thought, 1857-1911" in Journal of Inter-American Studies, 1 (1959),pp. 405-443, and Alan Knight, "Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940' in Thomas Skidmore, Aline Heig and Alan Knight, eds., The ldea of Race ln Latin America, 1870-1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990),pp. 71-113.

advertisements, editoriais, or illustrations-that

expose the interna! politics of

the magazine under Rivera's art editorship.5 An examination of Folkways provides a way to map out Rivera's active participation in, and dominance over, the cultural scene in Mexico. I continue to argue that, upon retuming to his native land, Rivera did not only seek to dominate the sphere of visual arts with his kilometres of mural painting. He also endeavoured-through whichever means possible-to

ensure a

prominent position within Mexican culture, for (modern) plastic art in general and his own in particular. He became the dominant artist that Picasso's presence, and other factors, had denied him in Europe. However, unlike his European rival, he also became the main theoretician, the critic-whose approval of other artists meant their recognition-and

his own publicity agent,

since dealers were irrelevant in the promotion of public mural painting. He took on the job of an Apollinaire and a Kahnweiler al1 at once. Folkways provided him with a perfect forum and significant exposure that would contribute to his own recognition within and beyond Mexican borders, and help him carry out his Pan American project for the dominance of a New World art. Jean Charlot, the young French artist recently arrived from Paris to paint murals, was the first art editor of Folhays pioneering it through its first

1 am not aware of any in-depth study of Mexican Folkways, especially not in terms of Rivera's role in it. The only publication 1 have been able to corne across is a bibliography by Ralph Steele Boggs, "Bibliografia completa, clasificada y cornentada, de los articulos de Mexican Folkways (MF), con indice", in Boletri, Bibliografico de Antropologia Americana, Mexico, D.F., vol. VI (1945), pp. 221-268. Though useful, this bibliography does not provide an analysis of the magazine.

four numbers from June to December 1925.6 When he went to Yucatan to draw archaeological findings with the Carnegie expedition headed by Dr. Sylvanus Marley, he had to leave his position with the magazine, and Rivera became the second, and last art editor. How exactly did Rivera obtain the job? Was he once again at the right place, at the right tirne, as Alejo Carpentier had said,' or did he maneuver his way into an influential position that he knew could help him achieve dominance?8 This would be more than an honorary position, different from the kind that he would later accept on many occasions. The art editorship of Folkways would require work, and time away from his painting, but it was a job he could il1afford not to undertake,

precisely in order to ensure the survival and success of his creative production. In her editorial, Frances Toor announced that her new art editor

It is interesting to notice that Laurance P. Hurlburt places Rivera's starting date as art editor of Folkways as June 1925, which is the date of the very first issue. Though Charlot's name is mentioned as art editor in the first four issues, it is obvious that Rivera's influence was such that Hurlburt believed he had always held that position. "Diego Rivera (1886-1 957): A Chronology of His Art, Life and Times" in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective (Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts Founders Society; New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1986), p. 59. Alejo Carpentier, "Diego Rivera" in Plural, 211, (abri1 de 1989), p. 43. Carpentier, the Cuban novelist, visited Mexico in 1926 and started a close friendship with Rivera. It is conceivable that Rivera, who had managed to get rid of most of his collaborators on his mural project at the Secretaria, including Charlot, would be actively involved in the take over of the art editorship of the magazine. It goes without saying that he would be more powerful and effective if he could control the magazine, than if he just remained a contributor, or were to join the board. There is no doubt that he was involved from the beginning in some way, even maybe in the actual conception of the paper-as he had in other cultural projects-but certainly as a contributor. In any case, the first number contains an insert of his Fiesta at Santa Anita, between pages 16 and 17. Rivera shared his new interest in the popular and indigenous with a number of other artists and intelIectuals, including Jean Charlot, and Frances Toor. They traveled to many villages around the country to learn about the local artistic production.

would be Diego Rivera, "Mexico's rnost farnous and greatest artist" (MF5 (1926): 29).

Toor knew she had made a good catch that would greatly contribute to the recognition and popularity of her magazine. From Rivera's standpoint, on the other hand, this appointment provided him with an effective platform from which to enter the printed world. While writers in Mexico had had literary magazines to promote them, and while these publications did contribute to some degree in raising public awareness of contemporary visual art, artists

did not have as much printed exposure as did writers. Unlike magazines promoting the literaiy genres, publications more specifically dedicated to the visual arts were less readily availahle, and professional art critics were limited.9 Furthemore, Mexican Folkways as its name indicates, would deal more specifically with art produced in Mexico, and mostly traditional indigenous art, while literary magazines published in Mexico introduced their readers to European writings and trends as well as to Latin American art worthy of inclusion into these "universal" trends. While Folkways served without any doubt as a marketing agency for Rivera's art,lO it also became one of the didactic tools with which he pursued

one of his objectives: to educate the public about modern art, more specifically, a 'new' Mexican modem art, and ultimately, his own. I contend that the subtle evolution of Folkways, from that of a basically ethnographic

One of these art journals, Frente A Frente, received subsidies from the Ministry of Education. Its editor was artist Gabriel Fernandez Ledesma. I o Besides the local market, it helped open up the US market in which he would personally enter in 1930, only four years later.

publication to one that incorporated-albeit

very selectively-modem

Mexican

art, was Rivera's doing.11 The exposure of lndian customs and artistic expressions in the magazine gave him a platforni from which he could introduce the readers to a Mexican art in the making, to which he was the major contributor. In fact, the first article to appear in the issue that inaugurates Rivera's new position as art editor, is on no less than Mexican painting: "La pintura mexicana: el retratoY'-"Mexican Painting: the Portrait", and authored by no other than Rivera (MF5(1926): 5-8 and 9-10). Over the years, Rivera's contribution to Folkways as art editor was mostly through his choice and placement of art reproduction, of coursemany of which were of his own frescoes-and

scattered drawings-most

of

which were his.12 But as well, he authored eight articles on Mexican art, and was the subject of more writings in the magazine than any other artist.13 As far as I can tell, David Alfaro Siqueiros is never mentioned, and there is only one short review on José Clemente Orozco by Frances Toor. Although she calls him "one of Mexico's leading artists [. ..] acclaimed [in New York] by the

When announcing the changeover of the artistic directorship, Frances Toor suggested that it was "part of my original idea for Mexican Folkways to make it artistic as well as human" (my italics), (MF, vol. 1, no. 5, p. 29). However, if that was indeed her own ideaand not one that had been suggested by Rivera - Folkways only really broached the subject of modern painting when he became its art editor.

'*

These drawings, often signed with a capital D on the lower left side and a capital R on the right side, appear to fil1 in the blanks, but sometimes, Rivera signed "D.R." in the left corner. It has often been said that he did not like visual silences; in his murals no spaces are left unpainted, and in the magazine he would leave no blanks either. l 3 A ninth article was on the name given to pulquerias. Of the eight articles on art, four were strategically placed at the beginning of the issues in which they appeared. Two of his articles were reprinted later in special numbers of the magazines: "Caroline Durieux, Mexican Painter", and "Children's Drawings in Present Day Mexico". The latter was also reprinted in the United States in The School Arts Magazine in February, 1932.

best critics as one of the great Mexican artists of the world" (MF4 (1928): 194-9), Orozco sent in a terse reply.14 The controversy between Toor and the painter touches directly on the issue of indigenismo. Orozco attacks Toor for having misnamed Modotti's photograph of a scene of one of his murals. He objects to her calling it "Cortés y Malintzi: The lndian Race Under Their Feet".

He argues that his fresco gives equal space and status to the two races, and that the figure "underfoot" represents what had occurred, "the end of a state of things, as the Conquest undoubtedly was". He affirms that his representation of the lndian is unique both in Mexico, and elsewhere, and that he has glorified "the indigenous race" (MF1 (1929): 9). Never did he "flatter[ ...] him nor falsify[y his] true nature...", a statement that could be perceived as a veiied attack on Rivera. It is unfortunate, for our purposes, that the discussion ended there, and that no one thought to elaborate on the meaning of "flattery" ("adulation")15 and "glorification", and on their alleged difference when referring to Indians. This excuse allowed Orozco tc be included in Folkways, as apparently, the art editor16 had not felt it important to print an article on him, even after

l4 Unless indicated, al1 quotes in both English and Spanish versions are from the original texts. They are transcribed here exactly as the original with or without capital letters, accents, spelling, or grammatical mistakes, etc. The magazine was generally poorly typeset.

l5 Orozco used the verb "adular". j6 It appears that Toor regarded him as "such a great artist" that çhe did not rnind being called "an imbecile" by him. So I think it is safe to assume that it was because of Rivera's infiuence that Orozco was not given more space in the magazine. It her short note of explanation regarding the title she had given Orozco's fresco, she says that she had "consult[ed] with someone [she] thought competent to explain the meaning of the fresco". It is entertaining (and not so farfetched) to speculate that the person in question might have been Rivera, who would find a title to offend his rival!

two and a haIf years of publication. It also gave Orozco the opportunity to attack his rival, Rivera, and his depiction of the indigenous. But Orozco would not be given another opportunity in Folkways, as painters of the calibre of Siqueiros and Orozco would be kept in the role of pretenders, ignored as potential dominant actors. While other fellow painters, such as Adolfo Best Maugard, Roberto Montenegro, Miguel Covarrubias, Agustin Lazo, and Dr. Atl each contributed one article, and Carlos Mérida wrote two, it is worth noting that these artists were included as authors, rather than as contemporary painters whose work was worth discussing. The magazine did not offer any space to possible cornpetitors of Rivera in the field of painting. The artists about whom Rivera himself wrote include foreign phctographers (Edward Weston and Tina Modotti), a sculptor, and an architect, but only one painter, Caroline Durieux. The American critic, Howard Parker reviewed painters, such as Rufino Tarnayo, Carlos Mérida, Luis Ortiz Monasterio, and Carlos Orozco Romero, and the poet, Xavier Villaurutia wrote about Maria Izquierdo.17 However, al1 these reviews were published in 1932, the year Rivera was busy painting murals in the United States, and therefore, presumably, not available to effectively perform his duty as art editor of Mexican Folkways. Unlike Mexican literary publications that focused on the international avant-garde, Folkways unearthed the popular, the folk, the local, what was seen as the expression of the Indian/Mexican essence. Under Rivera's art

l7 In 1927, Frances Toor wrote about Mhirno Pacheco, an assistant to Rivera. In 1928, Folkways devoted a whole issue to Posada, the famous deceased engraver, and also published a monograph on him with an introduction by Rivera.

editorship, the magazine in general, and Rivera in particular, made a point of showing the connection and reievance of vemacular customs to the production of Fine Art in Mexico. The magazine dwells on children and na-ive art as well as masks-the

same kind of "primitive art", and primitive inspired

art, produced in Europe-and

introduces retablos (ex-votos), corridos

(popular ballads), mural paintings in pulquerias (popuiar bars), etctraditional and popular artistic expressions specific to Mexico. By identifying the similarities-that

is the production of a "primitive art" on both continents-

Mexico would be placed on an equal footing with Europe. By stressing the differences, namely a richer and "exotic" folklore-with rooted in very ancient traditions-Mexico

the distinction of being

would be set apart from Europe,

whereby Mexican art would be granted its "originality". After the Sindicato de Obreros Técnicos y Pintores y Escultores [Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors] disbanded in 1924,1* and Rivera resigned from the Mexican Comrnunist Party in April 1925, he lost the privilege of writing in ElMachete. That broadsheet, mainly in the hands of painters-first

as the paper of the SOTPE until 1924, then as the official

organ of the Mexican Communist Party-had

provided Rivera with a forum

from which to broadcast his ideas on art. Even without these events, one can speculate that his involvement with El Machete would not have lasted long because David Alfaro Siqueiros dominated the paper.19 Mexican Folkways

j8

Rivera resigned from the union after disagreements with the other muralists.

El Machete was apparently an idea of Graciela Amador, Siqueiros' wife. Margaret Hooks, Tina Modotti, Photographer and Revolutionary (London: Pandora, 1993),p. 81.

j9

offered an alternative with great potential and Rivera did not loose any tirne in joining it. Even before he became artistic editor, his name tumed up in the first issue as a contributor, though al1 that appeared in that issue was an insert of a reproduction of his work, Fiesta de Santa

He is referred to

as "the most discussed artist at home and the most ceiebrated abroad", and said to believe that lasting art "should be based on folk themes and placed where people can enjoy it" (MF1 (1925):30). Then, in the third number, Folkways published an article on retablos by Rivera.

It is important to note that the first article in the initial issue is by Manuel Gamio, the American-trained anthropologist and, according to the magazine, a leader in "creative science". (MF1 (1925): 30). What was presumably meant by this strange juxtaposition of words describing the methodological basis of Gamio's project was his attempt at designing a scientific system to analyse the artistic work of the indigenous populations.*' For Gamio the solution to what he (and José Vasconcelos) saw as "the race problem" was to raise the lndians to the level of present western civilization

so that they would be able to grasp the scientifically based knowledge taught in Mexican schooIs.22 Gamio was a believer in modernity and modern

*O 1 have not been able to find evidence for Rivera's earlier involvement in the creation of Folkways, but, like in other cultural initiatives of the period, if Rivera was not part of the initial idea, his name would somehow, become associated with the project. 21 As explained in Part One, Chapter Two.

22 Vasconcelos and Gamio respectively wrote articles titled 'The Race Problem in Latin America", and "fncorporating the lndian in the Mexican Population" in Aspects of Mexkan Civilization, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1 926),pp. 75-102 and 105-127.

scientific progress23to which he thought the Indianlmestizopopulation should have access, but he did not want this backward majority to loose its traditions. He favoured, for example, a blend of their traditional healing practices and the

advances of modem medicine, and of the traditional foods and modem hygienic techniques. Presumably, for Gamio, the lndian's "primitive" artistic talents were to be retained for the uniqueness and distinctiveness they brought the Mexican

nation. However, in al1 other aspects, their "backward" ways had to be upgraded "from a stage of darkness, organic misery, and general malaise to

one of satisfactory knowledge and of intellectual and material well-beingH(MF 1 (1925): 7). To bring this educational process to fruition rneant to "mould" the lndian mind i'into the ways of modem thought" (MF1 (1925): 71,it was crucial to first know (scientifically) how that lndian mind worked, and how the lndians Iived. He welcomed Mexican Folkways specifically because he felt it could contribute to a better understanding of "the true aspects of the sou1 of the people", especially by his colleagues in the social sciences and by politicians (MF 1 (1925):7).24 Throughout its publication, Folkways wouid serve as a legitimizing agent for official indigenismo by popularizing ethnographic data, rnuch of which came from officially sanctioned investigation. The inclusion of such luminaries as Gamio would give the magazine the weight and credibility that

23 Gamio, like his contemporaries, had received an education strongly anchored in Comtian positivism. 24 Gamio contributed financially as well. ( MF4 (1 932):207).

brought a wider readership.25 In the first year of its publication, the magazine included many "collaborators" besides Gamio, and Toor, who worked for the Department of Anthropology (presumably at the University of Mexico). Some of these were anthropologists and ethnographers also from the Department of Anthropology. Others found their way to the editorial board through their friendship with Toor, who belonged to the bohemian circle of Mexico City, as did for example, Anita Brenner, the future joumalist, and author of the celebrated ldols Behind Altars, the American author Carleton Beals, the painter Dr. At!, and others.26 With the publication of the eleventh issue, in 1927-introducing larger format-a

a new

list of "contributing editors" appeared above the table of

content. The composition of editors varied over the years. it comprised a mix of Mexican and American anthropologists and ethnographers, politicians (including President Calles) and highly placed govemment officiais, some artists, but scarcely any literary figures. The eleventh issue records Tina Modotti as contributing editor, the only woman on that list. Her art had been praised by Rivera in his 1926 article on Edward Weston and Modotti, and her photographs, mainly of Rivera's f rescoes, were always advertised in the

25 Gamio held an important post in the Ministry of Education until shortly before then. I was unable to find information regarding circulation numbers of Mexican Folkways.

26 Idols Behind Altars (New York: Payson & Clarke, 1929).Charlot, Anita Brenner ("the object of Charlot's unrequited loven, Margaret Hookes, Tina Modotti, op. cit. p.117), Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, Carleton Beal's brother Ralph, Dr. Atl and his wife Nahui Olin, Lupe Marin and her husband Diego Rivera, Bertam and EIIa Wolfe, and others met regularly for discussions and wild parties.

magazine." Modotti was also a good friend of Frances (Paca) Toor, and was for a while Rivera's mode1 and lover.28 At that point, she was already an activist, but had not yet joined the Mexican Communist P a r t ~ . ~ Though g she was expelled from Mexico in early 1930, and was to retum only in 1939, her narne appears as contributing editor until early 1932. It is doubtful that she would have been able to contribute to the magazine while in exile, as she was busy fulfilling political missions for the Communist Party in various European countries. Before she left for Europe she wrote about photography in Folkways describing the medium as one that can capture objectively the present moment, and claiming that the documentary quality of photography grants it "a place in social production" (MF4 (1929):198). Another name thaï appears alongside Modotti's is that of the poet Salvador Novo.30 Though he contributed only one article on (popular) literature (MF3 (1929),his name is present as contributing editor almost throughout the life of the publication. Novo was a friend of Rivera's, in spite of

27 The Italian-American photographer had come to Mexico in 1923 with Edward GVeston. She

met Rivera that summer. Later that year, she started photographing the Secretaria muraisEventually some of her other photographs graced the pages of the macjazine. 28 Modotti's nude body appears in a mural of the Chapingo chape1 painted by Rivera.

29 She joined the Mexican Communist Party in late 1927. See Hooks, Tina Modoiti, op. cit. for more information on the photographer. 30 It is interesting to note that. according to Margaret Hooks, Salvador Novo was the magazine Forma's "own censor". (Hooks, Tina Modotti, op. cit., p. 142). Cuauhtémoc Medina considers Forma the "first and most important Mexican art magazine of the first half of the century" (my translation). Diseiïo antes del diseno: diseno grafico en México, 1920-1960,

estudio, notas y selecciones de imagenes por Cuauhtémoc Medina, México: Museo de Arte Carrillo GiI, 1991, p.18. The magazine was short Iived (1 926-1928). Novo's article in Folkways appeared in 1929, though it seems that he joined the magazine as contributor at least in 1927.

at least one fierce public exchange. Rivera depicted him in one of his frescoes at the Secretaria on al1 fours and with donkey's ears.31 This characterization was an attack on the literary and theatrical groups to which Novo beionged, respectively the Contemporaneos and L h e s , and their interest in foreign works.32 The donkey's ears are also, I venture to guess, a subtle and playful reference to the Russian "Donkey's Tail" group that, in Moscow in 1912, organized an exhibition "as the first conscious breakaway from Europe, and the assertion of an independent Russian schooln.33 Novo replied to the visual attack in a poem, "La Diegada", that is no less flattering. Yet, this quarrel did not cost them their friendship, which lasted until the painter died.34 Novo was one of the very few literary figures, along with Xavier Villaurutia, to contribute to Folkways, but of the two articles he wrote, only one is on literature. lt is interesting to note that Novo1spiece on popular literature

31 Right after Rivera's death, Novo reminisced, without any rancor, about how Rivera enjoyed

making fun of some peaple, including himself. Salvador Novo, "Cartas a un amigo", Hoy, 14 de diciembre de 1957, p. 30. 32 The Sindiczto de Obreros Técnicos, Pintores y Escultores and the Contemporaneos had

opposing views on the role of art which they often debated. Alicia Azuela, "El Machete and Frente a Frente: Art Committed to Social Justice in México" in Art Journal, (Spring 1993),p. 83. Antonieta Rivas Mercado, another supporter of Lhises appears alongside Novo in the famous mural. Portrayed as a woman of leisure, she is handed a broom, because as the phrase from the corrido above proclaims: "ÉI que quiera corner que trabaje" [He who wants to eat should work]. All translations in square brackets in the text and notes are mine, unless specified. 33 Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art: 1863-1922(New York: Harry N. Abrams,

1962), pp. 132-3. Two of the organizers were Natalya Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov who became friends with Rivera when they went to Paris two years later, in 1914. 34 On the occasion of Rivera's 7othbbihday, Novo wrote: "Nuestm siglo es el de Rivera." [Our century belongs to Rivera]. Elisa Garcia Barragan y Luis Mario Schneider, Diego Rivera y los escritores mexicanos. Antologla tributaria (México: UNAM, 1 986),p. 145. W hen the painter died, Novo was still close to the family as is revealed in a letter written by Novo to a friend about Rivera's death. "Cartas a un amigo" in Hoy (México), (December 14, 1957), pp. 28-30.

was written after Rivera had made fun of him on the wall of the Secretaria.

The other article by Novo is on the open-air schools of painting. In it he reiterates the often repeated assumptions about the "innate" aptitudes of the Mexican Indian, inherited f rom his pre-Coh mbian ancestors, and the defensive attitude adopted by the Mexican intelligentsia towards Europe in matters of art (MF1 (1928):24-27). Before Rivera took over as art editor, the arts-as

opposed to crafts-

were only represented in the magazine by means of illustrations. it was he who initially introduced the subject of Mexican art in the first number for which he assumed the art editorship in 1926. In the first four numbers, artists such as Charlot, Dr. Atl, and Carlos Mérida contributed their thoughts in writing, but their articles dealt exclusively with folkloric aspects such as lndian dances and textiles. Charlot's article on the "esthetics of lndian dances" compares the "decadence" of Western dance with the beauty of the indigenous ones, based on the "mathematical passion" with which movements and adornments relate to one another (MF2 (1925): 4).35 Charlot's purpose here is to reverse the civilized/barbarian opposition by comparing Western and lndian dances, and to urge a new respect for, and the "assimilation" of these "pure" sources in Western culture (MF2 (1925): 6). Presumably, he wanted to reveal these new sources to Western artists who needed to quench their thirst for renewal, essence, and originality. Like his European co!leaguesl discovery of the

35 Charlot mentions Russian and Swedish ballet as attempting to achieve the kind of "essential representation" with which he characterizes lndian dances. But he believes they do not completely succeed. It is interesting to note that Rivera's design of the costumes for Carlos Chavez's ballet perforrned in Philadelphia, in the early thirties, were inspired by the ancient codices. Rivera succeeded where Europeans had apparently failed.

formal characteristics of African "sculptures", the French painter expresses fascination with the essence of plastic proportion that he perceives in lndian dances. In the eyes of this young European artist, primitivism had found a new source of originary purity (even if soiled by the Conquerors) in the aesthetics of a popular lndian art with pre-Hispanic roots. In Folkways, much of the Mexican folklore is presented as conternporary manifestations of very ancient indigenous traditions. A sudden interest in both archaeology and ethnography intersected, when major excavations were started, and anthropologists like Gamio, advocated a greater understanding of the lndian ways. The claim of continuity between an ancient civilization and the popular indigenous traditions of the 1920s was more than an exampie of a convenient link between two relatively new disciplines that found fertile grounds in Mexico. That alleged unbroken tie perfectly suited the nationalist aspirations of the governing elite, both in the political and cultural fields, and Folkways would illustrate that connection relentlessly. The magazine tried to shape the judgement of taste in matters of indigenous crafts. Rivera's article on retablos is one forceful instance of it (MF 3 (1925): 7-12). The subtitie of the article about these painted ex-votos is 'Yerdadera Actual y h i c a Expresion Pictorica del Pueblo Mexicanon-6'The True and Only Pictoric (sic) Expression of Mexican People". It clearly discloses the author's rejection of academic painting and Western influences, and his embrace of popular art as true Mexican art. The original version in Spanish differs in interesting ways from the translation into English by Anita

Brenner. The first sentence, which is not included in the English version, declares, in a "riveresque" categorical affirmation, that the only genuine Mexican art that has survived the European and American onslaught is the so-called popular art so despised by the bourgeoisie. It would be reasonable to speculate that this one long sentence was not translated because the daim by Rivera of European and American corruption, and his attack on the Mexican rural and urban establishments would not have been suitable for an American audience. In the rest of the article, the translator (who knew that audience well) expurgated-with

or without the author's consent-some

of

Rivera's most vituperative words, and shortened his interminable sentences. On the other hand, the more virulent Spanish original text, addressed as it was to the Mexican reader, would not only have been acceptable, but indeed welcome in the early post-revolutionaryclimate of Mexico. Rivera feared that in Mexico-similarly

to what happened in some

European countries (including France and Russia)-popular

art might

disappear when "discovered" by intellectuals (scientists, literary types, or politicians). The members of this elite, he thought, corrupt popular art-that utilitarian art-by

adopting it as ornaments for their own surroundings,

changing the use of the artefacts, and dictating their own (bad) taste to their producers by creating demand for mass production. Yet, at the same time that they pretend to guide the production of popular art for their own needs, artists appropriate elements of it to enhance their own "high art". Rivera genuinely admired retables, these small pieces of tin sheets painted by amateur painters as offerings to some saint for the healing of an

is

illness or the miracle of survival from an accident. In Europe, he had talked about Russian icons, and retablos, and as early as 1922 he became the first admirer in Mexico to speak about that old tradition. In Azulejos he compared retablos to the ltalian Trecento and Quattrocento masters, to Mayan and Oriental painting, and to ?he French painters Rousseau and Renoir.36 While in that earlier description he had merely set points of comparison between the retablo, and, old, as well as new European, Oriental, and New World arttherefore placing it on the universal scene-in

the Folkways' article, he

attacks those who do not appreciate the value of this art. Here, he does not study the form or content of retablos, but merely uses them as a rneans to broach the subject of popular painting, a branch of popular art not yet mentioned in previous numbers of Folkways. Furthemore, speaking of retablos allowed him to hammer at the academy, Europeanized bourgeois taste in art, and American mass production, and to bring up the issue of copy versus model-a

sensitive theme for the muralist since the days of his

Parisian association with Picasso. The article is more a discourse about the imposition of foreign models on local aitists/artisans than a study of the retablo, for which he only devotes about a third of the space. Though he recognizes-and

denounces-the

inevitable Spanish influences, he then argues that the Mexican "spirit" has survived and managed to keep a "pure" expression. While acknowledging the blending of two cultures in contact for centuries, he still believes that some

36 Jean Charlot, The Mexican Mural Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press,1963). p. 33-4.

indigenous art has remained unadukerated. He paradoxically proclaims the continuity and purity of a changed, yet untouched civilization. In his next article on Mexican painting, devoted to the portrait, Rivera clarifies his position. Where the indigenous artisan subverts the colonizer's impositions in rnatters of art through a process of adaptation-a Néstor Garcia Canclini calls it-the

sort of "reconversion", as

acadernically trained artist merely copies

the European model. What is most notable in this article, is Rivera's description of retablesand by extension, 'true' Mexican art-as

"super-realist". He defines the spirit

of the Mexican retablo as LA CONClENClA PROFUNDA DE UNA REALIDAD SUPRASENSIBLE, COMUN A TODO EL UNIVERSO Y ESENCIA DE LA NATURALEZA que hace farniliares los hechos milagrosos y vuelve milagros los hechos cotidianos.

The sober, profound recognition of reality, of an intangible, yet nevertheless universal and essential reality, sensitiveness to truth that makes miracles of daily happenings and daily happenings miraculous. (MF3 (1925): 12 and 9) .37 Long before Antonin Artaud, André Breton or Wolfgang Paalen attributed "surrealist" qualities to some Mexican paintings of the Iate thirties, did Rivera see in the retablo's representation of miracles, an element that transcended reality.38 Long before Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rivera saw in the retablo a particular type of magic realisrn avant la lettre. He anticipated what

the Colombian "boom" writer said later to explain the differences between

37 The use of capitals, not respected in the English version, is Rivera's. 38 The French Artaud and Breton, and the Austrian Paalen visited Mexico. Artaud called Maria lzquierdo a surrealist, and Breton similarly characterized Frida Kahlo. Paalen published a few issues of his surrealist magazine DYN in Mexico.

European modemity, and rationality and Latin American perception of reality: "La vida cotidiana en Arnérica Latina nos demuestra que la realidad esta llena de cosas extraordinarias." [Everyday life in Latin America proves that reality is full of the most extraordinary thingsl.39 Though Rivera's article is written in 1925, his "super-realism" is not the Surrealism of the First Surrealist Manifesto of 1924. The magical and irrational aspects of Surrealism may be present in the images expressed in the retablos, but these are neither hallucinatory, nor subconscious images. The retablos, unlike surrealist poetry, and paintings, were not born from rage against a bloody war, or the rejection of a bourgeois or rule-driven art, but from a long tradition of resistance that adapted foreign religious beliefs to indigenous ones and foreign art to indigenous practices. In fact, it had nothing to do with European Surrealism; neither was it an artistic movement, nor were its so-called super-realistic qualities the product of a conscious intellectual and rational decision by its creators. The purpose of the producers of retablos was to paint a votive image dedicated to a saint in gratitude for the happy outcome (miracle) of an accident or an illness that they, or an acquaintance, had suffered. By attributing surrealist qualities to retablos, Rivera attempted once again, to bring the worthiness of Mexican art to the attention of the cultural elites of both the European and American continents, and to clairn a place for it in universal (Western) art history. In an apparently paradoxical way, he

39 Gabriel Garcia Marquez. El olor de la guayaba (Bogota: Editorial La Oveja Negra), 1982, p. 36 (my translation).

asserts that the "beauty", created by the Indian, cornes from his "native" intuition and his resistance to European impositions. This made it possible for the lndian to survive with his art and self-respect intact. Rivera's assumption based on the twin constructs of continuity and purity of lineage, as well as on the native's ability to resist foreign intrusion, allow him to declare that popular art is therefore true Mexican art. This demonstration of Mexican art as 'true' versus "denvative" art, was a necessary first step for the subsequent claim to certain surrealist attributes. Taken together, they serve the purpose of validating (popular) Mexican art. The next move would be to show the relationship between this genuine popular art and modern easel work. Rivera's second article is a "lesson" on the portrait, lesson two in his didactic series on (modern) Mexican art. For him the portrait in Mexico, like the retablo, can be classified as "a very important part of the natural and pure

plastic production of the Mexican racial geniuç". (MF5 (1926): 5). in the original version in Spanish, Rivera in his peculiar custom of talking about the author of the article in the third person, removes himself, as if the authority of the voice were more effective when removed from the "1" of the subjective author. Here, the painter rejects the hierarchy created by Mexican society to categorize its art and artists based on class distinctions and the classification of low and high art. He daims that art-especially painting-that

is not

considered "popular" is often derived from European models. However-and one can assume that he is referring mostly to himself, as well as to other like-

minded fellow artists-some

painters "convert [that mode11 into sornething

really Mexican". (MF5 (1926):6).The "Creole", or native of European

ancestry, had tainted the pure lndian taste and produced a "mestizo" bastardization. Rivera extends this application of corrupted hybridity to the rest of the continent. He provides three illustrations of portraits painted by 'anonymous' painters, one of whom is a woman-the

only one he mentions by name. What

distinguishes these portraits is the sensibiiity they express, and the harmony of volume and color, clairns Rivera. The rnetropolitan taste of the academy does not recognize this art produced by people away from the center who, luckily, have not lost 'Yheir irnpeachable (sic) taste" (gusto innato). Rivera assumes two opposing entities: one close to nature, Indian, pure, "innate", and harmonious from rural Mexico, and the other influenced by (foreign) "civilization", mestizo, adulterated, and ugly, a product of the metropolis. He stresses that these "anonymous" painters have not fallen victim to foreign imitation, yet he attributes to them the enduring and proven qualities of a Goya, Cranach, Titian, or a primitive Flemish painter. So, while he stresses the Mexicanness of these works, he places them on the universal scale where they weigh as rnuch as any foreign or high art creation. In this respect, Rivera followed a trend shared by the cultural and political elites of the continent that stressed the opposition between nature and culture, North and South, and their potentially beneficial cornplementarity. Years later, in 1931, this opposition would still underscore Rivera's exhibition at MoMA in New York, which is the subject of rny last chapter. Rivera's third article rnoves from portraiture to photography. As in previous 'lessons', the teacher uses Edward Weston and Tina Modotti as an

excuse to continue his didactic project. The liberation brought about by photography, says Rivera, has given modem painting more freedom to treat the representation of reality. He mentions the American, Alfred Stieglitz, who, as a great photographer, had recognized the effects of that new liberty on Picasso's work, and had promoted it in New York.40 Fo!lowing Stieglitz, Rivera, the painter, tries to do the same thing for Weston and Modotti, the photographers. Rivera, who knew most of the foreign attists who came to Mexico, had befriended the two Americans, and he liked their work.41 However, he says little about their photography in this article. He uses Weston, who becornes the emblem of the LcAMERICAN ARTIST" (Rivera's emphasis, and his photography, that he presents as the example of an art that combines the "PLASTICITY OF THE NORTH AND THE LIVING

TRADITION OF THE LAND TO THE SOUTH" (Rivera's emphasis, MF 1 (1926): 17).

The fourth "lesson", published in the spring of 1926, is on the painting of pulqueria walls. From the small retabio and the portrait on canvas, Rivera moves to the more public medium of frescoes, and the more urban world of pulquerias. These are popular establishments for social gathering around the drinking of pulque, the alcoholic product of the magueycactus. After having established the validity of Mexican popular art in the painted forms of the minute retablos, and the larger easel works, Rivera's didactic purpose was to

40 Rivera uses this opportunity to stress his friendship to Picasso by referring to him as "the

great painter and my cornrade" (MF2 (1926):16). 41 A photograph of Rivera, taken by Weston, was used by the painter to depict himself in one

of his murals.

lead his readen to the contemporary mural movement. This art form, authenticated by its pre-Hispanic precedence. and its contemporary popular expression, was the final and most original form that Mexican modem art would adopt as itç own and distinctive trademark. Rivera, as the good teacher he was, developed in these articles-like political and cultural events-a

he did in his murals for Mexican

revisionist account of Mexican art as an

important chapter in world art history. This second issue to feature Rivera as art editor appeared around the time Rivera attempted re-admission to the Mexican Communist Party. This may explain, in part, why in this third article he introdoces the worker who joins the rural lndian in the ranks of producers of 'true' Mexican art. For him, pulqueria painters are workers, the real proletarian painters who depict everyday life, and are "the true condensers and transmitors (sic) of the collective aspiration" (MF1 (1926): 17), characteristics that he incidentally also applied to hirnself. He also refers to the vacilada, or the "irony", or humour found on those painted walls. In slang, the word means the kind of extremely exalted laughter that results from smoking marihuana (maybe by extension from drinking pulque?). It can be seen as a "caricature without a moral", a state of "absurd clarity", "oblique fantasy", the juxtaposition of tragedy and farce, reality and fantasy, the serious and the grotesque, a juxtaposition which is not seen as unthinkable.42 Could we interpret Rivera's mention of it, in relation to mural paintings, as another atternpt at drawing attention to a Mexican parody avant la lettre that prefigures that of avant42 Anita Brenner, ldols Behind Altars, op. cit., p. 184.

garde work? Could it also be a confirmation that the vacilada, as an "essential" Mexican characteristic, confers surrealist qualities to Mexican art? 1s the vacilada a coping mechanism that allows the rnestiro to deal with his existential angst? Rivera draws an interesting link between religious and drinking establishments as places where the masses gather to forget their condition. In these places of oblivion, the pulquerias and a few churches,~ the populace h î s been left free by the bourgeoisie to produce its own popular art. As he had done before for the retablo, and the portrait, Rivera repudiates European (Mediterranean, bourgeois, capitalist) impositions in art. However, this time, he specifically blames the attempts at putting an end to the popular painting of pulquerias on the Porfiriato years, and attributes the saving of this popular tradition to the Revolution. Rivera's fourth "lesson" also appears to be a response to those who had criticized his earlier praises of the painters of pulquerias" or had spoken publicly, and in a derogatory fashion about the job of wall painters, including the great admirer of folk art, Dr. Atl himself.45 To defend this kind of art, and reinforce its validity, Rivera uses, once again, a name from the European artistic world in relation to a specific pulqueria painting. He describes it as "INGRISTOPOPULAR" (author's emphasis), or as combining Ingresque and popufar characteristics (MF2 (1926): l2).46 His characterization of the

43 Rivera does draw attention to the otherwise general predominance of bourgeois taste in Mexican churches (MF2 (1926):6). 44 El Democrata (July 20, 1923).Mentioned in Charlot, Mural Renaissance, op. cit., p. 37. 45 Ibid., p. 37. 46 After Cubism, Picasso had also produced Ingres-inspired works, and so had Rivera.

painting of pulquerias as a "complete a i r of interior and exterior decoration, exhibiting a variety of plastic devices and materials foming a harmonious whole, leads him to conclude that wall painting anticipates what he refers to as the "Art of the New Order" (MF2 (1926): 10). He even goes as far as to say that the completeness of this art proves by analogy of results, that in the plastic tendencies, cailed the advance guard, there is a coeficent (sic) that is not only intellectual bourgeois speculation, but also the product of a plant that has deep roots in humanity. (MF2 (1926):10) This final affirmation seems to corne to the defence of modem art by way of the popular art of pulquerias. The ultimate message of this relentless art educator to his readers in Mexico and in the rest of the continent-is

that

modem art is acceptable, human, and universal. He calls for a revolution in aesthetics as in al1 other actions of post-revolutionary society. In his twin article on the "Names of Pulquerias", Rivera continues his efforts to highlight characteristics of Mexican popular art that prove equality

with, if not superiority over, Western art. In this case some of the names of the drinking establishments are not only poetic, but "the best synthetic Mexican poems" (MF2 (1926): 18),possibly referring to the Synthethism of a Gauguin or a Van Gogh. But, what is most startling about this short article, is his ironic description of "the army of very distinguished intellectual activities" involving an interest in "folk-lore" (MF2 (1926): 16). Besides the usual bourgeois, capitalists and imperialists, it is not clear if his criticism includes anthropologists and ethnologists such as those contributing to Folkways, but it certainly could be interpreted that way. This is astonishing coming as it does

from the art editor himself. But, more importantly, it confirms that Rivera's earlier involvernent in the magazine was not based on a mere interest in folklore, but on his determination to dernonstrate, both to Mexicans and Americans, how the rich local sources could be used in the development of a Mexican modern art. The illustration for the Spanish version of the article is a small drawing by Rivera, his visual exarnple of the vacilada (fig. 12). In the centre, he drew a

very large maguey plant that serves as a seat for a white-skinned woman wearing a skirt, high heels, and a hat with a bird perched on it, and holding a little church in her amis. The other figures, though al1 kneeling, are carefully placed in hierarchical order. On the left, a Western looking gentleman in a suit, hat in hand, and carrying a gun, and behind him, an lndian and on the right, a priest, and behind him, an lndian woman carrying a load on her back. The culmination in the cycle of Rivera's "lessons" about modern art in Folkways is an article about new architecture in Mexico. (MF4 (1926): 19-23; 24-27). After all, architecture was the ultirnate art of a new continent in a new

age where space had taken over from tirne, and, therefore, murals became the best-suited painting of that new age. Later, Rivera would be thrilled at the sight of New York's skyscrapers, but ultirnately, frustrated in his quest for American walls in those modem buildings." In this article, MdxicoYscolonial style of the 1gthcentury, product of the dite's servitude to Europe, is

47 Though his frescoes in Detroit were a great success. his subsequent mural in the very

public building of Rockefeller's Radio City was destroyed foliowing the well-known controversy about the depiction of Lenin. While the event brought him a lot of publicity, it closed the doors to further commissions and coçt him the Chicago International Exhibition.

compared to Mussolini inspired art and French academically inspired housing, and criticized as a ploy to integrate Mexican architecture "into European civilization" (MF4 (1926):19 and 20). The bad taste that characterizes that kind of architecture cornes in part, from the purpose and class it serves. Functionality, based on specific climatic conditions and user needs, utilization of local materials (as opposed, for example, to imported marble), and harmonious CO-habitationwith existing traditions are what makes good modem architecture for Rivera. And some young Mexican architects were following just such objectives, among them the man Rivera chose as an example: Carlos Obregon. Obregon's house described in the article is, not only functional, but it manages to blend its "ultra modernity" with the older styles of San Miguel in which it is built. Rivera, who himself had a modern house built in Coyoacan in later years, demonstrates the compatibility of modern architecture with the needs of urban dwellers, including industrial workers. The pipes and wires of the modern conveniences available to the working class are made into a feature in Obregon's new architecture, as they become proud decorations. The architect must be both "sculptor and painter to be authorized to manage usefully and logically forms, volumes and colours; in other words to make architecture" (MF4(1926): 19 and 20). Three pictures of Carlos Obregon's house illustrate the English translation of the article. However, the Spanish version is accompanied by reproductions of murais by Rivera from the Secretaria, including Celebration of the Day of the Dead on the Streets in which the skeletons of Judases are

being bumt.48 Judiciously interspersed are calaveras (skulls) by the farnous Mexican engraver José Guadalupe Posada whose work Rivera had claimed to have influenced his own.49 This issue of Folkways included several articles on death and calaveras, and provided another opportunity for Rivera, the illustrator, to showcase his most recent mural work. Rivera's art lessons basically ended with modem architecture, though, in the next number, he wrote a short piece on children's drawings. Several other contributors wrote more extensively on this popular subject. Afier all, it was not an exhibition of Mexican painters that had recently toured Europe and the United States, but a collection of children's drawings and paintings. Rivera's article is critical of the method developed by his fellow painter Adolfo Best Maugard. He considers it inadequate to encourage children's imagination, but admits that instruction in that field has improved despite Minister José Vasconcelos' unfortunate criticism. This is the closest Rivera cornes to writing an editorial: he concludes that "Folkways is pleased to make known [the product of these efforts] in the present number" referring, of course, to the many illustrations included in this issue. (MF5 1926):6). Rivera reiterates previous attacks on Western bad taste that finds its way into Mexico, and the regrettable Mexican practice of copying Western rnodels. With this, only the theoretical part of his art lessons was over. In the next

is no indication whether these and other photographs of Rivera's work were by Tina Modotti. The Day of the Dead, mural as seen in a photograph, probably by the Itaiian photographer, inspired Sergei Eisenstein for a scene of his film Que viva México! 48 There

49 According to Francisco Reyes Palma, Posada was Rivera's alter-ego. "Arte funcional y

vanguardia 1921-1 952",in Musêo Nacional de Arte, Modernidad y modernizacion en ei arfe rnexicano:l920-1960 (Institut0 Nacional d e Beilas Artes, 1991),p. 93.

issue-the

first one in large format-the

art editor chose to include several

pages of illustrations of his own murais at the Secretaria. That was not the first time that Rivera's work had appeared in

Folkways, nor was it the last. Besides his own articles, and illustrations of his frescoes, he was also the object of study, in several articies, the f irst one by the Amencan painter Ray Boynton (MF3 (1926): 24-29; 30-31). Attracted by the Mexican "Renaissance" in the arts, the Californian artist came to see the frescoes of the emblematic exponent of that movement. His laudatory comrnents must have been music to Rivera's ears. Not only does he consider that Rivera's productiun is "the most important work that has been done on this continent", but he adds that it is "the most important thing in art that is being done in the world to day (sic) to my knowiedge". (MF3 (1926):24). According to the author, Rivera's greatness was the result of a powerful combination of intellectual and creative abilities, and a "wealth of rich and vivid folk material" (MF3 (1926): 28),not only available right there, but also, his own to explore. Rivera had achieved what European painters had not

since the 14" century: "a youthful and comprehensive art" (MF3(1926): 28). 1 believe this comprehensiveness ensured, in part, the dominance of Rivera's work over that of other rnuralists, at least at that particular period, when he had already covered a very large surface of the Secretaria walls. This work, still in progress at the time, is described by Boynton as already "a folk monument" the Iikes of which had not been seen in contemporary society (MF 3 (1926):28).

The focus of the author's analysis is on the muralist's source of inspiration that is unique, plentiful, alive, his own, but, above al1 else, popular, and authentic. What Boynton-as

an American artist-would

have particularly

liked after talking with Rivera, and seeing his murals, was his vision of a 'cyouthfuland vigorous" continental art, unlike that of Europe. Obviously, the message that the Mexican artist wanted to leave with his fellow artists from the North, through Boynton, was that they had at home, so to speak, what Europe had lost. The local 'folk ways' (as Rivera liked to spell the name of the magazine) that inspired the painter's murals made it possible for his workand Mexican art-to

distinguish itself from European art.

The illustration of a Secretaria panel, that shows a sentence from a corrido painted by Rivera, appears at the top of the first page of Boynton's

article. The sentence reads: "La verdadera civilizacion sera la arrnonia de los hombres con la tierra y de los hombres entre si" [The real civilization will be harmony between men and the earth and between themselves]. Europe had soiled its civilized status with its savagery at war, and in its colonies, and had lost touch with nature. The Amencan continent could now daim that status by maintaining a respectful relationship with, and better understanding of nature and human beings of different origins in the North and the South, including indigenous peoples. Whether Rivera chose the illustration or Boynton suggested it, it is symptomatic of the era, and especially of Rivera's vision of

the future of the continent? As could be expected from an appraisal of the Mexican muralist, the Spanish translation of Boynton's writing is illustrated by reproductions of frescoes that Rivera had recently painted at the Secretaria. Other articles51 on Rivera appeared together in an issue devoted in large part to a "friend, Art Editor [. ..] and great artist", and to his Cuernavaca frescoes of which thirty are reproduced. (MF4 (1930): 16û-196). The first one, by the editor herself, and in the form of an editoriai, is a tribute to the artist.52 This was the first t h e , according to Toor, that such a cornplete look at his latest frescoes had been undertaken in print.53 The second article is by William

P.Sprattling, the American expatriate artist who had introduced

Rivera to American ambassador Dwight Morrow, who, in turn, became the

50 A very public manifestation of this desire for some sort of Pan American fraternity between

men (in this case, workers) is the cover of the May 1931 issue of Graphic Survey illustrated by Rivera. This cover, of the New York published magazine, depicts an American worker and a Mexican worker shaking hands across the border. Rivera was in California then, and, when he went back to Mexico that surnmer, he was offered a solo exhibit at MoMA (New York) for the end of the year. Survey Graphic (May 1931). 51 The last article on Rivera by American critic Howard Parker titled "The New Rivera" refers to his MoMA exhibition, and praises three new easel works depicting cacti, suggesting that the artist is "ready to let civilization look after itself, and devote hirnself to the presentation of form for its own sake" (MF 1 (1932): 31). He considers the paintings surreaiist, and wonders if the New York public did not appreciate them at MoMA because they are an expression of "Mexican" rather than French surrealism (Ibid., p. 32).

52 Toor refers to the Cuernavaca frescoes as a "shrine", the translator chooses to use the Spanish word for "sanatorium". Rivera the saint or Rivera the healer! 53 Ernestine Evans' book on Rivera's frescoes, published in 1929 in New York, was reviewed by William P. Spratling, in Fo!haysl last issue for 1929. The reviewer cornplains that the

book is already outdated because it was published before Rivera's recent creations could be included, and he shows impatience at the lack of a "definitive" work on the "greatest mural painter of our times" (MF4 (1929): 205).

patron who commissioned the murals at Cuemavaca.54 In this longer and meaty analysis, the author, who is well aware of Rivera's contradictions and fabulations, nonetheless expresses great admiration for his intellectual and artistic capabilities, particularly his organizational skills and his architectural sensibilities. He suggests that Rivera's understanding of his era makes him "a great modem", at a time of great cultural effervescence (MF4 (1930): 167). For Sprattling, Rivera is first and foremost a "craftsman", a tunctionalist" who believes in the "vital function of painting" (MF4 (1930): 163). From the perspective of an American artist who had known Mexico since 1926, Sprattling considers that, while the artist is well known internationally, to the point of having attained legendary status, Mexico "perhaps know[s] its Diego too well and not well enough", possibly intimating that though the artist might be a popular figure at home, his work was not yet understood and appreciated by the Mexican media in the way that it should. If this in fact describes the reception of Rivera's work in Mexico at that time, then his marketing strategies in Folkways might not have been helpful, unless the Mexican students, politicians and intellectuals who criticized Rivera's modem art read the magazine. However, these strategies seem to have been quite successful in promoting his fame in the United States. A fairly detailed description of the recently completed Cuernavaca frescoes closes thz article. More than thirty photographs of these murals follow, including three that would be reproduced by Rivera as part of the four

54 Spratling wrote LiMe Mexico with foreword by Rivera, New York: Jonathan Cape and

Harrison Smith, 1932. He became a famous silversrnith in Taxco. His book was reviewed in Folkways (MF 1 (1 932): 53).

portable frescoes of the Mexican series painted for the Museum of Modem Art exhibition in New York, in 1931.55 Incidentally, in that same number, appears an article about The Mexican Art Association that had just been formed in New York to promote understanding between Mexico and the United States through the promotion of cultural exchanges. It claims that Frances Flynn Paine, who promoted the Association, had recently arranged for a one-man show of Rivera's work at MoMA.56 Disappointment about the reception of Rivera's work had been expressed earlier by another contributing editor of Folkways who reviewed Anita Brenner's ldols Behind Altars (1929),a pioneering study of Mexican aesthetics, traditional and modem. (MF4 (1929):206-7). Though Carleton Beals praises the book, he complains about what he sees as her lack of appropriate recognition of Rivera's importance in comparison with other painters, more specifically Francisco Goitia.S7 He does not disagree with her analysis of Rivera, but finds that she does not give him the place and space he feels the artist deserves. Beals displays the racial preoccupation common to the time when he ponders over why Brenner would have seen fit to talk about the "vacilada", which he considers a mesfizo characteristic, when her

55 A fifth one, painted after the first opening of the show, belongs somewhere between the

Mexican and the New York series, as is explained in Chapter Six of this dissertation. 56 The article indicates that the arrangement was made and known several months earlier, than is the claim of the other sources to which 1 had access. Did Toor know ahead of tirne from Frances Flynn Paine? Was Rivera informed earlier than generally accepted? Was this issue of the magazine published several months later than the cover indicates? The last chapter of this dissertation explores the context of the MoMA exhibit. 57 Beals is also critical of what he perceives as Brenner's preferential treatment of some painters over others about whom he would have liked to read more (MF4 (1929): 207).

ernphasis throughout the book is on tndian culture. His concem with the distinction between shades of skin colour, and his anxiety about the purity of the ethnographer's object of study is obviously not only çymptomatic of the concems of Mexican intellectuals and artists, but also apparently, of the uneasiness with which the indigenous question was approached by some American intellectuafs in Mexico. The interna1 structure of Mexican Foikways and how it changed over the years provide another source for understanding its cultural treatment of the popular and the indigenous. Who it chose as editors, what it chose to describe, what kind of advertisements it accepted, the disposition of the articles, and the covers-and position as art editor-are

of course, how Rivera responded from his

revealing. His involvement in, if not dominance

over, the magazine is apparent in many meaningful details. I shall star3 with the covers of Foikways because a magazine, if not always judged by its cover, is rernernbered by it, especially when designed by a famous artist. The first four issues when Charlot was art editor, as well as the next one when Rivera took over from him, feature the same cover by the young Frenchman (fig. 13). It depicts two indigenous figures at the top dressed in ancient Aztec costumes and perfonning either a ritual dance or play. At the bottom, there are two indigenous figures; a cactus appears behind one, and

the head of a serpent appears behind the other. The design for this cover reflects Charlot's initial fascination with the old traditions of an ancient civilization that he viewed as still alive and unchanged, and illustrates correspondingly the article he wrote about lndian dance in the first issue.

The cover for the second number after Rivera became art editor was changed to feature a new design by him with initials D at the bottom left and

R at the bottom right. Below, the words "Numero aniversario" announce the beginning of the magazine's second year, and the table of contents proclaims that "Al1 drawings [are] by Diego Rivera". Thus, unlike his predecessor's design for both the cover and the rest of the magazine, this number clearly identifies the author of the cover, and the artistic leadership of the new art editor. Rivera's new cover, which he would re-use for a while changing the colours for each issue, radically converts the exotic vision that the young Charlot had, of a Mexico rooted in an ancient civilization, to a modem and political rendering of the popular (classes), (fig. 14). The Mexican painter depicts, on either side of the cover, two contemporary figures that represent the rural and the urban, and in Marxist ternis, the two real producers of the countries' wealth. The figure on the left is of a peasant with huaraches (sandals), holding a sickle, and the one on the right, is of a worker in overalls holding a hammer. Between them a coiled plumed serpent holding in his mouth what appears to be wheat. Rivera seems to have chosen a design that would remind the reader of who should be

regarded as the "consumer" of art in Mexico. The two men do not depict "producers" of art; they use a sickle or a hammer, their work tools, not a brush or a potter's wheel. This approach to the "folk" is radically different frorn that of the magazine as a whole. What interests the artist, here, is not just the old artisan traditions of that people, but the "class" of people to which he wants to address his art, and which he wants to make the subject and "consumer" of

his work. The Marxist notion of classes enters the indigenist discourse of

Folkways. The popular and urban mestizo is given equal importance as the rural Indian. It is interesting to compare Rivera's duo to Siqueiros' trio La Unidad del

Campesino e l Soldado y e l Obrero [The Unity of Farmers, Soldiers, and Workers] ,5* (fig. 15) that appeared in El Machete, in 1924, accornpanied by the sentences: Los tres somos victimas, los tres somos hennanos [We three are victirns, we three are brothersl.59 Siqueiros' woodcut depicts a unifomed soldier flanked by a peasant and a worker, al1 holding hands, and looking rather rnenacingly straight into the viewer's gaze. The masses appear behind them. In Rivera's design, the peasant and the worker are also placed, respectively, on the left and on the right, and facing the viewer. However, they appear to look down, and to make an offering of their labour in the form of their sickie and hammer. Their faces are not threatening, but rather poised and dignified. Whereas the faces in Siqueiros' figures radiate defiance in solidarity, those in Rivera's design are serene, maybe even resigned. While Siqueiros gave the soldier the central space, Rivera painted the Mexican symbol of the plumed serpent between his two characters.

Translation in the original. 59 El Machete (April 1-15, 1924). p. 5. Rivera had also painted the trio representing the

Mexican proletariat at the Secretzria, in the Court of Fiestas. In the panel titled UnitedFront, the peasant and the soldier, both dark skinned and armed, shake hands, while a slightly larger white worker in bright blue overalls puts his arms araund the shoulders of the two men, as if he led the unity. Also behind them masses of people are portrayed al1 armed in front of a background covered with modern machinery.

Rivera's first design was re-used for a number of issues, but for one exception: the first cover of the new larger format designed by Agustin Lazo (fig. 16). That cover of the February-March 1927 issue is rather stylized: at

the top the word Mexican and at the bottom the word Folkways. In between a figure with Mexican features (or a mask) sits, both his hands and toes prominently displayed, and a hat on his head. The written information appears as if on a square apron, or placard, in front of him. The initials A.L. appear discreetly a i the bottom, but there are no explanations anywhere for the contribution of this guest artist, the only such guest for a cover of the magazine. It does not seem to correspond to any absence of the art editor from the country. Rivera had not yet left for the Soviet Union, which he was to visit in the fall of that same year. When he did leave, however, a note in both issues of August-September 1927 and January-March 1928 was included to announce that, since he was out of the country, he was "not responsible for the make-up of this number." In contradiction with this statement, however, a new cover, again designecl by him, appeared in the issue that ended the year 1927 (fig. 17). Two large serpents rise up on both sides of the cover with their heads facing each other ferociously. The one on the left is the famed plumed serpent, representing Quetzalcoati, and the other has its skin covered by ears of corn.60 It is interesting to note that three issues earlier there had appeared

60 This other serpent may be Xolotl, the god of Transformations. Serge Gruzinski, The Conquest of Mexico: The Incorporation of lndian Societies lnto the Western World, 1gh-18'"

Centuries (La colonisation de l'imaginaire, 1988), Eileen Corrigan, trans. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), p. 161. He is apparently, Quetzalcoatl's identical brother, which would explain the serpent shape.

a review of D.H. Lawrence's newly published book The Plumed Serpent accusing the author of being "one sided, showing the sinister and cruel without their opposites-the

noble and loveable side of the Mexican

character." (MF8 (1926):46). The review criticizes the book for "show[ing] fear and ignorance of Mexico" (Ibid.). Did the book as described in the review provoke Rivera into introducing this new design for the magazine cover? Could he have placed the plumed serpent of Lawrence's novel opposite another serpent that might represent the "noble and loveable side of Mexico"? In an earlier issue of the magazine, Rivera had drawn a cartoon to illustrate an amusing corrido, left untranslated, and titled "El mosquito americano ahora acaba de Ilegar; dicen que vin0 a pasear a este sue10 mexicano" [The American mosquito has just now arrived; they Say that it came for a visit to this Mexican soilJ61(fig. 18). His illustration shows a large plumed serpent chasing an American businessman and grabbing his briefcase in his mouth. Was therefore the new cover a visual joke about the "foreign" novel that had caused derision among the rnembers of Rivera's bohemian circle of Mexico City? Could the plumed

serpent, that attacked the American businessman in Rivera's cartoon, now be vilifying the English writer on the cover of the magazine?6* Though the new cover may be interpreted as having playful or sarcastic intentions, it must also be interpreted as expressing a more serious

61 My translation, as no English version was included for this

corrido that rnakes fun of

Americans. 62 Margaret Hooks writes that "poor Lawrence's obvious bewilderment and fear of Mexico was the cause of much hilariW. Tina Modotfi, op. cit., p. 123.

message. The serpent is, of course, a syrnbol of Mexico: the feathered serpent represents Quetzalcoatl, the culture hero, and the creator. The other serpent, on the other hand, could represent the rich agriculture of Mexico, nature opposed to culture, one of many examples of the duaiities that Rivera liked to portray. Following Aztec mythology, the Sun, depicted at the bottom. between the two serpents, may refer to the rebirth of light after the night struggle against darkness; it is movement, and continuity. The serpent to the right might also represent the rebirth of the god/goddess of maize, or, in more contemporary terrns, refer to the importance of the agrarian revolution. Or, again, it could be the Quetzalcoatl who, according to legend, stole corn from his keepers, the ants; it was believed that leaming tricks or techniques from animals led men to prevail over nature.

As the symbol of one of two hugely important myths persisting in Mexico, that of Guadalupe and Quetzalcoatl, Quetzalcoatl represents the return (a new beginning) of the god who grants legitimacy to the new postrevolutionary order, the artist king who symbolizes the golden era of the Indians, the man become god, the teacher of writing.63 And of course, Quetzalcoatl inevitably conjures up images of the Conquest, when Moctezuma thought that Cortes' invasion was in fact the promised retum of Quetzalcoatl from Tula. Rivera's design centered on Quetzalcoati brings to rnind the irony of that fated "civilizing" moment when the ruthless Spanish

63 On the myth of Quetzalcoatl see, Jacques Lafaye, Quetzalcoati and Guadalupe:The Formation of Mexican National Consciousness, 1531 1813 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976)and J. M. G. Le Clézio, The Mexican Dream (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993).

-

conqueror is mistaken by the Aztec emperor for the "great thinker who formulated the ontology of Omeotl", and who could not be tricked into human sacrifice.64 The contrast between the contemporary Mexican worker and peasant of Rivera's first cover and the Aztec cultural symbolism of the second one reveals a remarkable evolution in his attitude. The focus on class and the concems of a modernizing Mexico appear to have been replaced by a preoccupation with its past traditions, symbols of its past culture. The final design Rivera created for the cover of Folkways was for volume 6 (1930),(fig. 19). In this scene, culture has taken over completely. To the right is the profile of an lndian who sings and plays a string instrument. kcross from him a young boy (or a smaller man), with a palette in one hand, paints on what appears to be a tablet. The figure to the right sits on the floor; the one to the left is kneeling. What seems meaningful here is more what is missing from the picture; there is no scribe in this depiction of Mexican culture. The traditional tablet used by a scribe is used here to communicate in images, rather than in letters, in a traditionally visual culture. Looking back at the Aztec world "lt is important to point out that the occupation of painter was essential because it meant painting the sacred codices. Also crucial was the singer, who had to intonate the 'song', [...] ritualized with a splendour".65 Looking at the present, the visual and oral traditions were still alive in the form

"A Nahuatl lnterpretation of the Conquest: From the "Parousia" of the Gods to the "Invasion"", in Amaryll Chanady, ed. Latin American ldentity and Constructions of Difference (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), p. 126, note 41. Rivera was well versed in various codices. 64 Enrique Dussel,

65 Ibid., p. 121, note 6.

of the popular kind of painting Rivera described in his articles, and through the conternporary popular songs of the Revolution, the corridos. The Aztec god of culture from the previous cover has been replaced by the humble artists who continue the traditions of their ancestors, sing popular baltads, and paint Mexican life. Other details on the cover add meaning to the intent of the magazine and/or Rivera's. The title on the cover under Jean Charlot's editorship is

Mexican Folkways; under Rivera, it becomes Mexican Folk Ways. What might appear at first as a necessary splitting of the word to fit within his new design,

is however, more than just a forma1 device, because Rivera also used "folk ways" (in two words) elsewhere. Did he intend to reclaim the "folk" out of "folkways", to rnake it clear that the human beings, who were the object of these ethnographers' studies, were alive and that they thernselves were important, not just their artistic production? After all, Rivera did make fun of these people who were fascinated by a Mexican foiklore abstracted from its reality. Even the publication of the cost of each issue on the cover was challenged. Originally it was indicated in large characters as "25 cents", while below, the cost in Mexican money was printed in srnaller characters.66 In the first number that Rivera edited, the price was suddenly indicated onIy in Mexican currency. It would be fair to assume that Rivera might have been offended by what appeared as disdain for the Mexican reader in a magazine,

66 In 1927, no. 2 goes up to one dollar, but then goes back down to 50 cents in the next

issue.

that after all, was published in Mexico, and that, in his typical controversial rnanner, he proceeded to remove the American price altogether. However, this was rectified, in the following number, where the two currencies are shown, this time the Mexican one first, and both in characters of the same size. It is as if the point had been made, and a compromise reached that rectified the offending oversight. However, in 1927 only the American currency is shown again. Did this reflect a change in the readership of the magazine? Did it seIl mostly in the United States by that time? Incidentally, the date on the cover of this bilingua! magazine is still in English, only. The primacy of the English language in tdexican F o h a y s is also demonstrated in the position of the articles and their translations. Whether the article was originally in English or in Spanish, it was usually the English version that appeared first, followed by the Spanish version printed in srnaller characters. Also later, some articles appeared only in English. Another change that could conceivably be attributed to Rivera is in the subtitle of the magazine. Starting with vol. 3, no.1 (1927),and the switch to a larger format, the specific themes explored by the magazine are rearranged on the cover, not in alphabetical order, but in what appears to be in order of priority. "Legends, festivals, art and archaeology" become significantly "Art, archaeology, legends, festivals, songs". This almost unnoticeable alteration for the new format signais a significant shift in ernphasis that reflected what Rivera wanted the magazine to become.67 "AIT now headed the list of areas

67 On the cover of this issue as well, the words "English, Spanish and their respective translations are also re-ordered and replaced by "Espaiol, English", presurnably again as the long overdue recognition that this bilingual magazine was a product of Mexico.

of concern for the magazine, and "songs", basically, the very important popular corridos, that he used above his frescoes at the Secretsria, were added to the inventory. Rivera's didactic strategies are most probably responsible for a change in the mission of the magazine. In the first issue, in a page opposite the table of contents, Mexican Folkways is described as "Bi-monthly in English and Spanish. Revista bi-mestral en inglés y espafiol dedicada a tradiciones y costumbres indigenas" [dedicated to indigenous traditions and custorns]. In the fourth issue, the last one edited by Charlot, (but when Rivera was already in the background) this description, or subtitle, switches to one dedicated to "usosy costumbres Mexicanas", [Mexican uses and customs; translation and

emphasis mine] confiming the Mexican, rather than indigenous, status of the subject matter, and substituting present utilitarian ways to past traditions. I believe these were subtle, but significant substitutions paralleling Rivera's new design for the cover. They point to an important evolution in the direction of the magazine when the art editorship changed. I have no doubt that Rivera, who officially became editor with the publication of the next issue, was responsible to a great extent for these changes. While he did not deny the past, he wanted the magazine to describe contemporary cultural production in Mexico as national and popular, an art that awaited the modernizing process, and his (modem) art. The advertising-practically al1 in English-provides

other clues in the

study of Rivera's strategic use of Folkways. The advertising was varied, but always included something to do with Rivera's work. Tina Modotti's

photographs of his frescoes were advertised repeatedly, starting with the first number he edited in February-March 1926 (fig. 20). Modotti, who had just retumed frorn the US, started to take photographs of frescoes, and the first ad offers the reader no less than 65 photographs of Rivera's murais taken by her. In another issue (MF10 (1926): 53-54) two pages list in detail photographs of 99 of his frescoes from various locations offered for sale by

Foihays. This benefited everyone: Folkways and Frances Toor made some money, and Rivera and Modotti received more publicity.68 These ads for Mexican public art appeared, paradoxically, alongside ads for private schools, mainly English speaking! (fig. 21). In 1928, Folkways also started to offer Modotti's photographs of frescoes by Orozco and Maxirno Pacheco. The summer school at the National University of Mexico, that brought Frances Toor to Mexico for the first tirne, advertised regularly, starting with the first number also. In 1928, one of its ads Iists al1 that it finds great in Mexico, including "the fact that Mexico is now the centre of the most virile modem art movement in world (sic)".69 These summer school sessions featured prominent Arnerican and Mexican speakers from a variety of

e8 Toor also offered packaged exhibits of popular art for schools and universities (MF4 (1927). 69 The word 'virile' referring to an art movement altudes, no doubt, to the term that was

used

in the famous cultural quarrel that raged two years earlier and that is examined in Chapters Four and Five here.

151 disciplines, including Rivera himself, and the school offered excursions that would guarantee visits to the artist's mural work.70 The Lineas Nacionales de Navegacion urged the readers (presumably North American) to "Go to Mexico to see the ruins of the Maya civilization more (sic) interesting than those of the Egyptian Pharaohs". The monthly allEnglish magazine Mexican Life, available in Mexico and other countries, also advertised in Folkways. If Folkways offered its readers a glimpse at Mexico's popular traditions, Mexican Life complemented it by presenting mostly the urban aspects, and the modern "progress" of Mexico. However, this did not prevent the incongruous juxtaposition of the popuiar and the modern to appear in Folkways, where the announcement of a rnonograph on the engraver José Guadalupe Posada (with an introduction by Rivera) shares the space with an ad for the latest models of electrical appliances used in the modem home! (fig. 22). Another illustration of the need to resolve the nature/culture antithesis

is shown in the choice of the review of a book on the Indian. In the April-June 1926 issue--the second one after Rivera became art editor-an

American

student of anthropology reviewed The Stary of the American Indian, by Paul Radin, the Arnerican anthropologist, born in Europe. According to the reviewer, Radin's theory is that American lndian civilization originated with the

70 People such as Hubert Herring, and John Dewey were invited to speak at the school. Topics such as "Advanced Educational Problemsn, "Advanced Contemporary Philosophy" "The Petroleum Problem", "The Agrarian Question", ''The Modern Art Movement" were presented. At the same time, Mexican intetlectuals such as Moisés Saenz, Manuel Gamio, and José Vasconcelos lectured at the Mexican lnstitute of the University of Chicago, and reprints of their talks were published in Folkways.

Mayas and went north and gradually deteriorated until it reached Canada. The same deterioration occurred when the Incas went north. The reviewer suggests that not enough is being done in this area of research, and that risking a hypothesis, like Radin does, is al1 that can be done to "awaken a new interest in the rernarkable culturai experiments of the aboriginal populations of the New World" (6 (1926): 134). The focus on the whole of the continent, the common indigenous roots, and particularly the primary and superior position of the indigenous populations of the south that underscores the article reflects the desire of some Mexican and American intellectuals to redeem the Indian. Paul Radin was added to the list of contributing editors in that issue. Mexican Folkways, like a museum of ethnography, collected between its pages, rather than in curiosity cabinets, the customs, festivals, corridos, and crafts of rural Mexico, often by regions. lts intentions were pedagogical. To provide Mexicans and Americans with the knowledge needad to better understand a vast rural and Iargely pre-modern territory. For sorne, like Frances Toor, this knowledge would satisfy their desire to bring recognition of a people and a way of life to a world on the irrevocable path of modernization,

and bring back the perceived loss of authenticity resulting frorn mass production. For others, like Garnio, this knowledge would allow for a dignified assimilation of the indigenous peoples into the nation on the terms of the "civilized". It would help bring the "primitive" indigenous into the fold of the

modem. But in the end, for the Indian, the result of these cuitural practices would be one "of abstract inclusion and concrete exclusion".7~ For Rivera, unlike for a foreigner like Toor, there would be a tremendous sense of pride in a rich cultural patrimony he made his own, and

a deep feeling for the newly appreciated lndian whose long exploitation he thought might be redressed by the new conditions that would emerge from the Revolution. He did not separate the objects from the producer neither did he see the necessity to only look backward to tradition. He praised the paintings on the walls of pulquerias, and elevated them to the statuç of art, but he also acknowledged the painter and his creativity. Like the contributors of Folkways he wanted Mexico to be known for its folkloric riches, yes, but he did not divorce this desire frorn a profound cornmitrnent to changing the social conditions of the country. In bis writings in the magazine he does not want to separate the patrimony into rural and urban, but sees the Mexican people as made up of both peasants znd workers. Through a large nurnber of changes in Folkways, even though many of them were small, Rivera tRed to compensate for the collecter's interest in pure Mexican folklore, by continuously promoting the Mexican urban and popular cuitural production. Furthermore, he advocated for the modem expression of art, provided it was functional (like an urban dwelling for workers), and of Mexican inspiration, as he equated European influence with bourgeois art and taste.

7iJesus Martin Barbero quoted by Néstor Garcia Canclini, Culturas Hibridas: estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad (México: Grijalbo, 1 989).p. 194.

In Spratling's words, Rivera was "dominant and inevitable". This held true in the case of Mexican Folkways (MF4 (1930): 163). If by "inevitable" Spratling rneant that his fame was eventualiy unavoidable because of the convergence of his enonnous talent, gargantuan production, and the historical circumstances that allowed that talent to express itself so publicly, he was probably right. However, it is obvious that for Rivera there was no inevitability. He found it necessary to work very hard at becoming dominant in Mexico and on the continent, not only through the sheer volume of his painting, but just as importantly, by penetrating the cultural and political fields through as many levels as he could. Mexican Folkways was one of these levels. Rivera dominated the magazine with his drawings, reproductions of his murals to illustrate almost anything, the articles he authored and the ones of which he was the subject, the advertising of photographs of his murals, and the design of the covers. Even the mention of his wedding found its way in the pages of Folkways with a whole page photograph of Frida Kahlo and Rivera titled: "An 'artistic' photograph of Diego Rivera and his bride Frieda Kahlo on their wedding day, August 1gth, 1929" (MF2, 1929). As the photograph does not relate to any of the articles in that issue, and the magazine did not report on society events, nor included pictures of artists, the editor(s), presumably, found it necessary to qualify this picture as "artistic" in order to justify its inappropriate insertion. Only Rivera could get away with such a move!7*

72 The photograph is by Victor Reyes and family, presumably a commercial photographer. A few pages further, the reproduction of one of Kahlo's paintings is printed. Under the list of contributors, appears the name of lone Robinson "a young California student who came to study with Diego Rivera".

While the magazine offered him exposure at home-primarily American and Mexican intellectuals and artists-it

among

becarne one of his major

conduits to the American public, and therefore, to American walls. If the magazine contributed in large measure to his recognition as an artist, his editorship did not successfully balance that of Toor. Folklore won over the urban popular, tradition won over the modem, and the crafts won over art. It is difficult to assess to what extent Rivera might be responsible for that "failure". Rivera's contribution to Folkways was not an honourific one. One presumes that as art editor, he would have tremendous influence on what artists, or what work would be included or excluded. Was he the obstacle to the inclusion of more articles about, and illustrations of modem art, or did he meet with the resistance of Toor or other contributors who wanted to remain faithful to the folk lori^'^ nature of the magazine? Or did the financial contributions, however small, from the government prevent the magazine from straying too much frorn its rnainly nationalistic purposes? At any rate, in the final analysis, the ethnological "museum" won over the modem art "gallery, but Rivera's art won over that of other painters.

Part Two: The Literary Avant-Gardes

Chapter Four Rivera the Poet: Estridentismo Diego Rivera's retum to Mexico, in 1921, after fourteen years in Europe, spelled the rejection of his own European modemism in favour of a more strategically promising public art, muraiism, a movement he would soon dominate. This paradigmatic shift occurred in post-revolutionary Mexico, when the country's intellectual and political leaders perceived the need to promote culture, and the visual arts in particular, to forge a national identity that would help construct a modem nation state. It was not the objective of the European avant-gardes to reintegrate art into life that Rivera rejected; on the contrary, the whole thrust of his (and other muralists') project was precisely to make art accessible.' What Rivera rejected was the uselessness of such a pursuit for an art still based on easel works used as commodity for private collectors and museums. Besides, in Mexico, there was no institution of art, to speak of, and therefore, the pursuit of the European avant-gardes to

See the 1922 manifesto of the Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors signed by a number of muralists, including Rivera; it repudiates easel work as elitist, and praises monumental art because it is public art. "A Declaration of Social, Political and Aesthetic Principles" (1922),reprinted in David A. Siqueiros, Art and Revolution (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975),pp. 24-5.

expose that institution was to a great extent irrelevant for Rivera, and his fellow muralists.2 While the European historical avant-gardes wanted to destroy the institution of art, the Gennan playwright, Bertold Brecht, wanted to transfom it, to change its function.3 In the different spatio-temporal realities of postrevolutionary Mexico, Rivera, and his colleagues could neither destroy nor change an institution that was basically non-existent. In a country where rnodemity had made only uneven incursions, they had to help build a cultural network, in tandem with the re-construction of the econornic and political systems. How do the Mexican art movements of the 1920s, including the socalled avant-gardes, such as Estridentismo (mostly a literary movement), respond to the specific local concerns that faced them, and what was Rivera's position within and around these movements? To what extent was the apparently idealistic vision of the muralists, and Rivera's in particular, informed, on the one hand, by radical ideological (political and aesthetic) concems, and, on the other, dictated by the lack of an art market, an art public, art critics, and patrons? In this chapter, 1 examine how Rivera, and

Peter Bürger in Theory of the Avant-Garde (1974), sees the objective of the "historicai avant-gardes" as having been that of destroying the institution of art. Trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). Ibid. p. 89.

other cultural movers, specifically the estridentistas," deal with this lack: their attempts at creating a market, and a public, as well as their role as each other's critics, and their relationship with the only really available patron, the govemment. I also examine to what extent this relationship and these strategies inform Rivera's attempts at affecting a core/periphery reversal, or, at least, at altering the complex networù of peripheral and metropolitan nodes, and in the end, at emerging as a dominant artist in the Amerkas. The examination of Rivera's involvernent with various segments of the cultural field in a post-revolutionary Mexico that attempts to develop its own modernity allows for the uncovering of the lack of a broad consensus in the Mexican society of the twenties. This particular view contradicts the unif ied socio-cultural scene generally described, in which Muralism-undoubtedly powerful, and, eventually hegemonic rnovement-is

a

held out as the one and

only movement, the "Mexican school". More often than not, the muralism of the 1920s and 1930s is presented in isolation from other cultural movements of the period, therefore creating the image of a hornogeneous cultural

A loose group of writers whose common link is their well known avant-garde literary magazine, Contemporaneos (1928-1931),strongly diverged from the Estridentistas. Their magazine promoted European Iiterary works, and published some alongside Mexican poetry. Their goal was to open communication between "realizaciones europeas y la promesa americana" [European realizations and the American promise] quoted in Jean Franco, La culfura moderna en América iatina (1 983),trans. Sergio Pitol (México: Grijalbo, 1985),p. 198. Rivera did not have a particularly good relationship with that group, nor did he involve himself much in their activities as he did with Estridentismo. Al1 translations in square brackts are mine unless specified.

expression.5 By laying bare the multiplicity of positions, and movements expressing these positions, this image is shattered, and instead, the heterogeneity of Mexico's culture is revealed in al1 its complexity and inconsistencies. But above all, this helps dispel the image of Rivera as just a muralist. As seems to have occurred often in Rivera's career, when he went

back to Mexico in 1921, he found himself in the right place, at the right time. The famous Cuban "marvellous realist" writer, Alejo Carpentier, who knew the artist, wrote about him what in this case is not a general, and empty statement: "Estuvo perfectamente ubicado en una etapa decisiva del acontecer americano. Hizo en su moment0 la obra que le tocaba hacer." [He was perfectly situated at a decisive stage of Arnerican history/'happeningl. He did the work he was called upon to do at the appropriate momentl.6 The years of the amed Revolution-the

years Rivera was in Europe-had

not been

favorable to the development of the arts. But once the general fighting ceased, these years actually became the stimulus, the match that ignited the fire of renovation. Just as what happens at any turning point in history, in 1921, the particular confluence of events, abroad and in Mexico, appear to

Some recent works have exposed the fallacies of that perception of hornogeneity. They have placed Muralisrn in the context of other cultural attempts at dealing with Mexican modernity. Two such works are Modernidady modernizacion en el alfe mexicano: 1920-1960 (México: Institut0 de Bellas Artes, 1991), and South of the Border, texts by James 01es and Karen Cordero Reiman (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993). Alejo Carpentier, "Diego Riveray'in Plural211, abril de 1989, p. 43. And called upon he was, by José Vasconcelos, the new Minister of Education.

crystallize to mark the beginning of an era for Iiterature and the plastic arts.7 But, as Hans Robert Jauss explains, these so called epochal beginnings and ends are merely perceptual spaces, "threshholds", constructed by historians.8 Historical changes are gradual, and moves from one space to another within the same cultural field are made at different paces. We will see what some of the artistitic currents sharing the Mexican stage in the 1920s carty over from the recent past, how they innovate (looking backward to the ancient past, and fonnrard to a new modem and global future), how they "mediat[e] [...] the new through the oldN,9how they concur with, and diverge from each other, and finally, how Rivera fits within and ne& to them. These movements were part of the larger global picture and the more continental one, both of which had,

and were, experiencing spectacular changes. In Europe, several nations were licking their wounds after the Great

War, and the new Russia was still in its euphoric infancy. Though World War I had been fought rnainly by European nations, it had an impact on the whole world, and caused a shift in the hegemonic relationship between the European and American continents. For its part, the Russian revolution had undermined the established notions of capitalist means of production. Both these events had ushered political and economic changes at the global

Hugo Verani refers to the year 1922 as the 'annus mirabilisnof Iiterature in the world (presumably the Western world). To this we can include Mexican painting. Las vanguardias literarias en hïspanoamerica (Manifiestos, proclamas y otros escrjfos), (Roma : Buzoni, 1986), p. 11. Hans Robert Jauss, 'Tradition, Innovation, and Aesthetic Experience", The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, number 46 (1 988),pp. 375-87.

Ibid., p. 375.

l e ~ e l . ~Inothe United States, 1919 saw the emergence of the first Red Scare, and 1921, witnessed the return of the Republicans to the White House. At home, in Mexico, the long and bloody revolution had just ended, and, awakened in its intellectualç similar sentiments of shock and dismay at its extrerne violence as their European counterparts had felt after World War 1. However, in Latin America, the "dedine of the West" as declared by Oswald Spengler11 became the opportunity for the New World to riss to the promises of its name and replace the decadent Old World. The year 1921 was also the first centenary of the independence of Mexico from Spain.l2 In the 1910s, art and literary movements had sprung up throughout Europe in frenzied responses to both, the fast Pace of modemization, and after 1918, to the aftershock of a war (1914-1918) that had been unthinkable. in Mexico, as in the rest of Latin America, manifestations of similar

movements, some of which would be considered as 'avant-garde', emerged in different cities reclaiming a continental difierence vis-à-vis Europe-a difference that no longer was the object of shame. It is among these Mexican movements of cultural self-affirmation-in their similarities and contradictions-that the already well-known Rivera landed back in Mexico.

'O Nelson Osorio explains the impact oi these changes in global relations on the appearance of avant-garde movements iliternationally, but more specifically in Latin America. "Para una caracterizacion historica del vanguardismo literario hispanoamericanonin Revista Iberoamericana, vol. 47, number 114-5 (Enero/junio,l981), pp. 227-54. His Decline of the West was widely read in Latin America, and gave intellectuals and artists the idea that the New World was finally coming out from under European hegemony, and into its own. l2 The long war lasted from 1810 to 1820, with Mexico gaining its independence frorn Spain in 1821. The armed Revolution occured 100 years later, and also lasted about a decade.

He, like some of hiç colleagues from the Ateneo generation, was older and more experienced than the large number of young poets and artists fonning the avant-garde. Soon after his retum home, Rivera-along

with other artists and

writers, including painter Roberto Montenegro and, Rivera's life-long friend, poet Carlos Pellicer, both also back from Europe13-made two trips of reacquaintance with his native land that took him to Yucatan and Tehuantepec, in November 1921, that were to significantly affect him.14 The new Minister of Education in the Obregon government. José Vasconcelos, financed the two trips with the purpose of showing Rivera and other artists-also

just returned

home-exarnples of the Mexican patrimony. It was after these that Rivera's insertion into the political and artistic movements of the country began in eamest. His extensive participation, both active (sometimes behind the scenes) and perfunctory, is revealing, on the one hand, of his will to prornote and dominate a new "Mexican" culture, and, on the other, of the emblematic status bestowed upon hirn. The closely knit political and cultural concerns in Latin America, born of its specific geographical and historical conditions, has generally shaped the role of intellectuals differently from that of their European colleagues. In Latin

l 3 Hurlburt, Laurance, "A Bibliography" in Detroit Retrospective (Detroit: Detroit lnstaute of Arts Founders Society; New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1986), p. 53. l4 The Estridentista poet Maples Arce also affirrns in a 1923 interview that Yucatan is the place frorn where "spiritual renovation" will arise. Mario Schneider, Elestridentismo, O m a literatura de la estrategia (México: Ediciones de Bellas Artes, 1970),p. 80. This study of the movement is invaluable for the extensive original documentation it provides, especially from El Universal Ilustrado, a newspaper that had wide circulation in Mexico in the 1920s.

America, significantly more so than in Europe, intellectuals have traditionally been called upon to perfom important functions in govemment, and therefore, in post-revolutionary Mexico, they had a strong presence at the political helm of their country. Thus, Rivera's participation in the various political and cultural movements entails an inevitable association with the leading figures in the country, an association which would be crucial in the attempt to establish a modem cultural center in Mexico, and, by extension, in the Americas.

The Ateneo Years

Much of the leadership in post-revolutionary Mexico started within the Ateneo of which Rivera was an early member. El Ateneo de México (19061914), a hugely influential group of intellectuals, did not last long as a

movement, but its impact on contemporary Mexican thought and culture was profound.15 The Ateneistas rejected the positivism of the Diaz's dictatorship, and, generally, promoted a humanist and idealist renaissance, a revival of spiritual and aesthetic values, and more particularly, literary modernismo.16 They saw themselves as educators, and among their achievements in the

For a detailed history of the Ateneo, see Alfonso Garcia Morales. El Ateneo de México (1 906-1914). Origenes de la cultura mexicana contemporanea (Sevi lla: CSIC, 1992), p. 43. And for Rivera's role within the Ateneo, see Alvaro Matute, "Diego Rivera, ateneista" in Diego Rivera hoy. Simposio sobre ei artista en el centenario de su natalido (México: SEP, 1 986), pp. 15-9.

l6 For the difference between modernism and modernismo, see Part One, Chapter two, note 8.

dissemination of knowledge is the creation of the Universidad Popular whose president was Afeneista Alberto J. Pani, later one of Rivera's patrons." Rivera and his fellow painter, Angel Zarraga, were on the list of correspondents for the Ateneo because they had both left for Europe on an extended stay.18 While Rivera could not participate from a distance in the collective readings and discussions of the group, he very much belonged to that generation of intellectual caudillos19 who played a significant part in the construction of the concept of a new national culture. If Rivera's fourteen-year exposure to the European scene appears to have activated his awareness of political and aesthetic concerns, he had already been involved earlier on, in his own country, before leaving for Europe in 1907. In 1902, he took a leading part in a student strike at the San Carlos academy where he was studying; the protest was aimed both at the re-election of the dictator Porfirio Diaz, and at the conventional teaching approaches within the academy.20 In 1906, Rivera joined a group of young artists and intellectuals who promoted European Modemism, and published a

l7 Pani actually was instrumental in bringing Rivera back from Europe, and also commissioned a number of works. After Pani, Martin Luis Guzman held the second most important job; he was Secretary of the University. In Paris, Rivera had done a cubist portrait of both, Guzman's in 1915, and Pani's in 1920,

Garcia Morales, ElAteneo de México, op. cited, p. 177. It is interesting to note that Rivera was sent to Europe with funds from the Porfirio Diaz's regime. Matute, "Diego Rivera, ateneistanop. cit., p.16. "Caudillos" is the term that Enrique Krauze took from its usual political context to apply to the cultural leaders of the Mexican Revolution. Caudillos culturales de la revoluciun mexicana (México: SigIo Veintiuno, 1982).

*O John Brushwaod, Narrative Innovationand Polifical Change in Mexico (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), pp. 8-9.

magazine, Savia modemaY2'an ephemeral publication to which he contributed iIlustrations.22 Alfonso Reyes, the celebrated Mexican writer, "nuestrc Socrates" [our Socrates],23 later remarked on the importance of the magazine: "No solo en nombre [. ..] en el material mismo prolongaba a la Revista Moderna. Duro poco-era de rigor-pero

Io bastante para dar la voz

de un tiempo nuevo." [Not only in name [...] in the material itself, it extended the work of the Revista Modema.24 It lasted little-that

was obligatory-but

enough to give voice to a new eral.25 Pedro Henriquez Urena, the no less celebrated poet and essayist, and the first historian of Latin American literature originally from the Dorninican Republic, and editor of the last two nurnbers of the magazine, commented to his friend Reyes that "En Savia Modema habia de todo: pintores y escultores [...] poetas y prosistas, malos y buenos. Algunos muy malos." [In Savia Modema there was everything: painters and sculptors [. ..] poets and prose writers, good and bad. Some very badl.26 He saw in the magazine the same element of radical rupture, and described it as "desorganizada y llena de enores" [disorganized and full of mistakes], but added that "representaba, sin embargo, la tendencia de la generacion nueva a diferenciarse francamente de su antecesora a pesar del

21 Laurance P. Hurlburt, "Diego Rivera (1886-1957): A Chronicle of his Art, Life and Times" in

Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, op. cit., p. 25.

22 Matute, "Diego Rivera ateneista", op. cit., p. 15. 23 Manuel Duran, Antologia de /arevista Contemporaneos (México: Fonda de Cultura Economica, 1973), p. 163, note 1. 24 A Mexican art magazine of the period that lasted only a few months.

25 Quoted in Garcia Morales, El Ateneo de México, op. cit., p. 43. 26 Ibid., p. 47.

gran poder y del gran prestigio intelectual de ésta." [it represented, however, the tendency of the new generation to distinguish itseif radically from its predecessor despite the great power and the great intelectual prestige of the latter].27 While the magazine presented a rather canonic modemist literature, it was truly innovative when it came to painting? In 1906, Rivera was one of the painters whose work was shown at a Savia Modema exhibit of young antiacadernic painters organized by Gerardo Murillo, known as Dr. Atl. The magazine was also, the first unifying tool for what later became the Ateneo group.29 Some of Rivera's future patrons and friends were part of the Ateneo, among them, José Vasconcelos (1882-1959),Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959)' and Martin Luis Guzman (1887-1976)' al1 three, Ateneistas and active educators. Vasconcelos, philosopher, and politician, promoted muralism when he became Minister of Education in the Obregon regime, and offered Rivera walls on which to paint. Reyes was one of Mexico's most prominent essayist and poet whom Rivera admired and with whom he shared a love of "Anahuac", the land on which Tenochtitlan-now

Mexico City-was

built.30

Guzman was also a writer, and a chronicler of the Revolution, whose Cubist

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid. 29 For brief accounts of Rivera's involvement with the Ateneo group, see Matute, "Diego Rivera atenekta", op. cited, pp. 15-9, and David Huerta, "Diego en las dos orillas del Atlanticon, in Diego Rivera hoy, op. cit., pp. 21- 3. 30 Reyes wrote Vi'si'dnde Anahuac (1 91 7). Rivera was iabelled the "Anahuac cubist" by Justino Fernandez. Reyes followed Rivera's professional Iife when they were both in Europe and wrote about it in his correspondence to Mexican friends. The artist and the writer also carried out an extensive correspondence.

portrait the artist painted in Paris, in 1915. In that portrait of his friend, Rivera introduced the first Mexican element (a sarape, or Mexican woven and striped blanket) prior to the more clearly "mexicanized" Z'atista Landscape. The Ateneo was no doubt one of the significant elements that provided Rivera with the tools that would allow him to span both continents.31

Simultaneous Shoots and Multiple Flowering: The First Manifestos

The year Rivera retumed to Mexico was a year of intellectual effervescence. Vasconcelos, was detemined to bring about a "spiritual" revolution, and thus, apply the philosophical principies of the Ateneo generation. The university reforms that had started in Argentina in 1918, and swept Latin America were introduced in Mexico in 1921. The first so-called International Student Congress took place that year in Mexico City. Though

an apparent cultural beginning, 1921 was, of course, anticipated. On the literary scene, some avant-garde movements, manifestos and magazines had already appeared in Chile (Huidobro's Non Serviam), Peru (Alberto Hidalgo's La Nueva Poesia), and Argentina (Los Paros: Revista de Orientacion

Futurista) between 1916 and 1920. But, at the end of 1921, Mexico joined in,32 and from then on,there was an explosion of " brotes casi sirnultaneos"

31 Huerta, "Diego en las dos orillas del Atlantico", op. cit., p. 23.

32 Francisco Reyes Palma calls it "el aiio cero de la vanguardia mexicana" [the year zero of the Mexican vanguard], "Vanguardia: Afio Ceron in Museo Nacional de Arte, Modernidad y modernizacibn en el arte mexicano: 1920-1960 (México: Institut0 Nacional de Bellas Artes, 191), pp. 43-51.

[alrnost simultaneous shoots] and "floracion multiple" [muitiple flowering] in Latin America.33 In Mexico, the poet Manuel Maples Arce's first manifesto was published in December 1921, a year before the artists' union (SOTPE)34 published theirs, but seven months after Siqueiros' "Tres Ilamamientos de orientacion actual a los pintores y escultores de la nueva generacion de AméricaYy-"Three Appeals for a Modem Direction To the New Generation of American Painters and Sculptors" which appeared in the first and only copy of Siqueiros' avant-garde magazine, Vida Americana.35 That magazine, subtitled Revista norte centro y sud-americana de vanguardia, and headed by the slogan "No haremos literatura hispano-amerkana" [We will not write Spanish-American titerature] was published in May 1921, in Barcelona, another 'periphera1'-but

European-node

of avant-garde activities (see

fig.11). In February 1922, the Brazilian Modemista movement made its official appearance at a week-long celebration of modem art in Sao Paolo. There is little doubt that Siqueiros' document, written with the acknowledged help of Diego Rivera, would have influenced the publication of

33 Nelson Osorio, "Para una caracterizacion historica del vanguardismo literario hispanoamericano" op. cit., p. 247. 34 "El sindicato de obreros técnicos, pintores y escultores" r h e union of technical workers, painters and sculptors]

35 That was the first and only issue of the magazine. For the whole text in English translation, see 'Three Appeals for a Modern Direction To the New Generation of Arnerican Painters and Sculptors" in Dawn Ades, Art in Latin America: The Modern Era, 1820-1980 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 322-324.1 have used this version translated by Polyglossia in preference to the often cited one by Sylvia Cailes of Siqueiros, Art and Revolution, op. cit. Pages of quotes from this document will be indicated in brackets in the text.

Maples Arce's manifesto which appeared seven months later.36 As other Latin American writers, the young Mexican poet kept abreast of European and Latin American avant-garde movements and publications. Such a document, published by another young Mexican artist in BarceIona-a buuing modemist center-was

bound to attract Maples Arce's attention, and,

most probably, to encourage hirn to become an active participant as an artist from an even more marginal Mexico City. Unlike Marinetti, Siqueiros did not launch his ''Three Appeals" from Paris, but from a centre on the European periphery. Unlike the Futurist manifesto, Siqueiros' document does not announce the appearance of a new movement, and is addressed to artists of a specif ic geographical area. Siqueiros laments the mimetism of 'decaderit' European art that American37 artists still adopted then, and the negative reception his continent resewed to the new European "purifying" trends like Cézanne's Impressionism, Cubism, and Futurism (p. 322-323). His first appeal is for artists to "live our marvellous dynamic age" (p. 323) and to choose "new subjects" and "new aspects" in the production of their art (p. 322). "Lost values" must be brought back and "new values" must be added (p.

36 At the beginning of Maples Arce's book Urbe (1924). the very short list of his works includes a title which presumably refers to his Actual no. 1 manifesto (the only document known to have been published by him in 1921). The title closely resembles that of Siqueiros' document; compare Maples Arce's "Manifiesto a los poetas, pintores y escultores mexicanos de la nueva generacion" (December 1921) and Siqueiros' "Tres llamamientos de orientacion actual a los pintores y escultores de Américan (May 1921). Maples Arce, Urbe. Super-poema bolchevique en 5 cantos (México: Andrés Bota e Hijo, 1924). 37 The writings of this period, whether published in the United States or in Latin American countries, often use the word "America/Américan, sometimes in the sense of Latin America, other times to cover the whole continent. This terminological laxeness or confusion is symptomatic, 1 believe, of the ambiguous feelings in both the north and the south of the continent towards what unites and what distinguishes them.

323). To some extent Siqueiros appeared to believe in a Hegelian

progression of art towards an ever "highei' expression (p. 323). His second appeal is for the creation of a Lconstructed'art to replace

the decorative works produced at that time. The use of "primitive" black art, says Siqueiros, has shown the way back to 'construction' elements that had been forgotten, and he suggests that American artists can foilow this (European) lead by leaming from the construction of the ('American') art of ancient Mexican and Andean cultures, but without falling into trendy 'primitivism'. His third apeal is for a universal and pure art. Siqueiros ends by waming visual artists not to follow the path of the poets: "Let us close our ears to the critical dictates of our poets. They produce beautiful pieces of literature totally divorced from the real value we seek in our work." (p. 323). This attack on scholarly or academic affectations, on "literary frilI~"~38 will be renewed in Actual no. 1with Maples Arce's strike against "postizo literaturismo" [false

"literaturism"].39 Though this third appeal is for 'pure' art, Siqueiros appears to also cal1 for an art that is reintegrated into life, following in this the explicit goal of the European avant-gardes as discussed by Peter Bürger.40 This reinforces his criticism of autonomous art, of what he refers to, in his first

38 Mario de Micheli, Siqueiros (New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1968), p. 4. 39 Verani, Las vanguardias literarias en Hispanoarnérica, op. cit., p. 76.Literaturismo does not translate literally into English. Polyglossia translates it into "literariness" in Ades, Art in Latin America, op. cit., p. 308. It has an unusual ending reminiscent of that of

conservadurisrno (conservatism) that, I think, added here might be meant to infuse the word "literature" with conservatism. 40 See Biirger, The Theory of the Avant-Garde, op. cit.

appeal, as "marketable" art (p. 322). The general ideas in Siqueiros' first document will become much more specific in his 1922 manifesto. Maples Arce's first manifesto is much longer, more strident and less serious than Siqueiros' "Three Appeals". His broadsheet, Actual no. 1. Hoja de Vanguardia,41 obviously concemed with the present moment and the avant-garde as the title indicates, was essentially a one-peson manifesto. Siqueirosy"Three Appeals" might have infiuenced to some extent the publication of Actual no. 1. Its young author appears to have, as well, been given a hand by Diego Rivera, at least in the long compilation of a list of "who is who" in the avant-garde world (mostly Paris) of art and literature that follows the manifesto.42 The Iist includes names of artists and writers from the world over, including Latin America, and, more specifically, there are ten names from Mexico: Alfonso Reyes, José Juan Tablada, Diego Maria Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Mario Zayas (sic), José D. Frias, Fermin Revueltas, Silvestre Revueltas, and Pedro Echeverria.43 Jean Charlot, the young French painter recently landed in Mexico, also in 1921-and who would be one of the first muralists in Mexico-is

on the list as well.

41 Maples Arce, Actual no. 1, reprinted in Verani, Las vanguardias literarias en

Hispanoamerica, op. cit., pp. 71-8. Pages for quotes of the manifesto will be indicated in brackets in the text. 42 While Schneider in El estridenfisrno, op. cit., p. 35, guesses that the source of the list of

names rnight have been a magazine of international avant-garde, Serge Fauchereau assumes, I think quite rightly, that Maples Arce counted with Rivera's help. "The Stridentists" in Artforum, 24 (Feb. 1986), p. 86. 43 Schneider, El estridentismo, op. cit., p. 41. The cornplete list of names that follows the

manifesto can be faund under "Directory of the Avant-Gardenafter "Actual no. 1", in Ades, Art in Latin America, op. cit., p. 309.

Curiously, the unexpected names of two minor and unknown painters also appear next to the famous Russian artists Larionow (sic) and Gondiarowa (sic) whom Rivera frequented in Paris9 They are those of the two femaie cornpanions with whom Rivera lived in the French capital, and with each of whom he haci a child: Marevna Vorobëv and Angeline Beloff. These inclusions-especially the first one, as simply 'Marevna'-lead

one to

suspect the interference of Rivera in making up the list.45 As the mature, established cultural figure he would be the ideal person to assist the twentyone year old aspiring poet, who like hirn wanted to be part of the Mexican and intemational avant-gardes. While the names of Rivera and Siqueiros are included in the directory, there seems to be one flagrant omission: there is no mention of José Clemente Orozco.46 One could speculate that the name is missing because the Jalisco bom painter had not acquired the avant-garde legitimacy granted the other two by a European sojourn. Or maybe, Rivera had not suggested the name of his older rival, or had requested it be kept out. This omission is al1 the more surprising since Orozco, who had retumed from the United States in 1917, had a studio in Coyoacan, and was involved with the Acciun y

See previous chapter for the link between these Russian artists and Rivera. 45 Other narnes of people close to Rivera in Paris that might not have otherwise been

included, appear in the list like Elie Faure, Marie Blanchard, and Mme. Fischer. 46 When interviewed in 1922, Maples Arce again ignores Orozco. He calls for innovation, or

renovation, as exemplified by "Diego Rivera, Dr. Atl, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Eduardo Catafio, Fermin Revueltas, Jean Charlot, and the sculptor Guillermo Ruiz". El Universal llustrado (24 de agosto de 1922), as quoted in Schneider, El estridentismo, op. cit., p. 54.

Arte group.47 But then, Orozco's venture in the United States (1917-1920) had been less successful than Rivera's European one, and he had to seek the attention of the critics to gain some publi~ity.~8 The shy and very private Orozco was once again overshadowed by R i ~ e r a . ~Ing 1910, while Rivera was in Europe, Orozco could have begun his mural career long before his rival, when he, Dr. Atl and other artists applied for govemment help, and were offered walls on which to paint. However, their hopes were dashed a few days later because of Madero's revolt. With Porfirio Diaz ousted, the birth of the mural renaissance had to wait another de~ade.~O Eventually, Orozco did join the (artists') Syndicate (SOTPE) when it was founded in 1922, and a connection with Estridentismo-the

first Mexican avant-garde movement-

was finally made when his name appeared in the fourth estridentista

4 7 i ~ r o r1883-1949 ~~! (Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, 1980), p. 8. The name is Grupos de Accion de Arte, according to Francisco Reyes Palma who refers to their 1922 exhibit as having received mixed reviews. Revista de Revistas did not like the modern tendencies, and was particularly critical of Orozco, while El Universal llustrado only praises Orozco and Rivera. Francisco Reyes Palma, "Arte funcional y vanguardia (1921-1952), in Modernidad y modernizacion, op. ci!., p. 85 and 95, note 1. 48 Jean Charlot, The Mexican Mural Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963),

pp. 213-4. 49 In 1924, he was still mentioned as a student of Rivera by Salvador Novo in El Universal

llustrado (3 de julio de 1924) in ibid., p. 223.

ln 1910, part of the official celebrations of the anniversary O! Mexico's independence was an exhibition of Spanish contemporary art to be held in Mexico City. Orozco, At1 and others requested government support for an exhibition of Mexican art to be held at the same time. That second exhibition met with great success. After that, the Mexican artists formed a group called Centro Artistico aimed at getting public walls on which to paint. See José Clemente Orozco (1945), trans. Robert C. Stephenson, An Autobiography (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1962), pp. 26-8.

rnanifesto published, in 1926, by the Third National Congress of Students in Ciudad Victoria.51 In its fourteen-point form, Maples Arce's 1921 estridentista manifesto showed some influence from the ltalian Futurist, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's first 1909 manifesto, itself divided into eleven points.52 Maples Arce's proclamation may not have been quite as dramatic as Marinetti's had been, but still, it was plastered on walls, and sent to the local newspapers and artistic figures locally and elsewhere.53 Rivera's involvement in the Iist of artists and painters points to the probability that he also had a hand in the writing of Actualno. 1, and in suggesting its mode of distributicn. After all, Rivera had lived through the experience of the reception of Marinetti's manifesto, in March 1309,when he arrived in Paris just weekç after it was published in Le Figaro, and took the Montparnasse artistic colony by çtorm.s4 I cannot help but speculate that Rivera not only contributed to the list, but rnight have actually suggested that it be added. In his first publication, that

51 Schneider, El estridentismo, op. cit., p. 142.

52 Serge Fauchereau mentions sixteen points. "The Stridentists", op. cit., p. 85. 53 Ibid., p. 85. 54 1 do not mean to irnply that Maples Arce would have first heard of Marinetti's rnanifesto from Rivera, The event was widely discussed in Latin America's intellectuai circles. At the tirne of its publication in 1909, Ruben Dario and Amado Nervo, among others, wrote about it. See Schneider, El estridentismo, op. cit., pp. 13 and 16. Though Maples Arce would have been nine years old then, he undoubtedly read about it later as it continued to make ripples among Latin American young artists and writers. In fact, he daims that Marinetti had sent him his manifestos and other vanguardist material. Manuel Maples Arce, Soberana juventud, as quoted in Fauchereau, 'The Stridentists", op. cit., p. 88. Charlot believes that when Siqueiros and Rivera came back from Europe they were carrying Marinetti's manifestos in their luggage. This would be more Iikely. Stefan Baciu, "Un estridentista silencioso rinde cuentas: Jean Charlotn(una entrevista), in La Palabra y el Hombre 40 (noviembre-diciembre de 198l), p. 143.

essentially calls for the creation of a Latin Arnerican modem art, the young Siqueiros mentions three contemporary Spanish artists: Sunyer, Picasso, and Juan Gris. Though, as Siqueiros acknowledged later, his recent discussions with Rivera, in Paris, contributed to the elaboration of his "Three Appeals", it is conceivable that Rivera (and Maples Arce), now from Mexico, respondedto the Barcelona document by rnaking it known, through that Iist, that there were many Latin American artists and writers-including Mexican ones, and especially Rivera-who

already belonged to the international avant-garde,

and produced the new kirid of art that Siqueiros advocated.55 Whereas its tone is vehement, shocking, and even insulting, Actual, no. 1does not exhibit the violence and the glorification of war that are found

in Marinetti's document. Maples Arce clearly reiterates the declarations of European Futurists, and generally of the avant-garde, that reject the past. He affims the preerninence of the present. Though still an embryonic expression of Mexican vanguardism, his is not a mere parroting of his European counterparts. He condemns local practices, such as the academic production of Mexican schools-"contra

los prefectos de preparatoria" [against college

administrators],56 as well as "conventional" expressions of national art,57 possibly targetting the more recent folkloric and nativist trends of artists like

---

- --

55 Young Maples Arce's name does not appear on the list.

56 Fauchereau, "The Stridentists", op. cit., p. 88. 57 Maples Arce, Actuai no.1, op. cit.

Roberto Montenegro, and Adolfo Best Maugard, and the open-air schools that Siqueiros had already condemned more directly in his Yhree Appealsn.58 In his manifesto, Maples Arce also denounces the local critical scene as "bufa" [a piece of buffoonery], including the enthusiasm of the critics for a "postizo literaturismo" [a false "literaturism"] in the visual arts.59 This concern about the lack of (good) critics would be a constant in estridentista writings, and, from 1925 to 1927, became the central preoccupation among Mexican

writers and critics.60 Some thought that "publishing laziness" reigned in the country, that there were no "real Mexican critics" capable of guiding the public, and that, outside of textbooks, book publishing was not offering business advantages to either authors or publishers.61 The debate on the lack, and quality, of critics (especially, disinterested critics) was inevitably linked to the issue of the kind of literature Mexicans produced, and whether "a modem Mexican literature" or "a virile Mexican literature" (rneaning a 'revolutionary' literature like, for example in Russia) existed.62 Most of the 'criticism', or rather promotion, of estridentista works and activities, was

Incidentaliy, Siqueiros had helped set up these open air schools. de Micheli, Siqueiros, op. cit., p. 3. 59 See note 39 above.

60 In El estridentismo, Mario Luis Schneider focuses particularly on the year 1927. 61 Schneider,

El estridentismo, op. cit., p. 117-121 .

62 Ibid. For detailed documentation on this aspect of the debate see Victor Diaz Arciniega's Querella por /a cultura "revolucionaria" (1925),(México: Fondo de Cultura Econornica, 1989). In "Manifiesto Estrideniista" of 1923, terms that imply viriIity are used a i the end of it: "Ser estridentista es ser hombre, Solo los eunucos nos (sic) esfaran con nosotros. Apagaremos el sol de un sombrerazo. FELlZ ANO NUEVO" r o be a stridentist is to be a man, Only eunuchs will not be with us. We will turn off the Sun with one big strike of a hat. HAPPY NEW YEAR; ernphasis mine]. Verani, Las vanguardias literarias, op. cit., p. 81.

written by 'critics' who were associated with the rnovement, as for example in the widely distributed weekly El Universal lluçtrado. That association, along with the creation of their own publications, was the only way writers and movements could becorne known, at least arnong the limited reading public. If in France, the Cubist painters had needed their Apollinaire to create a public, in Mexico, the need was even greater for a Maples Arce; he was one of the first to write about "The young painters of Mexico" (including Rivera), less than two rnonths before the artist's return to Mexico, in 1921.63 The anarchic, strident nature of Actual no. 1, this "spiritual revolution" and "intellectual subversion [.. .] meant to Save the future generation", and erroneously labeled a "first in America"64 by its author, is negative in the tradition of some European avant-garde movements. It opposes many things, the most curious of which, I think, is "los inquilinos sindicalizados" [unionized rentersl.65 Soon, the movement would gradually veer towards a more coi-iscious political involvernent in local social issues. In 1923, the Estridentista painter, and close friend of Maples Arce, Femin Revueltas,

painted a fresco for the railroad worker's union? And as mentioned earlier,

63 "Los pintores jovenes de Méxicon,Zig-Zag (TMéxico, 4 de mayo de 1921), quoted in Schneider, El estridentismo, op. cit., p. 21 1. Before Maples Arce, the poet José Juan Tablada had already played that role of critic and promoter of Mexican artists, for example with his article "Triunfo de los pintores rnexicanos" published in Revista de Revistas (1 de agosto de 1920). Later, in 1923, he wrote more specificaily about Rivera in The Arts from New York, where he had just gone to live. 64 Schneider,

El estridentismo, op. cit., p. 55. (my translation)

65 Maples Arce, Actual, no. 1, p. 53. The "movirniento de inquilinos" was started in Veracruz

in 1915. 66 Fauchereau, 'The Stridentistsn, op. cit., p. 88.

less than a year after Actual no. 1 appeared, the farnous artists' union organized by Siqueiros would be bom. To have an impact, Maples Arce needed to surround himself by other intellectuals because, as he said, "para hacer significar la fuerza de una época, es necesario crear la fuerza de un grupo." [to give meaning to the impact of an era, the creation of a group is necessary to validate it1.67 SO, he was eventually, joined by other poets and novelists to f o m the Estridentista movement, to which the American writer, Carleton Beals referred as "the Noisemakersn.68Though recognized as a literary association, a few visual artists, arnong whom the recently landed French painter, Jean Charlot, the painter Ramon Alva de la Canal, Rivera, and others collaborated closely with the movement. In fact, it was artists, and not poets, who first cooperated with Maples Arce. Besides the suspected part Rivera played in the publication of the first Estridentista manifesto by Maples Arce, the artist's name is often associated with the Estridentistas for whorn he appears to have been the object of admiration, maybe even veneration. In 1922, they announced plans for a 'rnultidisciplinary' exhibition whose plastic arts section (drawing, scufpture, painting, and engraving) Rivera was to organize. That first show was in effect held in April 1924, in "El Café de Nadie" [Nobody's Café], where Estridentista writers and artists met with their

67 El Universal Ilustrado (30 de noviembre de 1922), as quoted in Schneider, El

estridentismo, op. cit., p. 55. 68 Probably the first account of Estridentismo in English was provided by the American

author, Carleton Beals in Mexican Maze (Philadelphia: J . B. Lippincott Company, 1931). However, it is a poor and confused account.

collaborators, including Rivera, and that gave its name to a painting by Ramon Alva de la Canal.69 However, it is not clear whether, or to what extent, Rivera actually carried out the original plans for organizing the exhibition.70 It is evident, though, that his leadership in visual matters was recognized from early on. Soon after, Rivera would ask Estridentista painters to assist him in painting the Secretaria murais, but that association was short lived; it ended when the master painter decided that the styles of his assistants did not blend in with his, and only a handful of frescoes by these artists remain on the wails of the Secretaria. This was the beginning of the dominance imposed by Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros that Alva de la Canal, one of Rivera's assistant, and muralist in his own right, summarizes as: "Eran terribles y no dejaron pasar a nadie." [They were terrible, and they did not let anyone t h r o ~ g h ] . ~ l Jean Charlot-the

young muralist who had corne from France and worked

with Rivera-describes at length the master's participation in the elimination of al1 other muralists from the Secretaria, and his iack of practical cornmitment to the collective emphasis of the rnembers of the Syndicate.72 In fact, this "no dejar titere con cabeza" [destruction or disarrangement, literally, not leaving a puppet with its head 01-1173started earlier on, with the first mural, when Rivera publicly denigrated the mural that Charlot had painted at the Preparatoria.

69 Schneider, El estridentismo, op. cit., p. 54, 85, and 73.

70 It is not clear whether any of Rivera's work was presented in that exhibition.

7 iMireya Folch "Entrevista a Ramon Alva de la Canal", La palabra y el Hombre 40 (octubrediciembre 1981), p. 37. 72 Charlot, The Mexican Renaissance, op. cit., pp. 269-79. 73 An expression used by Ramon Alva de la Canal referring to Rivera. in Folch, "Entrevista a Alva de la Canaln,op. cit. p. 37.

Rivera wrote a nasty piece of criticism about it in 1923, trying to counter some of the good reviews the young French artist's fresco had received, and, therefore, destroy the image that associated the 'two' muralists in the eyes of the press?

The Estridentista Wedding

Rivera also played a small, but significant part in a piece of journalistic humour. In 1923, a wedding announcement was published in El Universal

Ilustrado,75 a paper to which the Estridentistas contributed regularly under the heading of El Gran Rotativo [The Big Rotary Press].The note describes itself as a "burla y ataque" [a mockeiy and an attack] as it indeed is. The groom is the bard Maples Arce, and the bride is "FLO 826 CHUT, una belleza estridentista" [FLO 826 CHUT, a Stridentist beauty]. The groom's best "men" are Arqueies Vela, another Estridentista poet, and Celia Montalvan,76 a

74 "Arriving here with Franco-German luggage, someone thought himself the Greco of Mexico, and shed here the influence of the fatidic Catholic Marcel Lenoir, thanks to friendly suggestions that oriented hirn tûward Paolo Ucello; after that he carried out his plan of painting a wagnerian mural. More could have been expected of him but that is enough for such a youth, and after al[, Eric Satie said long ago that "Wagner stinks". "Dos Anos" in Azulejos (December 1923). quoted in Charlot, The Mexican Renaissance, op. cit., p. 187. Later in this chapter, I include a poem where Maples Arce, Charlot and Rivera are mentioned in similar fashion. 75 El Universal llustrado (18 de enero de 1923), quoted in Schneider, El estridentismo, op. cit. p. 66. The quotes from that article are al1 from page 66. 76 Rivera painted her in his mural Dia de muertos at the Secretaria. She is standing between the poet Salvador Novo, and a famous bullfighter in a large festive crowd that includes Rivera himself with his wife Lupe Marin. Considering that this cycle of frescoes was started in March 1923, and finished in1928, we can Say that this mural frorn the Court of Fiestas was painted within a year or two after the article was published. The inclusion of the actress in this mural might be a humorous reference to a humorous article.

"artista de variétés", but the bride-whose

parents are unknown-cannot find

anyone who would dare sponsor her. The officiating "pontifical" is no less than Diego Rivera who is also referred to as "el Ilustrisirno Abate" [the Very Iltustrious Abbot]. The message of this short farce appears to be that

Estridentismo is new and provocative, of unknown origins, and. because it is so, its potential public is not daring enough to face the challenge. So, Rivera's role is that of the sage monk, a well respected figure, who sanctions the marriage between Maples Arce and Estridenfisrno(an unknown quantity). To stress the modemity and cosrnopolitanism that the Estridentistas so highly praised, the notice mentions that the music for the wedding ceremony will be perforrned by "una conocida orquesta de Jazz Band" [a farnous Jazz Band)? This short journalistic piece could be interpreted as a public notice, albeit farcical, that Rivera-as

one of the participants in the European avant-garde

movements-will preside over the cultural revolution of the Mexican avantgarde. Rivera's mention, here, is al1 the more significant because this was the first appearance of the rubric El Gran Rotativo in El Universal Ilustrado.79

77 "Pontifice" ("pontiff")was a title given the Estridenfista lezder, Maples Arce, by his colleagues. Not unlike other Latin American iiterary movements, the Estridentistas used words of Church hierarchy to describe members of the movement: Arqueles Vela was an apostle, and others were the movement's priests. Schneider, Elestridentismo, op. cit., pp. 34 and 239. 78 Ibid., p. 66. Both the words band and orchestra are used here. 79 Ibid., p. 66.

A Calligram: ' 1 rradiador Estridencial"

Rivera's reiationship with the estridentiçta movement was not confined to organizing exhibits, or being part of humorous intellectual games played out in the press. He did illustrations for their magazines, such as Irradiador.

Revista de Vanguardia. Proyector Intemacional de Nueva Estética (19231924)*0 and Horizonte (1926-1927)'and also contributed poetry. In 1924,he

wrote "Caligrama 'Irradiador Estridencial"' ['Stridential Irradiator' Calligram] (fig. 23) for lrradiadorin the style of Apollinaire.81 If the French poet could Say

in relationship to his own calligrammes "Moi aussi je suis peintreHf82 so Rivera could reply that he too was a poet. But, while Apollinaire conçidered that the calligrammes were "une précision typographique à l'époque où la typographie

termine brillamment sa carrière à l'aurore des moyens nouveaux de

80 There are discrepancies as to the dates of publication of the ephemeral magazine, lrradiador, maybe due to the difficulty in getting access to any of its issues. Serge Fauchereau claims it was published only in 1924. "The Stridentistsnlop. cit. p. 88. Stefan Baciu, mentions that there was an engraving by Charlot in a 1922 issue. He atso remarks that Siqueiros was involved with this magazine; in fact, lrradiador is "una revista orientada por David Alfaro Siqueiros" [a magazine whose direction was given by David Aifaro Siqueiros], "Un estridentista silencioso rinde cuentas: Jean Charlot", op. cit., p. 143.

Mario Schneider has little to Say about lrradiador because he was unable to find any copies of the magazine, and does not mention the writing of any calligram by Rivera. Serge Fauchereau, provides an illustration of the calligram, and mentions that "Rivera made calligrams imitated from Apollinairen but does not elaborate further on it. 'The Stridentists", op. cit., pp. 88. Though Rivera was a friend of Apollinaire, another Frenchman who painted murals with him might have refreshed his memory about the poet's work. Jean Charlot, recently arrived in Mexico, had brought with him "entre sus pertenencias, las poesias de Apollinaire." [in his belongings, Apollinaire's poetry]. Baciu, "Un estridentista silencioso rinde cuentas: Jean Charlot, op. cit., p. 144. In that same interview with Charlot, the painter claims that Rivera wrote more than one calligram, most of them in French. lbid.,146. I have not been able to find any trace or mention of them elsewhere. 82 [l am a painter too] in Guillaume Apollinaire, Selected Writings of Guillaume Apollinaire. Roger Shattuck trans. and ed. (New York: New Directions, 1971), p. 19.

reproduction qui sont le cinéma et le phonographeV,83Rivera would write his caligrama at a time when printing in Mexico was finally ca!led upon to play a more steady and expanded role, and when the cinema and the phonograph were not yet items of mass consumption in the country. Reading on a larger scale was just starting, especially in newly created schools and universities, and the seventh art had not yet widely captured the recreational market.84 Rivera's calligram takes the form of a poster, a medium that Maples Arce acknowledges as indebted to Dada. This advertising poster entitled "1rradiador Estridencial"-not

'Estridentista'-offers a product, a remedy

called "Estridentina"-obviously a take on 'Aspirina'-said

to help get rid of a

mummified national ruling elite, a cure to "cerebral dullness and spiritual myopia".85 Around the initiais 'D R'-his

own of course-he

designed a series

of one-word slogans. Apollinaire had used his (whole) name inside a calligram, but as a signature rather than-as

did Rivera-an

integral part of

the message. The words starting with the initial 'D' allowed him to make up words with the prefix "de-" which, like in English, implies reversal. For example. he exhorts people to reverse their present drowsiness and sleepiness, ("desamodrrense" [sic], "despiértense", "desduérmanse"). W ith the initial R he iashes out, presumably at the critics, in Estridentista

83 [a typographic precision in an era when typography is brilliantly ending its career at the dawn of new means of reproduction such as the cinema and the phonograph], ibid., p. 21. 84 The Mexican film industry did not really develop until 1934.

85 Fauchereau, "The Stridentistsn, op. cit. p. 86.

terminology.86 He describes thern as "Rastacueros" [Parvenus], an adjective Maples Arce used in his second manifesto to describe critics.87 He indudes another Estridentista word starting with the letter R: "Ranciolatria" [the idolatry of the rancid], a tendency that is criticized in the 1923 Manifiesto Estridentista.88 "Roncadores" [Snorers] completes the terms devoted to sleeping. "Desharemos" [We will undo], "Desasnaremos" pNe will loose our asininity] and "Romperemos" [We will break] concludes the 'reversal' series, in the f o m of the 'we' of manifestos, in this case, an affirmative 'future' rather than the usual exhorting 'imperative' of avant-garde manifestos. In keeping with Rivera's practice of often infusing more than one connotation to the figures in his paintings, it would be consistent to attach to the central part of the visual poem a nurnber of sirnultaneous interpretations. First, Rivera's choice of advertising a (medical) remedy rather than any other modern product is fascinating. One of the major themes related to Latin American concerns with self-identity was the assurnption that the continent was diseased.89 At the turn of the century, and during the era of the cientificos, this belief, that stemmed from positivisrn, and notions of racial and biological evolution, centered around social sicknesç, but in the post-

86 Several of these words appear to be borrowed from the Manifiesto Estridentista (Puebla,

Enero 10. de 1923). It is reprinted in Verani, Las vanguardias Iiterarias de Hispanoamérica, op. cit. pp. 79-81. 87 Quoted in Schneider, El estridentismo, op. cit., p. 37. 88 "Manifiesto Estridentista" (1923),op. cit., pp. 79-81. 89 Martin S. Stabb, In Quest of Identity- Patterns in the Spanish American Essay of Ideas,

1890-1960 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1967), pp. 12-33.

positivistg0 years after the Porfiriato, and the Revolution, these afflictions were viewed more as being of an inteliectual and cultural nature. Rivera, having identified, with the Estridentistas, the nature of Mexico's illness as culturalmore specifically, aesthetic-offers a remedy that will cure it. 'Estridentina', like the 'comprimido estridentista' [estridentista tablet] in the subtitle of Maples Arce's first manifesto, are medicines, and as we have seen, Rivera's prescription of 'Estridentina' is offered with promises of "future" recovery. Another interpretation I would like to suggest cornes from the f o m given the calligrarn in keeping with estridentista principles such as exalting "el tematismo sugerente de las rnaquinas" [themes suggestive of machines], and capturing "la grafica emocional del rnomento presente" [the emotional graphics of the present moment].gl The circle f o n e d by the twelve words 'irradiating' around Rivera's initials rnay visually represent modemity, in the

form of the rotary printing press, a symbol of speed and rnachinery that appealed to the estridentistas.92 And, as well, it may be a reference to the need for a more modem and serious publishing industry, and for the

1 chose "postn rather than "anti" because as I mention later in this chapter, positivism still continued to permeate Mexican thought even while intellectuals were stagging their steady battle against it, and the cientr'ficosof the Porfiriato. Their new 'humanism' did not completely stamp out the positivist imprints left by their many years of schooling.

op. cit., p. 79; Manifiesto Estridentista numero tres, published in Zacatecas in 1925 and reprinted in Nelson Osorio, Manifiestos, proclamas y polémicas de la vanguardia literaria hispanoamericana (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho), 1988, p.158. 91 "Manifiesto Estridentista" (1923),

92 In his first rnanifesto, Maples Arce regrets the lack of posters that use geornetric forms inspired by the movement and shapes of machines. Schneider, El estridentismo, op. cit., p. 38. ln 1922, he writes about the work accomplished by the estridentistas during that year;

among their achievementç is that of "Exaltar el furor agudo de los rotativos" [Exalt the acute furor of the rotary printing press], ibid., p. 60. In his first manifesto, he declares his love for typewriters, "Actual no. l n ,op. cit. p. 73.

spreading of culture with Rivera, at the center, as the 'irradiator' himself.93 Supporting estridentista ideas and 'advertising' them, allowed hirn to position himself in the center, presumably as a leading motor, or-to printing press metaphor-as

stick to the

the leading mechanism behind the movement.94

This wonderful calligrarn, which ends with an appeal to the readers to listen to Manuel Maples Arce, was as much a marketing strategy for the estridenfistas as it was for Rivera. The format of an advertisement poster for the calligram (as for the estridentista manifesto) might have been chosen as a parody of modem

capitalist consumerism and marketing-also

extended to the arts-and,

like

Dada posters, as a symbol of the ephemerality of Estridentismo as an avantgarde rnovement. However, this satirical "advertisement", printed as it was in an art magazine, would have undoubtedly also proved useful as a modern means available to the movernent for its own marketing in an effort to

93 "Irradiadot' is a "cuerpo que despide rayos de luz, calor, ondas. energia O particulas del atomo en todas direcciones." [body that emits rays of light, heat, waves, energy or atorn particles in al1 directions], Klaus Müller-Bergh, "El hombre y la técnica: contribucion al conocimiento de corrientes vanguardistas hispanoamericanas" in Revista lberoamericana 48, no 118 (enero-junio de 1982). p.154. This defines both the title of the magazine and the centrality of the rotary press-like design adopted by Rivera in this calligram. But maybe it is one of the definitions for 'irradiate' from the dictionary that is more relevant as it reflects so appropriately the mood and the mission of the Mexican intelligentsia during that postrevolutionary phase: "to make clear or bright intellectually or spiritually; illumine." Collins concise Dictionary, London: Collins, 1988, p. 600. Lastly, the introduction of irradiation (Enlightenment) and technology through a poetry form borrowed from Europe may have been meant as a parodic reversal of the opposition Enlightened WesVMexican Darkness. 94 As Maples Arce would Say: "las propulsiones roto-translatorias del plano idea! de verdad estética que Apollinaire Ilam6 'la seccion de oro'" [the rotary and moving/tranferred/translated propulsions of the ideal plane of aesthetic truth ...], Actualno. 1, p. 75. Translated as "the roto-translatory projections emanating from the ideal plane of aesthetic truth that Apollinaire cailed the 'golden section"' in Ades, Art in Latin America, op. cit., p. 307.

create-or as Maples Arce said, "improvise"g~-its own public. By extension, the public that the estridentistas would create in that way could also be Rivera's. As we saw earlier, before Rivera's return from Europe, Maples Arce had started to play the role of a Mexican 'Apollinaire', that of a poet defending and prornoting new painting. While Rivera's not~rietyand European pedigree would be indispensable to the validation of the new estridentista rnovement, Maples Arce and his young followers would in turn, help him create a public for the new Mexican art he wanted to promote. And a public was needed. Visual expression, more akin to a post-revolutionary culture where illiteracy was overwhelming, could help bring attention to the written word, and help create a literary public. ln the continent as a whole, modem art was slowly filtering across the Atlantic and into the public's consciousness. However, in Mexico the Revolution had in fact delayed the process. While people were fighting for such basic things as the right to the land, they had little time to contemplate the new artistic and literary imports from Europe. Not that the illiterate majority would have cared for European trends before, but the Revolution seriously distracted the lettered few, and therefore, the lirnited artistic production was affected by the lengthy civil war. Young artists and writers who had not already left the country before the start of the Revolution (like Rivera had), continued to escape the impossible conditions of war which were not propitious for the creation of a new art.

95 El Universal Ilustrado, 28 d e diciembre de 1922, quoted in Schneider, El estridentr'smo, op.

cit., p. 60.

For those who stayed, and those who retumed in the early 1920s,the state of literacy and of the publishing industry was such that both artists and writers, particularly poets, had a very limited audience. Carlos Monsivais estimates the number of "readers and admirers of modem paintings", at that time, at "no more than 50,000".96 This situation was, of course, further exacerbated in the case of avant-garde estridentistas. After the initial Dadalike attempts at awakening the public with their manifestos, they pursued their aim of reaching the public by starting their own publishing enterprise, promoting young writers and poets, and advertising their works in their own magazines. These magazines, like Horizonte and lrradiador provided space to new artists, and therefore, helped create a public for a new art. Through the illustrations he created for these magazines, Rivera would also reach that public, while at the same time, his contributions and his name would help seIl copies. This rnutually agreeable "arrangement" between Rivera and the estridentisias is demonstratsd again by the appearance of El meridiano Iirico by Luis Marin Loya, a writer close to the movement.97 The 1926 publication is of interest because of the choice of subject; it presents three very laudatory

essays on Maples Arce, Arqueles Vela, and Rivera. While the first two were the most representative figures of literary Estridentismo, Rivera could not be considered as their artistic counterpart. And, even though the title does not

96 Carlos Monsivais, "Modernity and Its Enernies", in Images Of Mexico, Erika Billeter, ed. (Frankfurt: Benteli Catalogue Edition, 1987), p. 74. 97 'The Lyrical Meridian/Zenithn, Schneider, El estridentismo, op. cit. p. 146.

mention Estridentismo itself, Ramon Alva de la Canal, Gerrnan Cueto, Fermin Revueltas, or, even, Jean Charlot,g* for example, would have seemed more appropriate inclusions, as examples of the visual branch of the movement.

Why the curious juxtaposition of Rivera with the two literary figures? A critic, also close to the estridentistas, daims that the publication should be read because "it deals with three of the most discussed men in Mexicon.99 This

book gives an insight into what might have been, at the time, the perceived importance-greater than we know-of Rivera's involvement with the estridentista movement, an involvement which later was overshadowed by his

much greater role in Muralism. It could be said that the author included his brief account of Rivera's recently finished Chapingo murals as part of a marketing strategy that would benefit Marin Loya's estridentista friends. While the movement had not had a very productive year, the rnuralist, on the other hand, had been very busy, painting highly visible public murals. The evidence points to a mutually beneficial strategy. Rivera might have received this positive review of him and the two writers more favourably than earlier poerns, published in the press, where he is featured with Jean Charlot first: "Typists at work, al1 dolled up/ A la Tutankhamen, with split skirt/ Legs painted with a garland or motif/

98 Charlot collaborated with the Estridenlistas, mostiy by supplying numerous illustrations for their work, but he never really belonged, prefering to keep a "silent"distance. Baciu, "Un estridentista silencioso rinde cuentasn,op. cit. 99 Schneider, El estridentismo, op. cit., p. 149

Between Egyptian and modem, just likel A fresco by Charlot or RiveraW;1oo and then with both Maples Arce and Charlot: "Who is this one that muttered aloud,/ His sight already under a cloud?/ It is, declaiming his own verse,/ Maples. May the astral crowdl Believe he does them proud,/ For we mortals thought him worse./ Most rnisunderstood, al1 three,/ Away from this globe may he,/ Charlot and Rivera flee9'.10' On second thought, considering his great sense of humour, Rivera probably enjoyed these written caricatures!

Estridentopolis: The lrnagined Modem City

The association between Estridentismo and rnuralism was manifested at many levels. It is even found, for example, in the curious title of an early

work by Maples Arce, Andamios interiores [Intemal Scaffolds], published in 1922. The mention of 'scaffolds' a few months after Rivera started his first

mural is not surprising. Though the book was subtitled Poemas radiograficos

[Radiographie Poems] it included only one poem, Prisma [Prim]. The titles accuratety reflect the modern spatial elements of this work: the exaltation of urban and technological spaces linked to the intemal subjective ones of the author are viewed through his multiple Cubist perspectives. Andamios

'Oo "Las ninas de algunos ministeriodEscribiendo en la miquina, vestidas/ A Io Tutankhamen, con una falda/Abierta en el costado y luciendo en la pierna una guirnaldd O un nuevo decorado1Entre Egipcio y moderno, cual si fuerd Un fresco de Charlot O de Riveran.Charlot, The Mexican Mural Renaissance, op. cit., p. 187. 'O1 .LY aquél que habla en voz alta/ Con los ojos cerrados todavia?/-Es Maples, que recita una poesid Para ver si en los mundos siderales le prestan mas oido,/ Porque aqui, entre estos miseros mortales,/ Nunca fué comprendido;/ Juntos 'haran tangente' de esta esfera/ El, Charlot y Rivera". Ibid., p. 188.

interiores, and the later Urbe, were early Mexican versions of the type of work produced by European avant-gardes for whom "By the end of the 1920s, the capital had become a machine designed to contemplate itself, to fiIl the world with images of itself".'02 However, the Mexican spaces, even in the capital, did not reflect the modernity that Maples Arce's work exalts. His is rather, a 'universal' modemity, or a Mexican utopian version of it, an "imported city and technology, imagined as a result of the desire to belong to the global modem wortd. The concept of avant-garde was connected to the city, the capital, the centre. In fact, Maples Arce wanted to "urbanizar espiritualmente algunos gallineros literarios" [spiritually urbanize a few literary chicken coopsJ.103This cultural phenornenon foltowed the socio-economic transformations brought on by the global effects of the first World War. Inevitably, Latin America entered the global economy. Its cities-mostly

its capitals-became

the post-war

centres where the urban bourgeoisie, middle-class, and proletariat took over the control of new economic dynamics from the rural oligarchies.'o4 In the large urban centres artists shook the yoke of tradition, and expressed their rebellion.1os The capital had freed the rnodernist artist from nature, the traditional, and the past. Likewise, the estridentista movement started in the

Robert Hughes, Nothing Too Critical: Selected Essays on Art and Artists (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1990),p. 26. Maples Arce, Actual no. 1, op. cit., p. 60. O4 Osorio, "Para una caracterizacion historica del vanguardisrno literario hispanoamericario", op. cit., pp. 235-6.

Hughes, Nothing Too Critical, op. cit., p. 26.

capital, but it soon moved to the smaller town of Puebla-where rnanifesto appeared-and,

the second

in 1926, it finaily, ended in Jalapa, Veracruz (spelt

'Xaiapa' by the estridentistas), which, in avant-gardist 'tradition', they nicknamed 'Estridentopolis'.1~6While the French avant-gardes escaped fmm the conservative, backward looking "France profonde"'07 to the urban,

dynamic, forward looking, and more radical capital, the Mexican avant-gardes would eventually discover that the urbanfrural opposition in Mexico revealed a very different set of probiems. After the Revolution, the pre-modem "México profundo1'108could no longer be ignored. Mexico's spatio-temporal realities would require their own blend of avant-gardism. The rnovement chose to continue its 'irradiation' from the smaller provincial towns. In Rivera's work of the Secretaria the idealized rural replaces the utopian estridentista city, and while the machine is depicted in a few of these murais, it is not in the forrn of the technological advances of urban architecture, entertainment, and speed-like car-but

of rural necessities-like

skyscrappers, the radio, or the

the damn, the tractor, and the sewing

machine. When the radio loudspeaker "hom" of the new communication technology is depicted on a Secretaria mural, it appears in the village as the conduit through which information and education is received by the

This is the same year Fritz Lang's movie Metropolis (1925 -1926)was released in Gemany. Hughes uses that term in Nothing Too Critical, op. cit., p. 26. O8 In his book México profundo: Una civiliracion negada (México: Grijalbo, 1989),Ricardo Bonfil Batalla develops the concept of 'México profundo', as opposed to the imaginary Mexico which disavows the Meso-American civilizations. Of course, his "México profundo" is just as much a construction.

assembled peasants, or then, it appears as part of negative North American symbols of capitalisrn, in a fresco about a Wall Street banquet. There two radio loudspeaker "horns" surround a large bank safe, presumably transrnitting political and econornic news to help the likes of John Rockefeller and Pierpont Morgan, who are depicted in the panel, make appropriate stockmarket decisions.109

By 1924, when Maples Arce's famous Urbe [Metrop~lis]~ Io was published, the movernent had substantiatlly evolved. This set of five poems still exalts the modem "international" city, as its title might indicate, but it also glorifies the Mexican Revolution. Mario Luis Schneider points out that in Urbe "the glorification of the revolutionary struggle finds its counterpart in the exaltation of the city as an object of beauty"Y1 The avant-garde aesthetic revolution of the modem city seives as the background for avant-garde political action blown in from Russia across the sea. Bourgeois intellectuals and politicians understand neither the aesthetic nor the social revolution.

Urbe, which is subtitled Super-poema bolchevique en 5 cantos [Bolshevik Super-Poem in 5 Cantos], and is illustrated by Jean Charlot, is dedicated to the workers of Mexico (fig. 24). In the poem the workers appear as "rios de blusa azul" [rivers of blue overalls, p. 181, "huelguistas" [strikers, p. 191, and

O9 Fin del corrido and Banquete de Wall Street in Diego Rivera: los murales de la Secretaria de Educacion Publica, ensayo critico de Luis Cardoza y Aragon; introduccion y cornentarios de Antonio Rodriguez (Mexico: SEP, 1986), p.151. Manuel Maples Arce, Urbe: Super-poema bolchevique en 5 cantos (México: Andrés Bota e Hijo, 1924). Serge Fauchereau incorrectly dates it to 1925, "The Stridentistsn, op. cit., p. 88. Metropolis is the English title chosen by John Dos Passos for his translation of Urbe. Schneider, Elestridentismo, op. cit., p. 99. (my translation).

"arboles agitadores" [rousing trees, p. 191, and, in general, there is a sense of violent and irreversible change, a certainty that "la vida es una tumultuosa conversion hacia la izquierda" [life is a tumultuous conversion towards the left, p. 191. It is as if Maples Arce was suggesting that, white the whole country had not yet connected to the global modem (socialist) world, at least the city, and its workers had started the inevitable process. It is Lkbe that the American writer, John Dos Passos, chose to translate in 1929, after a visit to Mexico, making this estridentista work not only the first book of Mexican poetry to be translated into English, but more importantly, the first of any Spanish speaking avant-garde.112 While Maples Arce's "obreros explosives" [explosive workers] are dwellers of "las grandes ciudades palpitantes" [the palpitating metropolises], who Wear "blusas azules" [blue overallsl113 work in "la fiebre sexual de las fabricas" [the sexual fever of the factories], "en esta hora emocionante y conmovida" [at this emotional and moving time],ll4 Rivera's workers on the Secretaria walls toi1 in the mine or in the foundry, or they are weavers and dyers in some hacienda. Maples Arce's glorification of the worker is closely associated to that of the machine; the worker becornes the hero who operates the new technology, as it will in 1932 for Rivera on the walls of Detroit. In the meantime, at the Secretaria, the only city worker wearing blue overalls is

l2 At least according to Mario Luis Schneider, ibid., pp. 99-100.

Maples Arce, "Actualno. In, op. cit., p. 72. l4 Maples Arce, M e , op. cit., pp. 4 and 73. Maples Arce, like his avant-garde colleagues in the rest of Latin America, was also aware that he was living at a very special moment in (cultural) history.

Rivera himself while painting frescoes perched on his scaffold. Rivera's identification with the workers-with

manual and collective labour-is

suggested by his working clothes. George Grosz, stated that "[Plainting is manual labor, no different from any othef.115 It seems that Rivera took the German painter's words literally when he started donning the essential worker's gament. The work of Rivera-the

rnuralist-may

have been manual

labor, he may have been paid wages, and belonged ( f ~ar short tirne) to a union, but he was not part of the masses. Rivera's overalls, when he wears them himself, are a mask, in a Brechtian sense, that disguises his leadership-or mediatization116-as

an intellectual and an artist, and, when

he paints his workers in blue overalls, he gives the masses the role of a collective actor.117

El Universal llustrado, in a 1924 article on the influence of the Revolution on Mexican Iiterature, declares that Rivera and Maples Arce are respectively the great painter and the great poet of the revolution, while Mariano Azuela will become its great novelist when he writes about it.118 Was Rivera's name used to heighten Maples Arce's, or was there a public

Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, eds., Art In Theoryr 1900-1990 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 271. Rivera's works "are always mediated by the bourgeois or communist press" (my translation), Alberto Hijar Serrano, "Diego Rivera: contribucion politica" in Diego Rivera Hoy, op. cit., p. 42.

l7 1 base my interpretation on an article on conternporary Mexico by Claudio Lomnitz, "Ritual, rumor y corrupci~nen la formacion del espacio nacional en Méxicon, Revista Mexicana de Sociolog;a, 5 8 2 (abril-junio de 1996), p. 42. Schneider, El estridentismo, op. cit., p. 116. That novel of the Revolution had actually been written by Azuela in 1916, but Los de abajo was published in a "serious edition" only in 1927, by the Estridentjstas. Ibid., p. 129.

perception that they belonged to the same movement? What actually links them, in that particular critic's opinion, is the Revolution, when in fact, their respective representations of it are different. But, as was typically the case in the 1920s, Mexican intellectuals generally perceived the Revolution as the driving force behind Mexicans' new awareness of themselves, and the artists and writers who contributed to that awareness as revolutionary. Soon after the publication of Urbe, Estridentismofollowed Maples Arce to Jalapa. In 1925, the movement found a 'Vasconcelos' in the govemor of the State of Veracruz, general Heriberto Jara, thanks to whose patronage it could dedicate itself to publishing books, and the substantial magazine Horizonte, that saw its first number published in April 1926.1'9 In a very short time, Maples Arce became a judge and a Secretary of State, and Gerrnan List Arzubide, his fellow estridentista, becarne his private secretary. Another estridentista poet, Luis Quintanilla made his way to Guatemala as a diplornat. If this was a period of much estridentista production, it also was the beginning

of the rnovement's institutionalization, which corresponded to the gradua1 institutionalization of the Revolution. There is no doubt that government patronage, not only prolonged the movement's life, but also allowed it to increase production and the dissemination of Mexican work, their own and others. In fact, soon after, Estridentismo as a movement died when Jara's regime tumbled in 1927. ***

l9 It is interesting to note that Estridentismo may well have been the first avant-garde group whose patron was a high military official.

The examination of Rivera's participation in Estridentismo and the Syndicate, leads to the conclusion that they both helped in establishing his dominance as a revolutionary artist; the first one, confinned his legitimacy as an international avant-gardist proclaiming Mexican originality and promoting renewal mostly within international and Mexican intellectual circles, and the second one, consecrated him as a popular and public artist for a much wider audience. Estridentismo offered Rivera literary spaces which he used to indulge in more esoteric games, and to market his name and his work. The Syndicate authenticated his status as a worker, a wage-eamer, working collectively with others to produce public works, rather than as an individual easel painter marketing his easel work through the capitalist-oriented art market. But, while his association with the Syndicate is well known, what may be forgotten is that, in fact, it lasted a very short tirne.120 According to one of its members, the painter Fernando Leal, the creation of the Syndicate exacerbated disagreements within the group of painters, and helped Rivera, who was "anxious to retain at al1 costs the rating of master", emerge on his own.121 In this chapter I have introduced Rivera' involvement with an avantgarde movement as a "poet" and a dominant inspirational figure for its production. In the next chapter, I present Rivera as a literary protagonist. I analyze a little-known work by Xavier Icaza, written in 1926. It describes, even visually, the cultural quarrel that raged in Mexico in 1925, and makes Rivera its most prominent voice.

120 Rivera resigned in July 1924. 121 As quoted in Charlot, The Mexican Mural Renaissance, op. cit. p. 171.

Chapter Five Rivera the Literary Character: Magnavoz 1926

"Era un tipo que merecia ser el personaje principal de m a novela." Lupe Marin ln her novel La unica, Rivera's ex-wife, Lupe Marin, included Gonzalo del Monte who, she thought, "deserved to be the main character in a novel". Gonzalo was Diego.' llya Ehrenburg, Rivera's Russian friend in Pans, wrote, as a young man, what is considered by rnany as his best nove!,2 The

ExtraordinaryA dventures of Julio Jurenito and His Disciples. The nove1, published in Berlin in 1922, just before Rivera retumed to Mexico, is heavily inspired by the Mexican artist.3 He is mentioned by name as the artist he was, and a friend of one of the novel's character, llya Ehrenburg. As well, the main protagonist, the Mexican "teacher/master", Jurenito, is Mexican and

Elisa Garcia Barragan and Luis Mario Schneider, Diego Rivera y los escritores mexicanos: antologia tributaria (México: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, 1986), p. 131. 2 Julian L. Laychuk, llya Ehrenburg: A n Idealist in an Age of Realism (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), p. 82.The 1963 English version in fact adds that "lt is doubtful whether a better novel

has corne out of Russia since this waç published." lIya Ehrenburg, The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito and His Disc@les,Anna Bostock, trans. (Philadelphia: Dufour Editions, 1963), n.p. Ehrenburg wrote the book in June 1921 on the Belgian Coast. Laychuk, llya Ehrenburg, op. cit., p. 97. In his introduction to the novel, Ehrenburg sets the date of the death of the fictitious master, Ju renito, at the 12 of March, 1921. Ehrenburg, Julio Jurenito, op. cit., p. 9. June 1921 was the actual date Rivera left France, and set sail for Mexico. 3 The 1963 English version places the first publication of the novel at 1922 in Russia, Ehrenburg, Julio Jurenito, op. cit., n. p. However, according to Laychuk, the novel was first published in Russian, in Berlin, in 1922, though he also refers to the publication date as being 1921. llya Ehrenburg, op., cit., pp. 366 (note 114) and 82.

bears a strong resernblance to Rivera." However, it is in 1926, in a gem published that year, that I believe he really becomes "the main charactet' in a literary piece that expresses the cultural preoccupations and tensions of the period irnmediately following his retum. In it, he is the main actor, representing himself as the major player within the Mexican cultural field. That remarkabie work by the estridentista Xavier Ica~a-~'unade ias figuras mas interesantes de la nueva generacion intelectual mexicana." [one of the most interesting figures of the new generation of Mexican intellectuals]s-has

been generally overlooked by scholars of Estridentjsmo in

favour of his better known Panchito Chapopote that appeared two years later.6 Yet Magnavoz 1926: discurso mexicano,7 published in Jalapa, in

The book was published in Spanish under the title Aventuras extraordinarias del mexicano Julio Jurenito y sus discipulos, traduction directa del ruso por Isaac Zeitlin y Ricardo Marin, (Madrid: Edicicnes Oriente, 1928). It is worth noting that the word "Mexican", which is not in the original Russian titie, is introduced in the Spanish title; that the novel appears to have been translated into Spanish (1928) before English (1930); that the Spanish version includes a prologue (not found in the English edition) by Nikolai Bukharin, then director of the official organ of the Russian Comrnunist Party, Pravda. Fernandez de Castro and Rita Rodriguez in Diario de la marina (Havana, 1928), as quoted in Robert E. Wilson, r'Mexicanismo"As Seen in the Works of Xavier Icaza (Master's thesis. University of Arizona, 1934),p. 108, note 22. All translations in square brackets in the text or notes are mine unless specified. Neither Luis Mario Schneider, El estridentismo O una literatura de ia estrategia (México: Ediciones de Bellas Artes, 1970), nor Fauchereau, "The Stridentist" in Artforum 24 (Feb., 1986) mention this work. John Brushwood, who writes about Icaza, spends much more time on his other works than on Magnavoz 1926, which he only briefly reviews. "Las bases del vanguardismo en Xavier Icaza" in Texto Critico, (January-Decernber,l984).Vicky Unruh, in her study of Latin Arnerican avant-gardes, analyzes Magnavoz together with the Brazilian work Macunaha. Latin American Vanguards: The Art of Contentious Encounters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). The short thesis rnentioned in note 1 is rnainly concerned with Panchito Chapopote, and is very confused about Magnavoz. Xavier Icaza, Magnavoz 1926: Discurso mexicano (Xalapa: Talleres Graf icos del Gobierno de Veracruz, 1926).

December 1926, by the estridentistas under the patronage of the government of Veracruz, offers a sample of the era's complex social, political, and cultural scenes.8 The work, finished in July 1926, was written at the beginning of h e Calies administration, much less liberal-minded than the previous one. The date, which is part of the title, is significant because it gives temporal specificity to the cultural tableau it depicts. When Icaza retumed to his country, the "quarrel of Mexico", that battle for ideas and post-revolutionary directions in which Mexican intellectuals were al1 engaged, had been particularly active? Magnavoztakes a multiform appearance as, at once, a farce, a discourse, a play, a manifesto,~oan essay. What makes this work particularly interesting and relevant here, is that Rivera himself, is the major protagonist in the work, and represents the strongest voice in that struggle around modernity, intemationalism, as well as national culture and identity in which Mexicans were engaged in the decade immediately following the amed phase of the revolution. Also, and as importantly, I find it is an interesting sample of how the idea of "culture" is central to the creation and operation of

*

A review of Magnavoz in the New York Times Book Review in 1927, comments that "The principal merit of Magnavoz 1926 lies in the excellent synthetic cross section it presents of Mexican movements today." Cited in Wilson, "Mexicanismo" As Seen in the Works of Xavier Icaza, op. cit., p. 21. Victor Diaz Arciniega dedicated a book to that topic: Querella por la cultura "revolucionarian(1925) (México: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica11989). The struggle for cultural power was not new. The famous Mexican writer, and friend of Diego Rivera, Martin Luis Guzman, had already written a book on the subject as early as 1915, titled La querella de México (Madrid: S. p., f 9 t S ) . So it was an old debate, but this was a new decade and it took on a new twist. From here on I wili refer to Icaza's work as Magnavoz without the date. 10 Vicky Unruh quite perceptively compares Icaza's 'discurso' to a manifesto. Latin American

Vanguards, op. cit., p. 52.

Latin American literature/art as an institution.1î The centrality in this work of both Rivera and the functioning of Mexican culture are, therefore, compelling

reasons to analyze it at length. The analysis of this microcosm of the "quarrel for 'revolutionary' culture" provides a forum, and a backdrop, in which to present the thought patterns of intellectuals from Mexico and elsewhere, who, alongside Rivera, contributed to the cultural ethos of the postrevolutionary

1920s,and to the elaboration of a cultural centre in the New World. ***

Icaza, who had been out of the country for a year, dedicated

Magnavoz, "esta impresion de regreso" [this impression upon coming back], to Alfonso Reyes, himself temporarily back from a long exile in Spain and France. Reyes was also one of Rivera's good friends.12 In fact, the significant correspondence between them shows that Rivera considered hirnself a disciple of his,13 even though the writer was three years younger than he. The title of the play is, of course, patterned after the 'Magnavox' loudspeaker of

I apply here Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria's concept as elaborated in The Voice of the Masters: Writing and Authority in Modern Latin American Literature (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985). Interestingly, as I mentioned in a previous chapter, it was preciseIy the institution of art that the European historical avant-gardes wanted to destroy. See Peter Bürger, The Theory of the Avant-Garde (1 974), trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).

*

They met, in Mexico, at least as eariy as 1906, and strengthened their friendship in Europe. Later, they corresponded extensively. Reyes recounts how enthusiastic he was about Rivera's painting from the beginning, and how he followed his career to the end. Alfonso Reyes, "Recuerdos de Diego" in Garragan and Schneider, Diego Rivera y los escritores mexicanos: una antologia tributaria, op. cit., p. 201. l3 David Huerta, "Diego en las dos orillas del Atlantico", in Diego Rivera hoy: simposio sobre e/ arlista en el centenario de su natalicio (México: Palacio de Bellas Artes, 1986), p. 21.

Arnerican communication technology,14 and alludes to the technological innovations brought on by rnodemity and modemization, and their impact on Mexico in an increasingly global world.15 It is through the specific communication technology introduced in the title, and from different parts of the globe, that the voices of spokespersons for various constituencies and l interests try to win the Mexican people over. lcaza chose a highly o ~ g i n aand

modem medium through which to present various facets of the battle for a 'revolutionary' Mexican culture which had been waged with particular intensity throughout 1925 in the pages of Mexican newspapers and magazines.16 By 1926, the 'quarrel' was, of course, not settled. In a most succinct way, this short 'discourse' evinces the heterogeneity that existed in the country in the 1920s. The lack of political consensus that it

j 4 Unruh refers to Icaza's work as Magnavox 1926: Discurso mexicano. Her mistaken use of 'x ' instead of 'z' confirms the lasting power of the advertising strategy devised by the American company. They made a deliberate choice in the naming of their product by using the Latin word for voice, realizing that they would benefit from the striking looks of the letter 'x'. But, more important was Icaza's use of the Spanish word with the letter "z" in a conscious mexicanization of the brand name of this new American product. The Magna Vox electrodynamic foudspeaker was invented in 1915 in Napa, California by a company that in 1917 was to become the Magnavox Company, so called "because of the great sound produced by Our speakers." (Internet source and Encyclopedia of Consumer Brands, vol. 3 (Detroit: St James Press, 1994). Magnavox and RCA became the greatest cornpetitors. A little irony of micro history links Magna Vox to RCA through unlikely eiements: a "novelnfrom 1926 featuring Rivera and a Rivera fresco from f 932. RCA was eventually housed, in the early 1930s,in the Radio City building where Rivera's mural cornmissioned by the Rockefeller family was destroyed, in what has become one of the most documented and mentioned episodes in Rivera's life.

"La voz de Ia América Latina" [the Voice of Latin America] could be heard in Mexico starting in 1923. Schneider, Elestridentismo, op. cit., p. 71.

In his Querella por la cultura "revolucionarian(1925)'Diaz Arciniega examines the Mexican press throughout 1925.Even his compilation of titles of major articles written that year and listed in order of publication, confirms the centrality of the debate. Upon his return, lcaza could not but be struck by the momentum the discussion had achieved in his absence.

sketches so well, helps explain the efforts and difficulties of the postrevolutionary govemment in achieving some kind of political unification, primarily through the promotion of a national culture. But as we shall see, the 'great voice' of the title wins over the clear voices of contentious philosophies coming out of loudspeakers. Magnavoz is at once a written and visual illustration of Rivera's role as the cultural binder. The artist is both an actor (in fact the only individual 'actor' physically present on 'stage') in the 'play', and the object of the only illustration relating to the story. The woodcut by estridentista painter Alva de la Canal (fig. 25) also titled Magnavoz 792674epicts the back of a corpulent man with an Apizaco stick in his hand, a Stetson hat on his head, and a large gun hanging at the back from under his jacket? The man, who has just climbed to the top of the pyramid of the Sun built by the Aztecs, and who faces volcanoes-the

central one with a hom-like speaker protruding,

The only other illustration is a woodcut portrait of the author, also by Alva de la Canal. l 8 Apizaco is the name Guadalupe Marin used while referring to the stick that Rivera often carried. Bertram Wolfe, La fabulosa vida de Diego Rivera (1 963),trans. Mario Bracamonte (México: Diana SEP, 1986), p. 163. It is afso the name Icaza uses in this work. Jean Charlot's famous murai Massacre in the Temple portrays Rivera supporting himself with a huge stick, that shows rather prominently in the fresco. Bertram Wolfe mentions the Stetson hat Rivera used to Wear. In an article entitled "Lo nacional, Io mexicano, Io pintoresconthat appeared in El Nacional on November 18, 1917, the Stetson hat, replacing the traditional large sombrero used during the revolution, is mentioned as an example of cosmopolitanism replacing Mexicanism. Henry C. Schmidt, Roofs of Lo Mexicano: Self and Society in Mexican Thought, 1900-1934 (Texas: College Station and M. Press, 1978), pp. 84-5. Was Riverâ's wearing of a Stetson hat a deliberate syrnbol of his desire to be cosmopolitan? 1 believe it is safe io think sol considering the great significance he attached to the syrnbolic representation of his clothing, as for example his blue overalls that identified him with workers and artisans. Rivera was known to carry a gun, and occasionally use it! The woodcut reinforces the image Rivera had constructed for himself.

and the other two spewing furne~'~-is without any doubt Rivera? The work itself is divided into two parts: a Proemio [Preface], and the Texto [Text]. By writing a preface in which he explains the text, and establishes his authorial voice, lcaza follows a Latin American tradition in essay writing; not only does he "interpret'' the text to his audiencekeader, but he also, clearly States his personal preference for the position put forth by Rivera, later in the Texto. Though Rivera becomes the authoritative voice, it is in fact lcaza who is speaking through him.21

The major elements constituting post-revolutionary Mexico are represented in this short play-like essay: various segments of Mexican society, the battle of influences from the Old and New Worlds, and between tradition (seen as inertia) and innovation (seen as action). Not surprisingly, l9 In the woodcut only the central, largest volcano shows a loudspeaker, and the other two 'horns', actually larger, emerge from the sides of the sarne volcano, in a seemingly hierarchical order. 2Q Unruh, in her analysis of the work, does not make the connection between the woodcut

and Rivera, except in a footnote where she mentions it as a possible interpretation, following Brushwood's suggestion. She favors instead another interpretation. She identifies the man in the woodcut, with his back turned to the viewer, as the humble Mexican, "the intended audience of the loudspeaker's performance". He (Rivera) is the local, national voice in the flesh, not a voice from elsewhere brought to the audience through a Ioudspeaker. Latin American Vanguards op. cit., p. 51. However, I think that she chooses the former reading over the latter, to strengthen the main point of her analysis, the creation of an audience. She does this at the expense of another important point made by the work, which is the need for local identity (the rejection of outside 'voices'), and the centrality of Rivera in the construction of that identity. Besides the recognizable corporal structure of the artist who depicted himself seen from the back on at least one of his murals, the work ciearly mentions that Rivera climbs up the pyramid at Teotihuacan. Though Unruh correctly refers to Rivera's favoured role in the "discurso", she chooses not to stress it when referring to the only prominent visual representation of the work. 21 See Gonzalez Echevarria, The Voice of the Masters, op. cit., chapter one. The

effectiveness of this device is demonstrated by the confusion shown in Wilson's Masters thesis, where the author believes that lcaza actually quotes Rivera the "person" not the "charactef. Wilson, "Mexicanismo", op. cit., p. 15.

Magnavoz is about Mexican national culture and identity. The selection of volcanoes as the backdrop is extremely meaningful, and in more than one way. It is a reference to the significance of Estridentismo itself in the shaping of modem Mexican culture. The founder of Estridentismo wrote that one of the achievements of the "movement" in 1922 was to "provocar la erupcion del Popocatépetl." [to cause the eruption of the Popocatépetll.22 Icaza also uses the image of the volcano in contrast with modernization syrnbolized by the new technology of the loudspeaker. The juxtaposition of a symbol of Mexico,

the favorite geographical feature that the famous nationalist artist, Dr. Atl, was known to paint23 with the newest of communication technology from the United States, that is apparent in the image of American loudspeakers partially hidden inside Mexican volcanoes, illustrates the uneasy CO-existence of the very old with the very new in a country faced with economic domination

from the north. The idea of the loudspeaker is related to the megaphone used in Soviet avant-garde art. I think of a famous Rodchenko poster deçigned in 1925, particularly in relation to the use of the loudspeaker in Magnavoz (fig.

**

Schneider, El estridentismo, op. cit., p. 60. Mexican volcanoes and pyramids continued their fascination on other avant-gardists. "Mexican volcanoes displayed the [...] disruptive outbreak of energy. Breton visited the crater of Popocatépetl with the exiled Trotsky in 1938, and also made a point of climbing the sacrificial pyramid of Xochicalco (sic)".Feter Conrad, Modern Times, Modern Places (London: Thames & Hudson, 1998), p. 350. 23 In the te*, Dr. Atl is mentioned humourously in relation to volcanoes. A voice from the

loud speaker in the Popocatépetlvolcano announcing Jose Vasconcelos, cornplains about the smoke corning out of the crater, and suggests "Que suba en mi lugar el Dr. Atl" (p. 30) [Let Dr. Atl corne up in rny place].

26).*4 Rodchenko's photomontage shows the profile of a woman Lily Brik, 1924, whose left hand is raised to her face, against her mouth as to direct the

sounds she utters. Those in tum are amplified by a stylized megaphone from which the word, BOOKS, is uttered and written in large characters. In the poster, like in Magnavoz, the artist uses two symbois of voice transmission, one traditional an3 one from recent modern technology. While in the poster it is the mouth together with the funnel created by the hand, and the megaphone, in Magnavoz it is the loudspeaker and the crater of a volcano, or American technology and a Mexican telluric symbol. They both deal with written cultural and visual means. While the poster (a visual medium) advertises books through which the masses can become literate, and ultimately participate in the elaboration of a new Soviet culture, Magnavoz presents itself as a visual spectacle that introduces the voices of the contemporary cultural debate to the younger generation. The image of the volcano stresses the significance of the national landscape-naturehhe

earth-as

the distinguishing cultural feature of the

New World. In Vision de Anahuac (1917) Alfonso Reyes had lovingly described (from Europe) the high valley of Mexico with its volcanoes and nopales [Mexican cacti]. These also appear in the Magnavozwoodcut as

essentially Mexican. The volcanoes and the fumes and black clouds floating over them as seen in the woodcut are also a metaphor for the violent eruptions that the Revolution has unleashed, and for the uncertainties their

24 Selim O.Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko: The Complete Work (Cambridge: The MIT

Press, 1987), p. 156.

craters are still spewing. The volcanoes are significant in another way. They act as a mask, albeit an obvious mask in a farcical sort of way, behind which the 'foreign' voices hide their distant f ~ r e i g n n e s s Finally, .~~ they could be seen as representing the "hoguera" [bonfire] in which, lcaza says at the end, "Mexico is purifying itself", and from which, he adds it "will know how to arise triumphant and pure" (p. 47).26 ''The whole patria" (of utopian revolutionary, Ricardo Flores Magon) that, in 1910, was "a voicano on the point of spewing forth the choleric fire of its inside", was still burning in Icaza's Mexico of 1926.27

In Magnavoz, three Mexican intellectuals play important parts: José Vasconcelos, Alfonso Reyes, and Diego Rivera. Reyes is the voice of "Culture" (p. 17), representative of both Mediterranean culture, particularly ancient Greek philosophy as well as the Spanish literary tradition of which Reyes was so fond, and of the prestigious AteneS* tradition. Vasconcelos, another ex-atenekta, was destined, lcaza explains, to be the "héroe de la América intelectual indoespahola." [the hero of Indo-Spanish intelectual America, p. 17-18].*9 The third inteilectual, the only visual artist playing a part, is Rivera, who appears in the central and concluding role. The battle of the voices from abroad and from home are staged in front of a public-also

on

25 Unruh, Latin American Vanguards, op. cit., p. 53. 26 "México se purifica en una hoguera. De elia sabra surgir triunfante y puron. In the rest of this chapter, pages for quotes from Magnavoz wiil be indicated in brackets within the text.

27 Flores Magon quoted in Schmidt, The Roots of Lo Mexicano, op. cit., p. 60. 28 U n the Ateneo see previous chapter. 29 It is worth noting that Vasconcelos' cultural work had recently ended in 1924 with his resignation.

stage-made

up of various components of Mexican society. Besides the

individually named intellectuals from Mexico, and those from abroad (Lenin and Romain Rolland), the built-in public of this self-contained 'play', sometirnes actors, sornetimes audience, is made up of (totalizing) general groupings. These are: 'the Indian', 'the students of Arnerica', 'the rnissionary teacher', 'the unknown soldier' ('speaking from his urn'), as well as 'a reactionary, 'a peddler'. In a cfassical tradition, Icaza incorporates three choruses: 'the scientistsy,'the mediocres', and 'the chorus disguised as popular'. "lntellectuals" are the only elernent of society represented by individual names rather than as an ail encompassing category. This is not surprising considering the role Mexican intellectuals saw themselves as playing, and the need to attach a representative figure to the various positions contending for supremacy. Basically, the actors are intellectuals, and the rest of the population f o m s the "audience". The period following the terrible ravages of the Revolution was a time of much needed reconstruction on the political and economic fronts.30 Between 1920 and 1927, the general assumption was that the government's role was more one of providing "mental orientations" than of engaging in "economic strategies".s' As we have already seen in Chapter Two, this assumption informed the more humanistic and pedagogically oriented indigenismo of the post-revolutionary regime. In Magnavoz, Icaza's

30 See Alan Knight, U S . - Mexican Relations, 1910- 1940: A n lnterpretation (San Diego: University of California Press,1987), pp. 3-1 0. 31 Ibid., pp. 9-1 0.

intellectuals and teachers are engaged in that mission. So is lcaza himself; he y enérgica believes his 'discurso' will provide Mexican youth with the ccconsejo

direccion amorosa" [advice and energetic and loving direction", p. 191 that it needs. But where are the people, asks Icaza? How can the postrevolutionary 'missionaries' engage the people, make them follow this 'liberating', and homogenizing mission? What can be done for the Indian, who is still not happy even after the Revolution? While the intellectuals, the artists, the students, the workers are al1 hard at work building the new nation, most Mexicans sleep, the people "vive la noche mexicana" [live their Mexican night, p. 291,"noche de Walpurgis tropical" [their tropical Walpurgis night, p. 301,in other words, they live/sleep, absorbed in their continuous pagadbarbarian festivities. To engage the people in this new active (civili~ing/humanizing)~* re-construction, and at the sarne time, to build an audience for their literary and artistic creations were two of the challenges Mexican intellectuals, and more specifically avant-gardists like the estridentistas, faced in postrevolutionary Mexico. This is a message lcaza wishes to convey. The first three 'voices' that try to bring the people out of their lethargy,

corne loud and clear out of three 'magnavoxes' placed inside three famous volcanoes in the vicinity of Mexico City: Popocatépetl, Ixtlaccihuatl, and

32 Presumably a reference to José Ortega y Gasset and his influence on Reyes and Mexico in general.

Orizaba. The first one is that of Vasconcelos, speaking from New York? His is the voice of the idealist and the mystic, who firmly believes in the materialist-spiritualist dichotomy that distinguishes the North from the South

of the continent, in the tradition of Ariel, the Modemist classic, influential, and immensely popular essay by the Uruguayan writer, Jose Enrique R ~ d oHis . ~ ~ is the evangelical voice of a man with a "religious and apostolic m i s s i o t ~to "~~

redeem the Mexican people. In La raza cosmica (1925),his most cited work published a year before Magnavozappeared, he expresses his belief in the 'cosmic race' that Mexico will achieve in what will be the Hegelian final (spiritual) stage of civilization. The inevitable blending of races (though what is really intended here is the srasing of differences) that Vasconcelos envisions as the only road to universal civilization, would best be carried out in Mexico, where mestizaje has a long history.36 Only the best of the indigenous traditions of the Americas and of the 'Latin' heritage of Latin America would remain in Vasconcelos' new universal hybrid race. Eventually,

33 Vasconcelos spent time in New York. His relationship to Americans was an ambiguous

one, fraught with humiliation felt frorn an early age when he went to school across the border from where he lived, and yet at the same time he was filled with admiration for the country-. This is revealed clearly through his autobiography h e s crioilo (1935), (México: Editorial Jus, 1969). 34 The Vasconcelos scholar, Claude Fell, not surprisingly agrees that Ariel left a deep

impression on Mexican thought, on Vasconcelos' generation, and to a lesser extent, the next one. He suggests that "Vasconcelos se siente heredero del arielismo de Rodo, que intenta concretar aplicandolo a situaciones precisas." D/asconcelos feels he is [a responsible] heir to Rodo's Arielism, which he tries to put into practice by applying it to specific situations]. José Vasconcelos: los afios del aguila (1 920-1925) (México: UNAM, l989),pp. 666-7. 35 Daniel Cosio Villegas quoted in Mattha Robles, Entre el podery las letras: Vasconcelos en sus mernorias (México: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1989), p. 79. 36 José Vasconcelos, La raza cosmica: mision de la raza iberoamericana (1 W 5 ) ,(México: Espaça Calpe Mexicana, S.A., 1966), pp. 13-55.

Rivera, who had benefited from the patronage of the Minister of Education, made fun of hirn in his caricature painted at the Secretaria at just about that time. He portrays hirn sitting on a small white elephant, his back to the viewer, listening to the indian writer, Rabindranath Tagore,37 and the Mexican positivist educator, Ezequiel A. Chavez sitting on a pile of books on Spencerisrn, Darwinism, and Positivism, which, during the Revolution, became identified with materialism, and foreign ideas. Rivera's association of Vasconcelos with positivism. which the philosopher had supposedly rejected in ateneista tradition, and Icaza's iconographic use of Vasconcelos as antipositivist, point to both the confusion around the meaning of the word, and to the ambiguous relation intellectuals of the Ateneo generation maintained with the ideas that shaped their early education. Though the move toward a more humanistic society caused many of the intellectuals to reject the positivism of the Porfiriato, the lingering effects of that philosophy were still felt in the 1920s, and even later. But the chorus of scientists-presumably

leftover 'cientificos' from the

Porfirio Diaz's days of "order and progressV-attack Vasconcelos for rejecting positivism, and for believing he is "Superman". The young students from Spanish Latin America defend and praise Vasconcelos, and receive the support of French writer Romain Rolland (1866-1944) calling from the Alps. Rolland, author of Au-dessus de la mêlée ( 1 91 5 ) [Above the Battle], and 191 5

37 Tagore, along with Romain Rolland and Shakespeare (both 'voices' in Magnavoz), was one of the last authors to be included among Vasconcelos' seventeen "libros fundamentales" ["'fundamental booksn]to be published as part of the minister's far reaching education campaign. Fell, José Vasconcelos, op. cit., p. 489.

Nobel p

h winner, might represent, here, the ideal of energy as expressed in

his work, and the rejection of violence, especially as perpetrated in World War 1-38 It

is that pacifisrn that Vasconcelos adrnired in him, as he did in Tagore.

Referring back to the just mentioned Rivera panel, we could speculate that Rivera was not at that moment an advocate of pacifism-or rather "passivism"-but

rather of revolutionary action. The Mexican and the French

writers corresponded, and admired each other; while Vasconcelos characterized Rolland as "cruzado de la libertad y de la Suprema Nacion" [cruzader of liberty and the Supreme Nation], the French pacifist wrote about Vasconcelos that he "encabeza a toda la joven América" [leads al1 of American youthl.39 Rolland was certainly an important and controversial author in Latin Arnerica. He was among other European and American writers admired by Latin American intellectuals on the Left for having "either deviated from the orthodoxy of the Third International, or [because they] represent[ed] quite individual approaches to radicalisrn".40 But for some the admiration was rnitigated. In 1924, in an article "La torre de marfil" [The lvory Tower], the Peruvian critic, José Carlos Mariategui said of the French writer that he was "one of the creators of popular theatre, one of the esthetes of the theatre of the revolution", but that, because of his "mysticism of non-violence", he did 38 In his La querella de México, in 1915, Martin Luis Guzman, had already condemned both the violence and the apathy of the revolution. Guzman, La querella de México, op. cit. 39 Fell, José Vasconcelos, op. cit., pp. 491 and 659.

Martin S. Stabb, In Quest of Identiw Patterns in the Spanish American Essay of ldeas, 1890-1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, l967), p. 142.

40 One of these writers was Waldo Frank.

not have the courage to 'Yhrow himself completely in the battle9'.41Two years earlier, Leon Trotsky had mentioned him in a rather critical light in the introduction to a play by Marcel Martinet that appeared in I m t i a . He noted that, while having been "above the battle" during World War I was to his credit, Rolland's subsequent retrenchrnent to 'neutral' Switzerland, from where he limited himself-as

a "humanitarian egoist9'-to denouncing the

bourgeoisie through aesthetic means only was reprehen~ible.~* The Latin American left appears to have reproached him for his lack of 'active' participation. Rolland might, also, personify the civilized, rational French that Icaza brings to the rescue of the 'barbarity' and lethargy of the Mexican masses. In

Magnavoz, Vasconcelos' critics retreat after hearing Rolland, so that, in a contradictory way, the intervention by the French writer also symbolizes the voice of Europe still dictating from afar through the Academy, and the resulting submission by the periphery. lcaza remarks that, "Muy nuestro siiglo XIX, acatan sumisos el dictado extranjero." [Much like in our 1gthcentury, they submissively obey foreign dictates, p. 331. The undeniable intellectuaI ,

influence from France on Mexican thought had a long tradition with varied results that, sometimes like Comtian positivism, left traces that would take a

41 "[Ulno de los creadores del teatro del pueblo, uno de los estetas del teatro de la

revoluci6n; "misticismo de la no-violencian; "arrojarse plenamente en el combaten. "La Torre de Marfil" published in El Mundial, Lima (7 d e noviembre de 1924), and reprinted in José Carlos Mariategui, E/ artlSfay la época. (Lima: Amauta, 1959), pp. 28 and 29. 42 Leon Trotsky. "A Drama of the French Working Class: Marcel Martinet's La Nuif (first

published May 16, 1922) in Art and Revolution (New York: Pathfinder, 1992). pp.148-151. By the way, the cover of this edition of the book is a reproduction of a detail of one of Rivera's Secretaria frescoes entitled Literacy.

long time to erase. However, the Mexican public in Magnavoz rernains indifferent to these dilemmas and contradictions that confront their intellectuals. The masses, "rnediocres" and others, ask for bread and jobs, but Alfonso Reyes, from the Eiffel Tower-the

great syrnbol of European

modemity, or as Maples Arce defines it: "espectaculo de identidad para novilatitudinales." [spectacle of identity for people frorn the new latitudesl43rges them to be "intelligent", (p. 35 and 45) presumably reminding his fellow countrymen that they also need to nourish their minds. This request for bread and jobs though repeated elsewhere in the text is the only direct allusion to the econornic conditions of the postrevolutionary twenties, even though, when the Calles regime started in 1924, the availability of Mexico's main staple, corn, was at the lowest level in two centuries." aut, as we saw earlier, cultural ailments, and spiritual remedies, not econornic ones, continued to be the main concern of the intellectual class. Frorn another volcano comes the second voice, also through a 'magnavox'. This time it comes from Buenos Aires. It is the voice of a welltravelled ltalian reporter who immigrated to Argentina. He represents

El estridentismo, op. cit., p. 97. Illustrations of the Eiffel Tower appeared, for example, in Rivera's own Parisian easel work, such as The Eiffel Tower (1916), and Portrait of Addfo Best Maugard (1913),as well as in an illustration by Jean Charlot included in Maples Arce's Urbe: Super-poema Bolchevique en 5 cantos (México: Andrés Botas, 1924), and in an untitled illustration by Alva de la Canal (fig. 27), included in Icaza's most f amous wo rk, Panchito Chapopote: Retablo tropical O relacion de un extraordinario sucedido de la heroica Veracruz (México: Editorial "Cvlturan, 1928), p. 25.

43 Quoted in Schneider,

44 Charles C. Cumberland, Mexico: The Struggle for Moderniw (New York: Oxford University

Press, l968), pp. 242-7.

conservatism and pragmatism, and recommends that Mexicans follow Argentina, Chile, Brazil and the United States and encourage immigration, presumably, of white Europeans. It is well known that such a policy had been tried under the Diaz dictatorship, in what Sasically arnounted to an attempt at 'whitening' the Indian, but had failed to attract and keep new immigrants45 The joumalist favors modemization that will bring rnoney to Mexico. Probably

viewed as supporting the materialistic Caliban side of the ArieVCaliban opposition between the spiritual or mystical from the South and the material or rational in the North,'@the ltalian is accused, by the left-wingers of being a fascist. Mexicans need a new and creative solution of their own, they argue. The 'Mexican night' goes on, the population pays no attention, and the lndian continues to be sad. The rejection of Europe and the return to the ancient or "primitive" sources of the American continent led to the search for a continental resolution to the ArieVCaliban opposition. Frorn yet a third volcano, and through another loudspeaker, this tirne from Moscow, the Internationale is Sung, and Lenin is expected to speak.47 However, in the case of this third voice, we only hear what the 'reporter'/narrator/author chooses to tell us in cliché sentences, and stage-like 45 ln an article published in 1925, the author favors Argentina's synthesis of its identity found

in its essays and the efforts it rnakes to acquire knowledge, both interna1 and external to its society. Eduardo Villasefior, "tntenciones sobre la cultura en México", La Antorcha 1 (17 de enero de 1925), p. 16, quoted in The Roots of Lo Mexicano, p. 142. 46 See John T. Reid, " The Rise and the Decline of the Ariel-Caliban Antithesis in Spanish American in The Americas 34 (1 977-78), pp. 345-55. The ArielCaliban opposition finds expression in Arjel, the modernista classic, and influential and immensely popular essay by the Uruguayan writer, José Enrique Rodo. I expand on Arielism later in this chapter and in Chapter Six. 47 Lenin had just died (1924).

directions: Lenin "Recita el evangelio socialista. Repite EL CAPITAL del viejo Marx. Pregona la Revolucion; la lucha de clases." [Recites the socialist

Scripture. Repeats old Marx's CAPITAL. Announces the Revolution; class struggle. p. 371. We do not hear the actual message, presumably in a foreign language, but a (mediated) 'translated' and condensed version of it. And Veracruz springs into action without listening much. Icaza makes the point that Veracruz, where he cornes from, faces this loudspeaker with its back to the sea, presumably to Europe and the United States. This must be a direct allusion to the poem "Golfo de México Veracruz", written in 1924, by his friend Alfonso Reyes, to whom Magnavoz is dedicated. In it the poet prophesies about Veracruz: "Y yo te anuncio el ataque a los volcanes / de la gente que esta de espalda al mai' (And I announce to you the attack on the volcanoes / by the people who have their back to the ~ e a ) . Presumably, ~* Reyes

announces the awakening of Veracruz (the provinces, the countryside, the peasant who do not look to Europe) after which they will take over the volcanoes (the City, the establishment). Veracruz, symbol of tropical Mexico, Guillerrno Bonfil Batalla's "México profund0",4~will take over its own country from the hands of those whose foreign culture reigns from the outside. In this work about the conflicting ideas that emerged in postrevolutionary Mexico, the reference to Veracruz cannot be overestimated. The port of Veracruz, which faces the European shores of a shared

48 Alfonso Reyes, "Veracruz". Antologia (México: Fondo de Cultura Econornica, 1965). p.

143. 49 1 briefly explain this concept in Chapter Four, note 108. For more. see Guillermo Bonfil

Batalla, México profundo: una civiliracion negada (México: Grijalbo, 1990).

ocean, was like an indefensible opening through which the influence of modemity penetrated inexorably. It was from Veracruz that Rivera, and other Mexican intellectuals left, and it was through Veracruz that they came back, carrying their modem experience along with them. It was through Veracruz that the colonizsrs had come frorn Spain, as Rivera depicted at the Palacio Nacional in the panel entitled Disembarkation of the Spaniards at Veracruz (1951),and more recently, Veracruz had been the entry port for the American

invasion of 1914, an invasion that Vasconcelos, then working for president Carranza, conternplated from New York. While for other Mexicans this had been another sore reminder of American imperialism, for Vasconcelos it was the helping hand of friendly neighbours. In a letter to the president he revealed sentiments opposed to the anti-imperialist response of the latter.50 I believe there is another plausible and interesting interpretation which

does not exclude the previous ones; on the contrary, it completes the picture rather well. This passage in Magnavozcould also be referring to the penetration of another foreign culture and politics through Veracruz: ltalian Fascism. The incident of the officia1 visit of the ship Italia in 1924 with its military and cultural cargo to Mexico's port is recorded by Jean Charlot. He describes the content, the hostile popular response in Veracruz, and the officia1friendly one, as well as the critical contribution of El Machete (organ of

SOTPE), including a corrido about the event, titled "Fascist Petsn.51

50 Robles, Entre el podery las letras, op. cit.. pp. 33-5. 51 Jean Charlot. The Mexican Mural Renaissance: 1920-1925 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963),pp. 249-51.

lcaza further develops this idea. He suggests that Veracruz just follows the foreign discourse without really comprehending it well, and promulgates a string of new laws. It fears nothing-not

even the Constitution-and

knows no

Iimits. Presumably here, the author suggests that it goes to extremes, applying the theories expounded by the voice from Moscow, without sufficient regard for the social differences between the two countries. By 1925, Estridentisrno had moved to Jalapa, in the state of Veracruz. Under General

Heriberto Jara's government, of which Maples Arce had become an important member, promises from the Revolution in social, educational, and cultural matters, were being implemented fast, presumably following the Russian model. Maybe lcaza refers to what the estridentista magazine, Horizonte, calls the Veracruz government's "rapide2 en la accion" [speed of action] and its "seguridad doctrinal y [.. .] amplitud de propositos" [doctrinal certainty and

[. ..] the extent of the projectl.52 Though action is what lcaza advocates, he has mixed feelings towards the kind of action, or the speed at which it is carried out in his city. The different treatment given this third discourse is worth noting. Its triple mediation thrcugh the volcano, the loudspeaker, and then, through the narrator rnay suggest that many Mexican intellectuals and activists relied on sources other than the original ones for their knowledge of socialist doctrine. It may also reflect the author's impatience with a Communist Party not attuned to the Mexican reality. The Mexican Communist Party, founded in

52 In the editorial of Horizonte, no. 3 (junio de 1926),as quoted in Schneider. El estridentismo, op. cit., p. 154.

1919 by an East lndian who had lived in the United States, was heavily

infiltrated by Americans, like for exarnple, Bertrarn D. Wolfe, friend and biographer of Rivera33 While in 1923, the Executive Comrnittee was 'taken over' by Mexican intellectuals, including Rivera, Siqueiros, and Xavier Guerrero, that leadership was short-iived, when, in 1924, the comrnittee changed, and the secretary general of the American Communist Party ensured that the Mexican partyys"anarchist tendencies" were curbed.54 As is well known, and would have been known by Icaza, Rivera left the Party in April 1925. What lcaza would not have known at the time of writing though, was that the artist was to rejoin the party in July 1926, the exact date Icaza appended as the cornpletion date of Magnavoz. Meanwhile, in Magnavois representation of the nation's scene, the rest of the people continue to pay no attention. lndifference characterizes the reception of the three voices mediated through the rnagnavoxes, except from a few who play at the election game, an allusion, no doubt, to a new and as yet 'unpractised' (or malpractised) Mexican democracy. There is a clear hierarchy of importance between the three voices that is established by the degres of mediation. Though they al1 come out of loudspeakers, Lenin's voice, the most foreign and distant, is not heard directly, but the Russian's condensed message is reported through a narrator; the Italian reporter, foreign too, but from another Latin American country, utters words, rather

53 Karl M. Schmitt, Communism in México: A Study in Political Frustration (Austin: U niversity of Texas Press, 1965), pp. 4 -10. 54 Ibid., p. 11.

than sentences; and Vasconcelos, distant too, but Mexican, is given more time by the author to make his speech. Speaking in the preface about the philosopher tumed Minister of Education, lcaza shows a certain reverence for his views. Shakespeare's voice, critical of the use of just 'Words, words, words. .."erupts on the scene preparing Rivera's entrance. Work and action, rather than words, were what was seen by some intellectuals as the solution to Mexico's struggles with modemity. lcaza wouid not be the only writer to identify Rivera with work. In an article about the muralist in Contemporaneos, a Mexican critic wrote about him what can be seen as the corollary of Shakespeare's words, the necessary consequence to the misuse of words and the lack of action: "Trabajo, trabajo, trabajo. México necesita del ejemplo vivo que ofrece la tarea cumplida, y Diego Rivera ofrece, afio tras afio, la mejor leccion que un mexicano puede dar en las horas que van pasando." [Work, work, work. Mexico needs the living exarnple that accomplished work

offers, and Diego Rivera offers, year after year, the best lesson that a Mexican can give in the times we are going throughl.55 We may assume that Icaza's introduction of the English playwsight alludes to the successful reception of his plays by both the masses and the lettered elite of his own country-the

kind of reception he, Icaza, and other

la revista Contemporaneos (México: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1973),p. 254. 1 have not been able to ascertain the exact date of this article, but it would have been written between 1928 and 1931, the years during which the magazine was published. 55 Gabriel Garcia Maroto, in Manuel Duran, Antologia de

Mexican intellectuals yeam to achieve arnong their own publics.56 The juxtaposition of the famous English playwright with Rivera leaves no doubt as to the cultural stature attributed to the latter, and serves as reference to the popular nature of the artistic production of both men. While in his proemio, Icaza feels the necessity to explain his choice of Reyes and Vasconcelos as representatives of specific ideologies, he does not justify his selection of Rivera. It would be reasonable to expect that the artist would be understood as the rnost obvious emblematic embodiment of Mexico's cultural revolution. By placing him physically on 'stage' gives him the evident edge, even over

Vasconcelos himself, the promoter of muralism, and initiator of sweeping educational reforms.57 After all, two years after the Minister's resignation, Rivera was still one of the "three most discussed men in Mexico" as El Universal llostrado had said in March of that same year.58 And there, the writer was not referring to the Siqueiros, Orozco, and Rivera trinity, but to Maples Arce, Arqueles Vela, and Rivera. By then, the painter had started the much debated Secretaria and Chapingo murais. Rivera climbs to the top of the pyramid of the Sun, symbolic tornb of an old Aztec civilization waiting to corne back from the dead and produces sparks when he strikes it with his stick, bringing it to life. Then, like an Aztec priest, he addresses the people from the top. Agreeing with Shakespeare he We may also interpret this as a reference to the Ariel and Prospero borrowed from Shakespeare by Rodo for his famous essay, Arie1(1900), by which I believe Magnavoz is still influenced. I will attempt to show this connection here later. 57 By July 1926. Vasconcelos was no longer Minister of Education, he had resigned two years earfier and had been replaced by J. M. Puig Casauranc.

58 Schneider, El estridentismo, op. cit., p. 149.

calls for action, not words. In his wisdom, the lndian rejects words, says Rivera, who is the only actorkpeaker in Magnavozto even acknowledge the lndian and recognize his intelligence. He urges the people to stop looking at Paris as its model, and to become Mexican by learning frorn the Aztec ancestors. "Continuernos su obra interrumpida" [Let us continue their work which was interrupted (by the Conquest), p. 401. From the foot of the pyramid, the creative masses of intellectuals and artists applaud. Mexican avantgardists like their counterparts elsewhere were clearly trying to win over this special audience. But, in Mexico, as important as this audience of peers was to its writers and artists, this was not the only public they sought to conquer; the larger audience of illiterate masses also had to be brought into the fold. After Rivera's exhortation, old Mexican folk dances start around him when he cornes down, a stom breaks out, bonfires light up, and (the nationalist symbols of) the Eagle and the Serpent, and the figure of Quetzalcoatl are back triumphant. "Las profecias se cumplen" [Prophecies are coming true, p. 411, notes Icaza. Not only is Rivera's role made central by his unmediated

presence on the stage, but the dramatic effects: gestures, scenery, and turbulence in the air emphasize his centrality even further. But even Rivera's spoken message does not reach the population beyond the "creative masses". The Mexican skies rernain grey. The need for action remains Icaza's preoccupation and message. The order in which Icaza presents his "speakers" is also significant. Vasconcelos' constant message throughout his 'rnissionary' years that "an

illiterate people would always be enslavedn59actually "summarize[s] the thinking of all competing factions",60 and is uttered here first, though in different ternis. But. while Vasconcelos was a symbol of action during his years in the Ministry of Education, by 1924 he was no longer in govemment.

By interrupting his educational work, so crucial for the country at that moment, "he caused the name, the profession, and the intentions of the intellectual to lose prestigen.61On the other hand, Rivera, symbol of the most eminent cultural practitioner who has put revolutionary words and projects into action is, not only the unmediated speaker, but also the intellectual who delivers his

speech last.62 Then lcaza calls for an assessrnent of the Revolution that seems to have been forgotten even though it was a deadly civil war that killed over a million people. Even in 1923, three years before the writing of Magnavoz, 7,000 people had been killed in the de la Huerta uprising against Alvaro

Obregon.63 lcaza scoms the pomp and ceremony reserved for these occasions when the authorities give praise to the 'unknown soldier'. The dead soldier protests from his grave; he would have preferred to live. All around, 59 Carlos Monsivais, "Modernity and Its Enemy" in Erika Billeter, ed., Images Of Mexico (Frankfurt: Benteli Catalogue Edition, 1987)' p. 73.

Ibid. p. 73. 61 Daniel Cosio Villegas, quoted in Robles, Entre elpodery las letras, op. cit. p. 80.

62 The year previous to the writing of Magnavoz, Rivera had been very 'active'. Among other things, he had completed a large number of murals at the Secretaria (out of the 1,480 square meters of walls he was to eventually cover with frescoes there), he started painting the Chapingo walls, exhibited and won first prize at the Pan American exhibition in Los Angeles, resigned from the Communist Party to devote more time to painting (he would rejoin the Party a year later), and became art editor of the new bilingual magazine, Mexican Folkways. 63 iOrozco! 1883-1949 (Oxford: Museum of Modem Art, 1980), p. 8.

the hybrid and syncretic nature of Mexican culture can be seen, from its mixed architecture to the Spanish rnissionaries and the Aztec heroes, the cross and the Aztec calendar. In the midst of this, a fresco is alluded to, but the painter's name is not mentioned, no doubt because it describes a well-known Rivera scene, reminiscent of one of the panels in the Court of Labor at the Secretaria de Educacih Publica: the Rural Teacher.64 In this mural, an armed revolutionary stops his horse to take a break where a female rural teacher-one of the many "messenger[s] of the spirit" sent by Vasconcelos on an educative mission to the countryside-shares

"the new Bible" with peasants and their

children.65 This fresco, which was completed by the time lcaza wrote the play, was described by Rivera himself as representing "reconstruction" after the 'liberaïion of the peon'66-the

title of the adjacent mural. lcaza suggests that

the fresco to which he alludes is "una pintura simbdica y fuerte con vivos colores y que engendra esperanzas." [a symbolic and strong painting with vivid colors and that generates hopes, p. 421. Ultimately the main reason for the inclusion of this fresco is its direct involvement in the cultural "quarrel" of

64 With al1 the publicity around the Secretaria murals that started as soon as the first scenes of the Court of Labor were completed, frescoes like the Rural Teacherwere well known.

65 Antonio Rodriguez writes that Rivera depicted the teacher in this well-known fresco in the f o m or' "una mensajera del espiritu que lleva al campo, con su resplandeciente libro, el nuevo Evangelio." Diego Rivera. Los murales en la Secretaria de Educacion Publica con ensayo critico de Luis Cardoza y Aragon e introduccion y comentarios de Antonio Rodriguez (México: SEP, 1986), p. 51. 66 "Los prirneros murales. Los patios de la Secretaria de Educacion Publica", El arquitecto,

num. 5, iseptiembre de 1925), reprinted in ibid., p. 24.

1925. Pedro Henriquez UreAa. one of the major writers at that tirne, wrote

that Tal vez el mejor simbolo del México actual es el vigoroso fresco de Diego Rivera en donde, rnientras el revolucionario amado detiene su cabalgadura para descansar, la maestra rural aparece rodeada de nifios y adultos, pobremente vestidos como ella, pero anirnados con la vision del futuro" [Maybe the best symbol of contemporary Mexico is the vigorous fresco by Diego Rivera in which, while the amed revolutionary dismounts his horse to rest, the rural teacher appears surrounded by chifdren and adults, poorly dressed like her, but animated by the vision of the futurel.67 In his utopian vision, Henriquez Urefia saw in this fresco a reflection of the hopes brought about by a Revolution that through education would bring "the people", children and adults of rural México, to the point where they would define and "rnake" the new Mexican culture. His side of the cultural debate appears to win when the "select" group that applauds Rivera reacts to the expressions of materialisrn ("the Saxon bible"), and insists that Mexico, through its youth and idealism, must achieve its creative potential. In his "proemio", or preface, Icaza suggests that there is work being

done in Mexico, reconstruction work, and further in the text, he notes the feverish activities and the creative accomplishments of Mexican intellectuals and artists, including an anti-acadernic and avant-gardist mura1 renaissance, a new inethod for teaching drawing, Mexicanist novels, and original poetry and philosophy (p. 24). However, he cornplains that no thinking or studying is taking place among the Mexican public. What transpires from Icaza's essay is

67 Pedro Henriquez Ureha, "La revolucion y la cultura en México" in Revista de Revistas (15 de marzo de 1925), as quoted in Victor Diaz Arciniega, Querella por la cultura '~evulucionaria", op. cit., p. 120.

that, while Mexico's intelligentsia activeiy tries to define the cultural identity of the country, the majority of the population rernains outside the process. After the Revolution, life retums to normal, money is made, the "evangelio sajon triunfa. La mediocridad reina" [Saxon Scnpture triumphs. Mediocrity reigns, p. 441, a direct allusion to Vasconcelian and Arielist thoughts that view the

United States as a materialistic country without culture, against which Mexican society could define its own identity as spiritual and cultured. The "chorus disguised as popular" recites a corriddike poem, while others cal1 for bread, and once again, Alfonso Reyes reminds ail to be 'intelligent'. As Icaza suggests, South America knows that there is both "selfishness" and "idealism", that "en nuestra terrorifica lid que forma un circulo Dantesco, hay crimen y ensueiio" yin Our terrifyingAenific fight that foms a Danteesque circle, there is crime and dream", p. 461. Mexico is the field of an etemal struggle between ideals, between Don Quijotes and Sancho Panzas. But, Magnavozends in a note of optimism; Mexico's youth will corne out of the "fire", and their ideal presumably, the creation of the new educated and cultured Mexican, will inevitably win. Something intriguing about the book, at least about the original copy I consulted, is the detached, and folded orange sheet of thin paper, inserted inside it, and also dated from 1926 with no indication of the month. It is untitled, and includes the same woodcut (of Rivera at the top of the pyramid)

that appears in the book.68 The written text, in very small characters, is the same as that of the book in its central part, but exhibits some changes at the beginning and the end. The Texto only, without the Proemio, is included. The first 46 fines of the Texto are eliminated, and the rest is reproduced in its entirety, except for the ending;69 the last 22 lines are omitted and replaced by the introduction of new totalizing groups: 'the radicals', and 'the liberals'. The radicals are intemationalists, while the liberals want to forge a 'nation' built on the Aztec foundation, on the "patria de 57" [the fatherland of 571-presumably referring to the Benito Juarez reform of 1857-and

on the Constitution. A

man, who was gunned down, and is buried under two and a half rneters of earth, has the last word. He asks tragically: "&hé patria?" [What fatherland?]. This second version on the detached sheet (or is it a first version?), apparently leaves the social scene unresolved by exposing contradictory wishes for different directions: nationalism versus intemationalism, spiritualism versus materiatism. What is not in doubt is the resolve to build a

68 Anita Brenner an American chronicler of early postrevolutionary Mexican culture - writes that the corridos, or Mexican popular ballads, were "printed on cheap, brightly colored paper, headed with self explanatory illustrations". "Mexican Balladsn, Mexican Folkways, 5 (February-March 1W 6 ) ,p. 10.

69 The text of the flyer starts with the words "Después de la bola" (After the quarrel). This

refers, no doubt, to the yet unachieved Revolution after which "México esta decidido a ser éI misrno" [Mexico is determined to be itselfl. This is Icaza's optirnistic assumption, and obviously Mexico - whatever that Mexico is - has not yet corne into its own (identity).

'fatherland'; the question appears to be what kind.70 Though the endings in the book and the sheet are different, they both reiterate the text's premise of the existence of, and struggle between philosophical propositions that confront each other in the Mexican cultural arena. While the book concludes with a clearer expression of hope than the sheet," both versions, in the end, indicate the determination of the Mexican youth (or of the author) to forge a (new) nation. In both versions the authorial voice has been heard, especially, in Rivera's apparently unmediated words, and in the rnaily stage-like directions. The seerningly different endings do not affect significantly the nature of the work, or the affirmation of authorial preferences. Was this separate sheet a f o m of advertisement for the book? But then why would it be found inside it? Was it meant to be kept as a handy onepage version of the discurso, or to be shared around, or was it supposed to be pasted on walls?72 There are no indications, neither in the book, nor on the sheet, as to its intended purpose? 1 found indications, however, that it

70 " ~ Q u épatria?" [What fatherland?] is the title of a review of the book that appeared at the time of its publication. Antonio Cândido explains what he sees as the Iink between land and patria: ''The idea of patria, of LVatherlarrdn,was clearly Iinked to that o i nature and in part took its justification from this [. .-1. One of the ostensible or latent assumptions of Latin American literature was this connection, greatly exalted, between the land and the patria - taking for granted that the greatness of the second would be a kind of natural unfoiding of the might attributed to the first", quoted in Echevarria, The Voice of the Masters, op. cit., p. 42. 71 Due to its more pessimistic tone, it is ternpting to assume that it was written later in the year, when the Calles regime replaced Obregonls more Iiberal one.

72 The tradition of the corrido (popular song) can give us a clue. Anita Brenner notes that editions of "Corrido- Iiterally "event of the time" - [...] truer mirror of its people than any text yet written [...] are constantly being reprintedn,"Mexican Ballads", Mexican Folkways, op. cit., p. 12. 73 Following on a previous remark about the Calles regime (note 65). it could be concluded that this sheet came as an afterthought.

might have also been included in Icaza's 1928 publication of Panchito Chapopote, his most famous work. As Panchito is in some ways a more strident 'sequel' to Magnavoz, the inclusion of this 'supplement' in his new work would possibly serve as an introduction to

it.74

In any case, it could have

been intended, in estridentista fashion, as a broadsheet in Posada tradition, a manifesto broadsheet for educative purposes. As Vicky Unruh suggests, the book displays manifesto-like features.75 such as the exhortations, especially, those using 'we' and "it is necessary" [hay que] found in Vasconcelos' and Rivera's speeches, and the projection of the future, a better future. This complex little work, so filled with contradictory elements that are not always what they appear to be, is useful because it exemplifies so well the period during which Rivera was asserting his dominance in Mexico. The image of the loudspeaker partially hidden in the crater of a volcan0 illustrates

74 Wilson's masters thesis on Icaza, written in 1934, "Mexicanismo" As Seen in the Works of

Xavier Icaza, op. cit., includes the translation of the whole sheet, and tit!es it a supplement to Panchito Chapopote. This indicates that it rnight have been found in the first edition of that work as well (it does not appear in the 1961 edition of Panchito Chapopote that I consulted). Evidently, Wilson did not read Magnavoz in its entirsty, and makes quotes only from the 'proemio'. He does not appear to have made the connection between the sheet he translated and Magnavoz to which he refers as "non-fictional". Panchito Chapopote was finished at the same time as Magnavoz (July 1926) but printed only in 1928. 75 See note 9. Unruh does not provide any dues about the separate sheet to which she rnakes no reference at all. The review of Macyavozat the time of ils publication uses for its title ' ' ~ Q u épatria?", the last words in the sheet, but not in the book. For his part, Carleton Beals in Mexican Maze, devoted a chapter to Estridentismo where he quotes extensively frorn Panchito Chapopote (which he acknowledges), and also f rom Magnavoz, but without ever mentioning its existence. This leads me to believe that he rnight have found the shorter untitled version leaflet inserted in Panchito Chapopote (not in Magnavoz), and that it might have been rnisplaced later in the Magnavorcopy that I read. It is his description of Rivera's appearance on the scene of Magnavoz, that Carleton Beals uses as an introduction to his subsequent comrnents on Rivera, the rnuralist in the chapter on "The Noisemakers". Mexican Maze (Phiiadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1931), pp. 259-83.

very effectiveiy the essence of the postrevolutionary debate, the uncornfortable juxtapositions, and the cultural hybridity. The loudspeaker represents the extemal, the foreign, modemization, urbanization, technoiogy, the imported, materialism, capitalisrn, progress, the rational, the international, while the volcano, represents the local, the Mexican, underdevelopment, the rural, nature, the national, the ancientness of the so-called new World, witness to the ancient Mexican civilizations, the forces from within with explosive potential. This central image, reinforced in the woodcut, offers a complex assortment of the oppositions, tensions, and uncertainties that confronted intellectuals in the aftenath of the Revolution, when they embarked on a construction of their personal and cultural identity within Mexico and the Western world. In Magnavoz, Europe (France and Russia), North and South America are al1 calling and pulling the audience in different directions, and so is Mexico. What direction was culture to take in Mexico to help forge that new Mexican identity?

I would like to corne back to the centrality of the idea of culture in Latin American literary and artistic production, and its role in identity formation as defined by Gonzalez Echevarria in terms of Magnavoz. Gonzalez Echevarria contends that culture and literature in Latin America "create each other as necessary elements of ideological formationW.76Rather than reflect the culture that surrounds it, Latin American literature and, in a country like Mexico in the

1920s,where literacy was limited, muralisrn construct modern "culture". It serves as a discourse that provides society with a blueprint, that guides it,

76 Gonzalez Echevarria, The Voice of the Masters, op. cit., p. 10.

that considers itself "as the only hermeneutics capable of resolving the enigmas of Latin American identity" (my translation)." How does Magnavoz construct post-revolutionary culture, and through

what myths? I would venture to Say that, while there is in that work an avantgarde attempt at blurring the distinctions between literary genres,78 and while it presents manifesto-like features, this so-called play really is an essay in the Latin American tradition. Like the voices that are hidden in loudspeakers, themselves hidden in volcanoes, the essay is masquerading as a play, and a manifesto. However, while the author's device makes clear that the voices are mediated, it is less obvious to the reader that what appears as a play and a farce, is actually an essay on identity. In Magnavoz, like in an essay, there is no actual dialogue; the voices do not argue among themselves. I further contend that it clwes a lot to Rodo's Ariel, and that Icaza's work, in some way, reacts to Ariel. Published in the year 1900 a work of transition between two centuries Ariel was immediately disseminated and widely discussed in Latin America. In Mexico, however, it became known only after 1907.79 Alfonso

"Opuesta a los saberes "técnicosny a los lenguajes "importados" de la politica oficial la Iiteratura se postula como la Cnica herrnenéutica capar de resolver los enigrnas de la identidad latinoarnericana". Ju lio Ramos, Desencuentros de la modernidad en América Latina: literatura y politica en el siglo XIX (México: Fondo de cultura Economica,1989), p. 16. 78 It is listed under the specific category of Teatro rrheatre] in the inventory of Icaza's works.

Xavier Icaza, De chalma y de los remedios (M€xico: Ediciones de Andrea, 1963), p. 119. 79 Alfonso Garcia Morales, ElAteneo de México (1906-1914), (Sevilla: Consejo Superior de

lnvestigaciones Ciéntificas, 1992),p. 119.

Reyes and his friend Pedro Henriquez Urefia, two atenebtas, were both responsible for having it printed and distributed in Mexico.80

Though it chooses to appear as (popular) theatre, Magnavoz, with its own built-in public, could, of course, never be perfonned in front of a live audience, let alone a popular one. "Like the novel, the essay must pass for something else while acknowledging, contradictorily, that it is not what it pretends to be"? It is a (written) essay, not an (oral) play, and its intended audience is not the (viewing) masses, but the literate (reading) youth, to whom the work is clearly addressed in the Proemio: "Ojala mi voz sirva de aiiento a nuestra juventud, necesitada, como nunca, de consejo y enérgica direccion amorosa." [Hopefully, rny voice will serve to encourage our youth, who need, more than ever, advice, and energetic but loving direction, p. 191. The authority of Icaza's 'voice' is, therefore, first established in the preface, and again in the text through Rivera's speech unmediated by technology. The work presents several discourses prevalent in the Mexican society of 1926, uttered through a loudspeaker, or through (classical Greek-inspired) choruses, that are dismissed by the on-stage audience, and finally, a discourse uttered by Rivera, and received with applause. But whether that audience reacts negatively, positively, or indifferently, there is in effect no dialogue between the contentious views that, in the end, are resolved by authorial voice. The reader, the real audience, is guided to the truth, or at

ln 1907, Henriquez Ureiïa wrote a review of Ariel in Revista Moderna. Reyes convinced his father, a general, to pay for the printing of a new edition in Monterrey. In 1908, the books were distributed free of charge to young people. Ibid., pp. 122-3. 80

Gonzalez Echevarria, The Voice of the Masters, op. cit., p. 15.

least to the key to a distinctive Mexican culture and identity by means of what Gonzalez Echevarria calls "magisterial rhetoricrY.82 The target public of

Magnavoz, like that of Arieltwenty-six years earlier, is still contemporary Latin American youth. And like in Arie/, the Master's Voice is the author's; in Rodo's essay, it is disguised as the 'maestro' Prospero pretending to express Ariel's thought, while in Icaza's work, the master/ intellectual is disguised as Rivera (and to a lesser extent Alfonso Reyes). Images of air-air

that carries the voice (truth), brings about change,

represents the spiritual that Latin Americans are supposed to embodyappear following Rivera's speech: "algo flota en el aire" [something is floating in the air, p. 411, "una violenta rafaga" [a violent gust of wind], "el aire se estremece" [the air shivers, p. 411. Rivera himself (not the protagonist in Magnavoz) believed in, and played out the myth of the transmitter of knowledge, of the synthesizer. He had said Yrato de ser [. ..] un transmisor

que les proporcione [a las rnasas] una sintesis de sus deseos de modo de servir como un organizador de conciencia y ayudar a su organizacion social." [I try to be [...] a transmitter that provides [the masses] with a synthesis of their desires so that I can serve as an organizer of their conscience and help in their social organizationl.83 The 'mastefs voiceYe4in Magnavoz is ernphasized by the contrast between the distant voices, and Rivera's

83 Bertram D. Wolfe, Diego Rivera, su vida, su obra ysu época, (Santiago de Chile:

Ediciones Ercilla, 1941), p. 190.

Magnavox loudspeaker's great cornpetitor was RCA's His Master'.. Voice. This name emphasizes the notion of high fidelity, of truth, that comes out of the 'master's voice'. 84 As indicated earlier, the

autochthonous and physical presence anid Mexican cacti and volcanoes, at the top of a pyramid built by indigenous ancestors from a respected ancient civilization. Icaza chose the title Magnavoz, or 'great voice', as it allows for both the appearance of mediation and the hiding of the authorial voice. I dare Say that Magnavoz practises a more elaborate magisterial

rhetoric than its model, and one that reflects the changes in the contemporary idea of culture; the pull towards European ciassicisrn that underscores Ariel, while it has not disappeared, is rnitigated by the desire to retum to more direct and local origins in Magnavoz. However, the latter's construction of Culture, is based on some of the same myths underlying the former. Icaza, like Rodo before him, subscribed to the idea that, though it was important to redeem the masses by providing a better material and democratic life (like in the United States), what gave a nation superiority was the production of a thinking elite (like in Latin America).BS In this he also agrees with Alfonso Reyes. Besides being infoned by the myths of the maestro, telluric presence, and nature, Magnavozassumes also the construct of the unity of Latin American culture based on the use of the Spanish language; while it is clearly a Mexican work, about Mexican culture in particular, it is, however, addressed to Latin American youth in general. Moreover, it appears as if lcaza felt that the educative apostolado (mission) of Mexican intellectuals must (1 r)radiate from Mexico but reach beyond national borders to the rest of Latin America, that Mexico must become a cultural center that "make[s] clear or bright

85 John A. Crow. The €pic of Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). p. 696.

intellectually or spiritually; illurnine[s]".86 Finally, it is worth noting that another myth of Latin American "culture", that of exile, is very rnuch irnplicit in Magnavoz. Exile. Gonzalez Echevarria writes is "a founding literary myth, as it is a founding Latin American constmct, a strategic f o m of self-definition".*'

The retum from exile to the Latin Arnerican soi1 is Iike a rebirth. Icaza, the author, just back from a year away, was rebom. His "impresion de regreso" had the weight of distance from the native soil, that, upon return, provide a

new, more accurate perspective. Reyes and Rivera, the authorial mouthpieces, had been back within the previous five years from long 'exile', (and so had Vasconcelos to a lesser extent88) and they had acquired the Iegitimacy afforded by an extended foreign experience, I have attempted to demonstrate Rodo's lingering influence on Icaza's

work to help provide a broader understanding of the cultural codes and

strategies shared by intellectuals during a period when Rivera became the emblematic cultural figure, as clearly exernplified in Magnavoz. It could be said that Rivera's voice, as Rod6 says of Prospero's in Ariel, is "a firm voicethe voice of the master [voz magistral], which, to pass its ideas and [enlgrave them deeply in the rninds of the disciples, can employ either the clear penetration of a ray of light or the sharp blow of a chisel on the rnarble, the stroke of the painter's brush on canvas [el toque impregnante del pince1 en el

86 As

mentioned in the previous chapter. Collins Concise Dictionary (London: Collins, 1988). p. 600.

87 Gonzalez Echevarria, The Voice of the Masters. op. cit.. p.

134.

Vasconcelos had also gone into exile but in the United States, which in the hierarchical scale of exiles did not rank as prestigious as Europe in the 1920s.

lienzoJ"B9The word 'altavoz', Spanish for loudspeaker, would not have conveyed as strongly as 'magnavoz' the importance, the magnitude, and, above ali, the truth of the voice lcaza wanted heard. The voice of Alfonso Reyes, a minor authorial voice in Magnavoz, though the writer was a pillar of Mexican culture, complements Rivera's with his repeated cal1 for "inteliigence". He becomes the evangelist for what, Samuel Ramos, another Mexican intellectual called in 1925, "el evangelio de la inteligencia" [the Gospel of intelligence] or " la Doctrina de la Inteligencia" [the Doctrine of intelligence].gO Through this work, Rivera received publicity to the extent that the book was read and reviewed in Mexico and abroad.91 Long after the publication of Magnavoz, Icaza's most famous work, Panchito Chapopote, was reviewed in Madrid, in El Sol. The reviewer links by means of lcaza the names of Picasso and Rivera, who become the two beacons: "Entre Picasso y Diego Rivera, Xavier lcaza levanta su tienda multicolor. Los vientos se reunen-negros, petardos, rumbas. Rumbas, ya Io dijo el mismo Rivera: "Panchito Chapopote es un poema escrito en ritmo de rumba". [Between Picasso and Diego Rivera, Xavier lcaza raises his rnulticoloured tent. The winds meet-blacks, petards, rumbas. Rumbas, as Rivera himself already said: "Panchito

89 Gonzalez Echevarria, The Voice of the Masters, op. cit., p. 25. Translation in the text.

Samuel Ramos, "El evangelio de la inteligencia" in A t (18 de abri1 de 1925), quoted in Diaz Arciniega, Querella por la cultura "revolucionaria"(1925).op. cit., p. 77. 91 At the time of Magnavois publication, reviews appeared in La Estrella de Panama.

(Panama), El diario de la Marina, (Havana), La Revue de L 'Amérique Latine (Paris), The New York Times Book Review (US), and in El Universal (Mexico). Rivera continued to receive extensive publicity.

Chapopote is a poern written to the rhythm of the nimba."]92 Sol from main 'actor' in Icaza's Magnavoz Rivera becomes also expert critic of Icaza's next work. There doesn't seern to be a space in the cultural field that Rivera did not fill, nor an opportunity for publicity that he did not grasp! In Magnavoz though, the 'marketing' strategy, that is the device used by Icaza, is rather ingenious. The author puts a well-known living character, Rivera, on "stage", and gives him the central role by making him appear as the unmediated, and local voice against distant, indirect, or foreign voices. This was not just publicity, but the confirmation of Rivera as an indisputable cultural force, whose voice, sooner or later, would be widely heard in Mexico. Icaza's discurso is no longer written, but spoken. We could Say, in Saussurian teminology, that Icaza brought the "sound-image" or "signifier" into "being", or presence, through the illusion of theatre, and the visuality of the illustration, in both of which Rivera is present. That physical presence is crucial to the representation of meaning as it creates a clear identification of legitimacy between the "signifier" and the "signified". The presence, the purity, and the immediacy of Rivera's "vive voix" (to borrow Derrida's terms)93 as opposed to an electronic vocal medium, carries a sense of truth. As we saw, the estridenfistas, like ail modem writers and artists of post-revolutionary Mexico, had to create, "improvise" (Maples Arce) a public in the absence of galleries, critics, an adequate publishing industry, readers,

92 Quoted in Wilson, "Mexicanismo"As Seen in the Works of Xavier Icaza, op. cit., p. 108, note 23. 93 Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenornena, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston: NorthWestern University Press, 1973),p.15.

an art market, and patrons. Rivera was no exception, and we also saw how

he judiciously shared marketing strategies, how he 'used' and 'was used' in mutually advantageous associations. While Vasconcelos and his 'missionaries' were teaching the people in the rural areas to read and write, Rivera set out to teach that same people how to understand and appreciate a new Mexican art. In Magnavoz, the author "improvised" his own pubiic on stage, as it were, while hoping to find a real audience, particularly among Latin American youth. That audience could read about itself as that public depicted in the work. Rivera also introduced his public on his walls: the workers, soldiers, and peasants, the lndian and the mestizo, precisely the public he hoped to create. But that public, unlike the university students to whom Magnavoz is actually addressed, was largely unable to read, so the murals become what Carfos Monsivais calls "inevitable lectura" [inevitable reading],94 like the large Soviet posters. This was a long process though, and even with al1 the media publicity Rivera received when he came back in 1921, he was far from being popular with everyone. The students-these

same young students to whom Icaza,

and many other writers at the time, addressed their message-and

many

critics were offended by what they considered was ugly painting. Rivera felt he had to define a new 'Yaste". He saw his aesthetic role as parallel to that of the literacy missionaries. But his concept of taste varied from that of the Minister of Education whose educative project was to revive the decorative forms of folklore, on the one hand, and introduce Western classics, on the 94 Carlos Monsivais, "Diego Rivera, creador de publicos", in Diego Rivera hoy, op. cit., p. 3.

other. For the artist, taste was iess a friil, and more a fundamental need. Taste was "ese factor importantisimo y descuidado por todos, no como omato y refinamiento, sino al mismo titulo de necesidad que las medidas de

instruction elemental e higiene publica" [this very important factor ignored by ail, not as decoration or refinement, but as the sarne essentiai necessity as rneasures of elementary education or public hygienel.95 Rivera did not want to impose a foreign taste on the masses, but rather guide them to create the best they could from what they had. The estridentistas attempted to initiate their readers to a new aesthetic, but these

reacted negatively out of uneasiness in front of threatening, and incomprehensible change. In tu m, the estridentistas showed exasperation, and even disdain towards that public which was reluetant to being "improvised". Rivera, never discouraged, would pursue this goal relentlessly. If the importance of the avant-garde movements in Latin America was to have led to a new way of thinking the relationship between artists and thsir audience, then muralism, from the very beginning, was clearly allied to these movements in an attempt at affecting that relationship. To what extent, it and any other vanguard movement succeeded is another rnatter. Rivera as a literary protagonist appears to foilow a similar fate to Rivera the artist, from an uncertain reception in Europe, to an emblernatic dominance in Mexico. In 1922, in Ehrenburg's novel RiverdJurenito, an anarchistic and apparently unprincipled character, achieved an uncertain

95 "Diego Rivera diserta sobre su extrano arte pictoricon, El Demdcrata (2de marzo de 1924), quoted in Fell, José Vasconcelos, op. cit., p. 549.

dominance over a motley crew made up of rather uninspiring "disciples", and then dies. Four years later in Magnavoz, he becomes the dominant cultural voice, above other artists and writers, the cultural symbol that serves to bnng unity to the rather confused debate over the construction of a new national identity. In 1931, it was tirne for Rivera to make his incursion into the United States, following his unsuccessful attempt at gaining mural work in the USSR. After a California start, he headed for the Museum of Modern Art where the complex issues around his solo retrospective are the subject of the next chapter. This show at the new museum, the second after the Matisse one,

was a triumphant strategic move by Rivera towards the expansion of artistic dominance to the north. He would be the second "modem", and the first (Latin) Amencan to be awarded that distinction.96 The examination of the history behind the exhibition reveals to what extent its realization was mediated by the way the political and artistic elites from the south and the north constructed each other, and how Rivera responded in terrns of these constructions.

96 Even before Picasso's work was shown there.

Part Three: The Politics of the Primitive and the Modern Chapter Six Rivera at MoMA in 1931 The first Mexican artist to exhibit at the Museum of Modem Art (MoMA) in New York was Diego Rivera.' The retrospective of his work, in December of 1931, was the second one-person show after that of Matisse; it beat al1 attendance records since the opening of the museum two years earlier. In this third season of the new influential museum, what was the significance of a Rivera retrospective, and of its association to the famous French modemist? Art News reported that the succession of the two shows would "afford the public an opportunity to compare a modem European and a modem American artist who differ remarkably in style and subject matter as well as in their social, political and psychological attitude"? Did MoMAys choice then, merely reflect the "eclecticness and contradictions" of its director, Alfred H. Barr, or could it be interpreted, more specifically, as an

A version of this chapter was published under "The Politics of the Primitive and the Modern: Diego Rivera at MoMA in 193i" in Curare (Espacio Crifico para las artes) 9, otono de 1996, pp. 1-43.

*

"The Museum of Modern Art Plans Important Shows" in Art News (October, 1931). p. 12. The cornparison would be further highlighted; during the Rivera exhibition at MoMA, the Matisse retrospective was showing simuitaneously in Providence, "Diego Rivera WiII Exhibit Work in New York", in Providence, RI, Bulletin (December 22, 1931). An immediate and practical difference between the politics surrounding the two shows, and the two artists,.was the one-dollar charge at the door for the first three days of the Rivera exhibition, which raised $6,000 dollars for the unernployed, "Museum of Modem Art to show Rivera's Work" in New York Sun (December 19,1931) and Excelsior (25 de enero de 1932).

attempt at stressing the similarities between two living artists-one from Europe and the other from the Americas-therefore,

reinforcing the

integrationist ambitions of Modemism? After all, both had the proper arthistorical pedigree, led modem art movements, had benefited from the inspiration of primitive art-Matisse

frorn Morocco and Tahiti, and Rivera, of

course, from pre-Columbian art and Tehuantepec-both

had done mural

decoration, and had been asked to paint a fresco for the Rockefeller Centre.3 Why was a Mexican artist given the same honour as the celebrated ? ~ the show opened, French painter? Why was Rivera himself ~ h o s e n When the art critic Henry McBride declared that "the exhibition was inevitable, since Rivera [...] was, in those days, the most talked about artist on this side of the Atlanti~".~ That Rivera was highly popular at the tirne is undeniable, but why was he particularly lionised in the United States? Was the inevitability of the MoMA exhibition, which exploited popularity, not due to more fundamental purposes? What were the conditions to cause what the New York Herald Susan Noyes Platt, Modernism in the 7920s: lnterpretations of Modern art in New York from Expressionism to Constructivism (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985), p. 138. The European artist who was initially considered for a first one-person retrospective tnat year was the preferred, but unavailable, Picasso. (Conger Goodyear to Abby Rockefeller, September 1, 1931, Box 7, folder 100, AAR Papers, Rockefeller Family Archives). Though only an alternative to Picasso, Matisse would serve just as well towards MoMA's project. In the case of Rivera, al1 the evidence points to him as the candidate of first choice for that second oneperson show. In fact, it appears that the choice of Rivera for the second show was made months before the last minute decision about Matisse for the first show. In 1929, Alfred Barr outlined for Vogue MoMAs plan for the first two years of what was considered the Museum's experimental period. lt called for exhibitions of "living Arnerican, living French painters, modern Mexican art, with perhaps "one-man shows" for Daumier, Seurat, and others." See Irving Sandler and Amy Newman, eds., Defining Modern Art Selected Writings of Alfred H. Barr, Jr. (New York: Harry N. Abrarns, 19861, p. 76.

Henry McBride, "Diego Rivera's Mexican Murals Create a Stir at the Museum of Modem Art" in New York Sun (December 26, 1931), p. 19.

Tribune called "an unusual tribute to a living painter" to happen at that

particular time at MoMA in New Y ~ r k ? ~ The Rivera retrospective came at the end of a year in which other significant artistic events took place, for example, the International Colonial Exhibit in Paris7, the opening of the American Folk Art Gallery and a travelling show of American lndian art in New York, the First Pan American exhibit in Baltimore, and the travelling show of Mexican (fine and applied) Art, which opened at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and ended with a Pan American round table in San A n t o n i ~From . ~ al1 evidence, the Rivera show

" Rivera Paintings To Be Exhibited Privately Today" in New York Herald Tribune (December 22, 1931).

The Exposition coloniale internationale, in Paris in 1931, organized by the Ministry of Colonies, admits unabashedly to the necessary propagandist nature of t his exhibit, which featured France's achievernents in its colonies. Throughout the catalogue extreme pride is expressed for France's colonialist endeavour as this sentence attests: "la France s'est f i x i pour tâche d'amener à un stade de civilisation supérieure des peuplades attardées, surtout en Afrique, aux degrés de l'humanité primitive". Ministère des colonies, Exposition coloniale infernationale de Paris en 1931 (Paris, 1930),p. 16. That same year, Louis Aragon and others, in an effort to "politicize rather than aestheticize the primitivist-imperialist connection" counterattacked with an anticolonialist exhibit of their own, Hal Foster, "The 'Primitive' Unconscious of Modern Art", October, 34 (Fall 1985), p. 62. Rivera had works exhibited in the latter ?NOshows. The Pan American exhibit in Baltimore, held in early 1931, included one painting by Rivera, as well as one from Orozco and Siqueiros each, among 19 Mexican artists. See First Baltimore Pan-Amerjcan Euhibition of Contemporary Paintings, (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1931). The 1930 exhibition of Mexican art which opened at the Metropolitan included more works by Rivera than by any other painter represented there, including a portable fresco Market Scene (1930) cornrnissioned by Elizabeth Cutter Morrow. See Mexican Arts, 1930-1931 (New York: The American Federation of Arts, 1930). On the title page of the catalogue for the exposition of lndian Tribal Arts the organizers state that this art was "selected entirely with consideration of esthetic (sic) value." John Sloan and Oliver Lafarge suggest in their introduction that "the lndian artist deserves to be classed as a Modernist", that "lndian painting is at once classic and modern". Introduction to Arnerican lndian Art, text by John Sloan & Oliver Lafarge (New York: The Exposition of lndian Tribal Arts, Inc., 1%l), p. 7. 60th Elizabeth Morrow and Abby Rockefeller were on the Board of Directors, and the latter was one of the lenders to the exhibition.

was not an isolated cultural event; it was part of a complex interdiscursive structure built around notions of colonization, primitivism, race, rnodemism, and oppositions such as culture versus civilization and nature versus rnodernization. Though it had an important part to play, of course, MoMA was not the sole agent responsible for the exhibition. This chapter will examine the reception the United States accorded Rivera's work and suggest that the context of the Rivera retrospective was largely infomed by cultural Pan Americanisrn and corporate patronage. In both Mexico and the United States, a number of actors came together as the many threads that created an intricate web, at the centre of which the Rivera retrospective emerged, with Rivera willingly entrapped. The dominant factor linking these agents was the underlying need, in both the United States and the Latin American republics, to reject their condition as the Other of Europe. This would be sought, to varying degrees, through attempts at the economic and cultural integration of North and South into one single continent, and through the return to, and appropriation of, continental primitive sources as manifested in the archaeological and indigenist projects centring around the indian, represented at once as noble and backward, cultured and ignorant? Mexico, in the early thirties, was going through a period of political uncertainties after a long Revolution, the cristem revolt that had ended only in

In Mexico, the need to assimilate the "Indian", though as much a construct as that of its northern neighbour, stemmed from different circumstances. The huge indigenous population was manifestly pervasive and could not be ignored. Without its active participation (read "integrationn),modernization could not evolve as planned.

1929, and an "unfulfilled-ur cynically manipulated"-agrarian

reforrdOAs a

result, it was in the process of "forging a nation", or rather, creating a nationalist myth of progress and unity.ll For its part, the United States was experiencing the economic, social and psychological collapse of its society following the 1929 crash. The need for bott-i Mexico and the United States to rebuild a bruised national identity would strengthen their determination to subvert the old economic and cultural opposition between Europe and the New World by consolidating the construction of their very own exotic and primitive alterities.I2 By doing so they would create an antithesis which required the fusion of new opposites, the continental "interrningling of the mystical with the rational".' In Mexico, this new dialectic took shape with the Ariel-Caliban opposition, in which Ariel stands for spirituality and Caliban for materialism. It became widespread after the publication of José Enrique Rodo's novel Ariel in 1900, and was kept alive by other intellectuals like José Vasconcelos, the

William Rowe and Vivian Schelling, Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America (London: Verso, 1991), p. 158. Zoraida Vasquez and Lorenzo Meyer. The United States and Mexico (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985),p. 142; Forjando patria is the title of a book published by the Mexican anthropologist, Manuel Gamio in 1916. Foqando Patria. Pro-nacionalismo, (México: Porrija Hermanos, 1916). Pan Latinism, which proclaimed the superiority of the "Latin" culture under the guardianship of France, and which later inspired Arielism, had to be neutratized. The most effective weapon would be Pan Americanism. John T. Reid, "The Rise and Decline of the Ariel-Caliban Antithesis in Spanish America", The Americas 34 (1977-1978), p. 350. See also John Leddy Phelan, "Pan Latinism, French Intervention in Mexico, and the Genesis of the ldea of Latin America", Conciencia y autenticidad historicas (México: UNAM, 1968), pp. 279-

98. Arthur P. W hitaker, The Western Hemisphere ldea: Its Rise and Decline (lthaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1954), p. 143.

promoter of Mexican muralism, with his dream of a "cosmic race".14 The Arielist binary opposition gave Mexicans a sense of cultural superiority over the United States and, in tum, allowed Americans, who were shedding European influence, to look for a culture closer to home. As modernization was gaining hold, the belief in "harmonizing opposites" grew stronger on both sides of the border.15 Waldo Frank, and many other Amencan intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s, believed in the higher spirituality of the "Latin" south, while the anthropologist Franz Boas, who advocated cultural relativism, elevated the racial status of the Indian? Modemists, who shared with Arielists, the belief in the fusion of opposites, and their role as intellectual elites to mediate culture with the materialistic masses, carried the hernispheric project to an international level.17

The Russian Connection: Barr and Abbott

In MoMA'ç modernist tradition, the exhibition and the catalogue follow Rivera's progression from the early academic and European influences to his

l4 See Reid, "The Rise of the Ariel-Caliban Antithesis in Spanish America", op. cit., p. 345355; La raza cosmica, published in 1925, is a Hegelian reversal of Hegel's positioning of the New World in universal history. It is based on the assimilation of al1 the so-called "races" into the "white race". See José Vasconcelos, La raza cosmica: mision de la raza iberoamericana (1 925),(México : Espaça-Calpe Mexicana, 1966). See also Sabine Mabardi, "Discurso hegeliano en México: la mision cosmica de VasconceIos", unpublished paper (1994). See Frederick B. Pike, The United States and Latin America: Myths and Stereotypes of Civiiization and Nature (Austin: University of Texas, 1992), and Reid, "The Rise of the ArieiCaliban Antithesis in Spanish America", op. cit.

16 See Pike, The United States and Latin Amerka. op. cit., pp. 265-6. 17 lbid., pp. 215-20.

Mexican period and his American debut in 1930.18In the catalogue, Frances Flynn Paine, who assisted in arranging the show, presents the historical evolution of the artist's work. She starts with his apprenticeship in Mexico City, stressing the influence of José Guadalupe Posada, the famous engraver. She describes his fourteen-year training in Europe-with emphasis on the influence of the French Masters-followed

particular

by a brief

sketching of the exposure to ltaly and fresco rnaking. She follows him back to Mexico and the painting of his first public frescoes-with the Soviet Union-and

a short interlude in

ends with his first commissions in the United States.lg

Approximately two-thirds of the 143 works hung on the walls of the exhibition depicted Mexican subje~ts.*~ The few paintings and drawings from Rivera's pre-1921 European apprenticeship did not have much of an impact on the critics. Arnong other European works recently completed by Rivera, while he was in the Soviet Union, was the May Day Sketch Book, May Ist, 1928, a series of watercolours that Paine brought back from Mexico for Abby Rockefeller. Rivera executed these during the celebrations for the tenth anniversary of the October revolution at Red Square. The sketches, much different from his European or Mexican work, were also mainly ignored, but for one exception of note. While the catalogue describes them noncomrnittally as "a vital poitrayal of [Rivera's] impressions of May Day" and the

18 Susan Noyes Platt argues that MoMA "since its beginnings has been historical rather than pioneering". Modernism in the 1920s,op. cit., p. 136.

Diego Rivera, (December 23,1931 -January 27,1932)-Essay by Frances Flynn Payne, notes by Jere Abbott (New York: Museum of Modem Art, 1931). *O This number excludes the large portable frescoes.

critics are either numb or use their words sparsely, the New Republic, on the other hand, shows definite interest, not only in the May Day sketches, but also in the pre-1921 cubistic easel painting~.~' Paul Rosenfeld comments, in what was a "liberal" New York magazine, that Rivera, who might have lost his passion for his "political allegiance", "apparently saw, the humor of communism, the persistence of 'Holy' Russia in Moscow's May Day e x e r ~ i s e s " It . ~would ~ be interesting to speculate on the basis of this article, which reveres the artistic talent of Rivera but doubts his political cornmitment, whether Rosenfeld might have been referring to Rivera's newly declared sympathy for T r ~ t s k ySix . ~ weeks ~ after producing these sketches, Rivera was asked to leave the Soviet Union.24 How significant was Rivera's recent Russian experience in the scheme

of this exhibition? Alfred Barr and his friend, Jere Abbott, who became respectively first director and associate director of MoMA in 1929, visited the

21 Diego Rivera, op. cited, p. 32.

22 Paul Rosenfeld, ''The Rivera Exhibition", New Republic (January 6 , l932), p. 216. 23 According to Donald D. Egbert. Paul Rosenfeld, "the unpolitically-minded music and art critic", believed that the artist should concern himself only with his art, not with power, politics or "messianism of the ieft and of the center." Donald Drew Egbert. "Socialism and American Art", Donald Drew Egbert and Stow Persons, eds., Socialisrn and American Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952), p. il 8; Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism in America, 1889-1963: The Intellectualas a Social Type (New York: Knopf, l96S),p. 296-7. 24 Laurance P. Hurlburt claims that Rivera had to leave because of disagreements with the

Stalinist regime, and that the excuse given was that "as the president of the Workers and Farmers Bloc he [was] needed at home." "Diego Rivera (1886-1957): A Chronicle of his Art, Life and Times" in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective (Detroit: Detroit lnstitute of Arts Founders Society; New York: W. W. Norton, 1986), p. 66.

Soviet Union in the winter of 1927-1928 while Rivera was thereS2=From Barr's Russian Diary, we gather that they were interested in the Mexican artist's murals, or at least, his fresco techniques. The young Barr reports that Rivera was going to take them (Barr and Abbott) 90 the Lenin Academy where he [was] teaching fresco painting and composition" and, among the photographs the artist showed them, the two Americans saw some of his new murals in Mexico City.26 Barr bought a Russian drawing by Rivera, 27 and might have seen other Russian work, possibly that of his cartoon for the cover of an issue of the Russian journal Krasnaya niva (fig. 28).28Both the drawing, Sawing Rails, Moscow (1927) and the cartoon, The Commune (1928), erroneously entitled Communists of Paris in the exhibition catalogue,

25 Sandler, Defining Modern Art, op. cit.. p. 114. Rivera, whose records of things past are not always reliable, daims in Portrait of America that Barr and Abbott had asked hirn, in Moscow, in 1928, to give "a retrospective one-man show" of his work in New York. It is of course possible, but neither man was in a position to make such an offer at that time, at least not on behalf of MoMA. Bertram Wolfe, Portrait of America (New York: Covici-Friede, Inc., 1934), p. 18. 26 Sandler, Defining Modern Art, op. cit. p. 114. Rivera brought these to Moscow along with other photographs of his drawings and paintings that Barr says they saw, p. 109 and 123. This is confirmed in Abbot's Russian Diary: "Looked at Rivera's designs this morning. Also photos of his frescoes in Mexico". Jere Abbott, Russian Diary, 1927, unpublished manuscript (Print Archives, Smith College Museum of Art, p. 17A). I thank Olivier Debroise and James Oles for bringing the existence of this rnanuscript to rny attention. 27 Sandler, Defining Modern Art, op. cit. p. 134.

28 My assumption is founded on the obsewation that Barr owned a photograph of that cover which is reproduced in John E. Bowlt, ed., Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Crificisrn, 1902-1934 (New York: The Viking Press, l976),p. 275. The Russian title is Kommyna, printed at the bottom of the poster along with the author's name, Diego Rivera. A hand-written translation was added at the bottorn of the photograph: "The Commune, Artist Diego Rivera".

were shown in the retrospe~tive.~~ In Moscow, at a time of intense debates about the role of art, Barr, Abbott and Rivera met a number of times. These meetings, no doubt, led to discussions about art and politics, possibly about Rivera's new anti-Stalinist stance, and about state and private patronage in the Soviet Union, the United States and Mexico. Patronage and freedom of the artist were two issues about which Barr felt very strongly, especially in light of what he had seen in the Soviet Uni0n.3~When planning the 19311932 season at MoMA, B a r r - o r was it Jere Abbott?-might

have

remembered the Mexican artist he had met in Moscow.

Of the two men, it was Jere Abbott who showed more interest in Rivera, both in Moscow and in the United States. In his Russian ûiary, he comments on the photographs of the frescoes; Iike Barr, Abbott saw a strong influence from Giotto, but the future director of MoMA, who had just seen Egyptian antiquities in a Moscow museurn, had also found 'Lery strong and

29 It was ioaned by Hubert Herring, the organizer of seminars on Mexico and the editor of Genius of Mexico, a compilation of lectures given at the 1930 seminar, and in which Rivera features. Hubert Herring, and Katherine Terrill, eds., Genius of Mexico (New York: Cornmittee for Cultural Relations with Latin America, 1931).

30 While in Moscow, Rivera had joined the group October (Oktyabr), along with a number of Russian artists, including Sergei Eisenstein, Aleksander Rodchenko and El Lissitzky. October purported to offer a resolution to the current crisis in the arts, by proposing an alternative to both abstract art, as advocated by the Soviet avant-garde, and SociaI Realism. To serve "the proletarian needs of the revolution", the public art "of" rather than "for", the masses which October was promoting, would be inspired by popular Russian tradition. The association rejected "the system of personal and group patronage and protection for individual artistic trend and individual artists". BowIt, Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, op. cit., pp. 273-9. Barr would not have approved of October's position on patronage for he preferred the independen! patrons O! Western democracies - "the private individual who might attest to his membership in the avant-garde" - to the patronage of the Russian "bureaucrzts". Alfred Barr, as quoted in Sandler, Defining Modern Art, op. cit., p. 11. This issue, which is of great interest, is beyond the scope of this dissertation.

simplified Egyptian influence" in Rivera's ~ o r k . Barr ~ ' in his diary does not let on whether he likes the work, "suddenly" deciding to buy Sawing Rails on Febniary 16, 1928. just before leaving the Soviet Union. In contrast, Abbott

records that he finds Rivera's work "very fine", and expresses his enthusiasrn by buying a drawing two weeks earlier than his travelling cornpanion. He comments that Rivera is a "remarkably keen fellow and has analyzed the situation in art here sympathetically and to the point".32 It appears as if the Russian encounter might have played a part in the decision by MoMA to have a Rivera retrospective, but in the end, it was neither Barr nor Abbott, but Frances Paine, art dealer and Rockefeller staffer, who went to Mexico, in June 1931, to offer Rivera a one-person show on behalf of MoMA. As we 'stiall see, stronger factors and agents prevailed that would have probably made the exhibition happen regardless of Barr's and Abbott's personal interest in Rivera.

31 Sandler, Defining Modern Art, op. cit. p. 123; Abbott, Russian Diary, op. cit., p. 17A.

32 Abbott, Russian Diary, op. cit., pp. 17A and 21. 1 have found no information regarding this drawing; it does not appear to have been shown at the exhibition. After becorning Director of the Smith College Museum of Art, Abbott organized a show of Rivera's work at the museum in October 1934 featuring one of the eight frescoes painted for the MoMA retrospective, Knight of the Tiger. Jere Abbott, undated press release, Smith College Art Museum Archives, Jere Abbott's file. A few months before the exhibition opered at MoMA, Abbott revised somewhat his opinion. When Abby Rockefeller asked his advice about the possible purchase of a collection of Rivera's work, which she had not seen, Abbott warned her that "Diego's work [wasj often uneven." (Telegram from Jere Abbott to Abby Rockefeller, New York, July 17, 1931, AAR, Box 7, Folder 97, Rockefeller Family Archives).

The New World Other: The Mexican Series

Though lauded by some, the greatest successes among easel paintings were not the European works-which

a few reviewers in a typically

hegemonic reaction considered merely derivative-but

the Mexican ~ e r i e s . ~ ~

The Mexican easel paintings produced after Rivera's retum to Mexico in 1921 appealed to the critics for tt~eirprimitiveness, colours and authenticity. They found that Rivera's development was "predestined by the force of his own Mexicanism", they lamented the loss of the lndian "race" and its traditions in the United States, and praised the "authentic likeness" of the lndian depicted by Rivera, suggesting that "if it does not answer the romantic European myth of the Red Man, or Our own movie creation, nevertheless it is a true portrait of a living race whose civilization antedates ours by many centurie^".^^ The fact

is, that in the 'Mexican part' of the exhibition, what the viewers were actually shown were essentialized Mexican types in supposedly typical scenes celebrating and glorifying the Mexican way of life: the art decoish Flower Day (1925) for which Rivera won the first prize in Los Angeles at the first Pan-

American Exhibition, in 1925;35The Grinder (1924), and The Canoe (1931),

33 Harrison Kerr admits that Rivera has talent and "technical dexterity", but doesn't believe that "he has done more than to derive this knowledge from various convenient sources, not always of the highest." "Matisse and Rivera", Trend (March-May 1932),pp. 16-9. 34 Ralph Flint, Art News (December. 26, 1931). p. 5 ; Philip Youtz. "Diego Riveran, The Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin (February 1932), p- 1 0 1. 35 This painting was lent by the Los Angeles Museum for the exhibition. The catalogue does not include a description of the works, providing only a Iist of artists and paintings by country. Rivera was one of 29 Mexican painters exhibited; the other two "grandes" were not included. First Pan-American Exhibition of Ojl Paintings, November 27, 1925 to January 31,1926 (Los Angeles, California: Los Angeles Museum, 1925).

in costumbrista or folklorist style;36the Fiesta Tehuana (1928),and The

Bathers (1925),which reproduce the 'exotic' atmosphere of Tehuantepec, Rivera's Tahiti.37These images contributed to the propagation of the postrevolutionary myth of "mexicanismo", rooted in the newly rediscovered Indian. They gave visual support to the construction of the natural, spiritual, ferninine, unconscious and cultured opposite which, combined with civilkation, masculinity and rationality, would provide the wholeness that the white (Latin or Saxon) so much desired.38 More than the Mexican paintings, the movable frescoes especially commissioned by MoMA and executed in New Yorkparticularly, three reproducing mural work done in Mexico and three depicting New York scenes-tumed

out to be the leading attraction, as well as the

most often reviewed part of the exhibition? Edward Alden Jewell rernarked that "the work on canvas, the watercolours, the drawings, splendid though many of these are, pale in interest before the paintings in true fresco, on plaster." For Jewell, like for most critics, the frescoes-or rather these

36 The Grinder, which was much photographed for the reviews of the exhibition, was lent by Emilio Portes Gil, a one-year provisional president of Mexico, the man who commissioned the monumental mural at the National Palace and who was responsible for the decree declaring the Mexican Communist Party illegai. Francisco Reyes Palma, "Diego y el trotskismo", La Jornada semanal (31 de agosto de 1986),p. 3.

37 The Bathers was lent by Frances Toor, an Arnerican expatriate in Mexico, art dealer and promoter of Mexican art, and the editor of Mexican Folkways. See Chapter Three. 38 Pike, The United States and Latin America, op. cit., p. 234. 39 The media publicized and reviewed most frequently the "frescoes" with announcements such as: "Of special interest will be the full-sized cartoons of the frescoes commissioned for the Palace of Cortez (sic) at Cuernavaca by the late Senator Dwight Morrow while he was Ambassador to Mexico", "Matisse in Review", Art Digest (November 1, 1931), p. 6.

fragments of frescoes-were

"the backbone of the show", just as MoMA had

intended40

A total of eight frescoes were painted on location and shown in the exhibit: five reproducing Mexican scenes which were ready for the first opening in Decernber, and three depicting New York and American industry which were introduced in a second opening in January. Of the five Mexican reproductions, three were discussed consistently in the more than 120 reviews across the country: Agrarian Leader Zapata ( 1 931).Liberation of the

Peon (1931), and Sugar Cane (1931).The other two, lndian Fighting (1931 ), and Uprising (1931), were rarely mentioned. The fact that they were not included in the catalogue âccounts in part for the omissions, as well as the confusion in reporting the total number of frescoes shown in the e~hibition.~' The catalogue reproduces and lists only the first three frescoes which are simply described as "in the style" of Rivera's Mexican work. Though the highly publicized frescoes were the selling point of the exhibition, the catalogue could not offer a critical analysis of these 'last minute' movable panels. Instead, it presented a brief exposé on fresco painting in which Jere Abbott stresses the technical importance of the fresco medium as used by Rivera,

40 As a number of critics remarked, asking an artist to paint works for an exhibition, at the very site of this exhibition, was an unusual initiative - if not the first one of its kind - to be taken by a museum in the United States. Besides, these were not just any kind of paintings; they were "frescoes". Edward Alden Jewell, "An lmpressive Exhibition" New York Times (Tuesday, December 22,1931), p. 28.

41 The number of portable frescoes mentioned in the reviews Vary between three and eight.

Rivera himself mentions seven frescoes in My Art, My Life: An Autobiography, with Gladys March (New York: The Citadel Press, 1960), p. 180-1, but Jere Abbott, the Associate Director of MoMA, refers to eight, Brooklyn Eagle (January 25, 1932).

but avoids discussing its social ~ i g n i f i c a n c eThis . ~ ~ avoidance is particularly interesting considering that the Mexican muralists deliberately chose fresco painting, as opposed to easel painting, because of the public and social nature of its production.

Agrarian LeaderZapata (fig. 29),a detail of a large frescoe in the Palace of Cortés in Cuernavaca, entitled "Exploitation and insurrection, Zapata leading the Agrarian revolt", was commissioned by Ab by Rockefeller, CO-founderof MoMA and an inffuential member of the Board of Trustees.44 Part of the museum's permanent collection, Agrarian Leader Zapata has probably been printed in books, posters and postcards more often than any other painting by Rivera. Right after the show, the MoMA commission which reproduced the Cuernavaca mural in the form of ço-called "portable fresco", was further adapted and reduced in the f o m of a lithograph (40 x 33 cm) this tirne commissioned by the Weyhe Gallery, whose representatives had helped

42 Diego Rivera (1931). op. cit., pp. 64 and 41-2. An invitation card and announcements indicate that Abbott gave two lectures on Rivera in January, 1932, the first to MoMA members and the other to the general public. (Scrapbook kept by Conger A. Goodyear, first President of MoMA, MoMA archives). The text of these does not appear to have been published, but I suspect the content to have been similar to a text he produced for publication in the local papers, to publicize a Rivera exhibit at Smith College in October 1934 (Jere Abbot file, Smith College Muselim of Art archives). 43 According to Stanton L. Catlin the original is 4.25 x 1.34 m. Diego Rivera: A Retrospective., op. cit., p. 272; it is 2.1 0 x 1.34 m according to Los Zapatas de Diego Rivera. Blanca Gardufio (México: Museo Estudio Diego Rivera, 1989), p. 80. 44 Alfred H. Barr Jr., ed., Masters of Modern Arf (New York: Museum of Modern Ait, 1954), p. 154. Frances faine, in the empfoy of Abby Rockefeller, sent her a letter dated August 1st,

1931 and a picture of the fresco depicting the sugar cane scene of the new Cuernavaca murais (ARR, Box 7, folder 97, Rockefeller Family Archives). Could Mrs Rockefeller also have commissioned Sugar Cane,the MoMA fresco? Could she have comrnissioned or, at least, suggested to Rivera the themes of some of the other frescoes? Abby Rockefeller's comrnanding role in the behind-the-scene running of the museum, and therefore in this exhibition, cannot be ignored.

assemble the e x h i b i t i ~ nThis . ~ ~ lithograph, and others reproducing fragments of Rivera's murals, becarne the privately affordable and truly portable

reductions of what had started as public art on the walls of Mexico.46 The originat mural depicting the conversion of the Indians, the Inquisition and Zapata is actually the final one in a series of frescoes telling the story of the present state of Morelos. Two months earlier Rivera had just completed the Cuernavaca murais comrniçsioned as a diplornatic gesture by Dwight Morrow, the American ambassador to Mexico. In the actual full-size fresco of Zapata, situateci above the horse there are violent scenes of lndians fleeing, while others are being flogged and two Indians are hanging from ropes. Below, a frieze-like scene grisaille portrays the assassination of Roquetillo, the first native in the area to rebel against the conquerors. The squarer fragment reproduced by Rivera for MoMA, shows only the lower part of the original fresco. This version, which actually retums to the proportions of the 1929 drawing for the original Cuernavaca fragment, frames again Zapata and his white horse in a luxuriant garland of large tropical leaves, on the right, and the completed figures of his peasant followers on the left.47

45 It was part of five lithographs of Rivera's work issued by the Weyhe Gallery in New York. Judith Keller, "Rivera's Prints: Notes on the Weyhe Lithographs, 1930-1932", The Fath Collecfion: Selected Prints from the United States and Mexico, 1915-195û (Austin: The University of Texas, l986),p. 16. 46 The portable frescoes, which were hardly portable weighing over 1,000 pounds each, did

not sel1 during the exhibition. They ended up at the Weyhe Gallery.

This fragment taken out of its specific Cuernavaca context, ignores the vioient scenes of the original narrative, and stands on its own as an apparently more serene image, signalling to the American public that the agrarian reforrn was successful, and that tropical Mexico is again a nice place to visit and in which to invest. Tourism in Mexico had improved slightly during the Porfiriato, but then the violence and uncertainty of the civil war had kept foreigners a ~ a yJudith . ~ ~Keller rernarks that "Zapata's face has taken on more clearly Hispanic rather than Indian features" in the MoMA fresco-a subtle change which would reinforce the overall tranquillizing message.49The choice of Zapata, here portrayed as a peasant leader is extremely significant in t e m s of this exhibition. For Rivera, as for many Mexicans, Zapata represented the purest symbol of the historic rights of the indigenous peoples

47 The Christian Science Monifor's version is that "on the right flourish the luxuriant leaves of a new agricultural day when the Morales (sic) peasant came again into possession of the ground he spent his days in cultivating". E. C. Sherburne "Diego Rivera's Frescoes", Christian Science Monifor (Decernber 26, 1931), p. 6. The New York Herald Tribune referring to the great expanse of white, suggests that "it is rather a reposeful unity, suggesting relief that the rigors of the battle are over". Royal Cortissoz. ''The Art of Jose Maria Sert and Diego Rivera", New York Herald Tribune (December 27, 1931). In 1937, in Portrait of Mexico (Plate 205), Rivera renamed the detail of the original f resco Zapata and his Horse, thus, giving prominence to the beautiful Uccelloan horse so much adrnired by the critics, and even further gutting the work of its original political message. In the same book, the lower left part of plate 204 is entitled Zapata Leading the Agrarian Reform, implying a collective action, while the MoMA version, Agrarian Leader Zapata, focuses on the man, not the struggle. Bertram Wolfe, Portrait of Mexico (New York: Covici-Friede Publishers, 1937). 48 Vazquez and Meyer, The United States and Mexico., op. cit., p. 144.

49 Keller points out that the Zapata painted for MoMA looks more preoccupied than the relaxed, "satisfied" Zapata of the original fresco. "Rivera's Prints: Notes on the Weyhe Lithographs, 1930-1932",op. cit. p. 22. This change, which is indeed noticeable and puuling, appears to contradict the premise that the Revolution is over; on the other hand, Zapata could be expressing the fear that revolutionaries might experience after a victory, namely that a future revolution may again be needed. Or does it suggest Rivera's unease with his new relation to American capital?

to their land, the emblem of the Revolution, and for some Arnerican viewers Zapata probably represented the pure south, blissful nature, primitive culture, and agrarianism. However, the Zapata fresco was reviewed, like the others, mostly for its aesthetic and technical quaiities for which the critics had nothing but praise?* Zapata was described in t e m s of ltalian influences, but now "primitivisrn" had substituted "cham", or it was described as 'Yhe most felicitous panel, both in its power of design and its beauty of cool tonality, greys, greens, and ~ h i t e s " The . ~ ~images themselves received no serious critical attention, but for one notable exception, notable because it came from a group conspicuously silent on this exhibition, the American Comrnunist Party. Joseph Freeman, alias Robert Evans, reproached Rivera for celebrating "above all, the agrarian revolution" and therefore, of "painting Zapata as the hero of the Mexican revolution while [at the same time] condemning Zapatism as a social solution". In 1929, Zapatisrn and the agrarian reform had been declared "bankrupt" by the Party which maintained

"There is a great strength and a full conviction in the figure of Zapata standing beside his white horse", Flint, Art News (December 26, 1931), op. cit., p. 7. "mhe tall panel of Zapata with his beautiful Uccelloan white horse, happily so placed". Virginia Nirdlinger, "Diego Rivera", Parnassus (January, 1932),p. 10. Jewell mistakes the dead man at Zapata's feet for a peon. "An lmpressive Exhibition", op. cit., p. 28. The lack of knowledge of the subject rnatter displayed by this critic seems fairly representative of other reviewers, calling into question the public's reading of these works by Rivera. 51 "Rivera - Greatest Mexican Painter". Literary Digest (January 23. l932),pp. 13-4; Margaret Breuning, "Modern Museum Shows Rivera Frescoesn,New York Evening Post (December 26, 1931). In generaf, the reviewers shied away frorn the works themselves, restricting their

comments to generalizaiions about Rivera's physical appearance, his European training, his Mexican murals, and his importance as the leading "frescoer". Almost al1 the reviews and announcements brandished the word "fresco" in their titles.

that only a revolution of peasants and workers could solve the agrarian problem. Freeman claimed that this contradiction would "confuse Rivera's conceptions on basic values, both as a painter and p o l i t i ~ i a n "It. ~is~of course arguable whether this painting of Rivera was giorifying a historical hero who had had some successes before he was assassinated in 1919, or prornoting Zapatism as a viable solution for the present problems. There is no doubt, however, that Zapata had been conveniently mythologized by the postrevoiutionary govemment as the hero who had led a successful agrarian r e f ~ r r nFreernan .~~ wouid appear to suggest that Rivera was contributing to the official game. If MoMA's modemist tradition guided the historical progression of Rivera's career in the exhibition, from the pre-European period to the present, with the purpose of legitimizing his inclusion in the modernist camp, Freeman's equally historical description of the artist's evolution reduces it to three stages to establish his present 'fraudulent' political

52 Robert Evans, "Paintings and Politics: The Case of Diego Rivera", New Masses (February 1932),pp. 23-4. At The Congress of Proletarian Culture held at Kharkov in 1930, the slogan was: "art is a weapon" to be used under "the carefut yet fine guidance of the Communist Party". Egbert, "Socialism and American Art", in Donald Drew Egbert and Stow Persons, eds., Socialism and American Life, op. cit., p. 688. In contrast, Trotsky maintained that "Artistic creation has its [own] iaws - even when it consciously serves a sociai movement." Quoted in ibid., p. 684.

53 For a study of the myths of the Revoiution see llene V. OIMalley, The Myth of the Revolution: Hero Cults and the lnstitutionaliration of the Mexican State, 1920-1940 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986).

behaviour: pre-revolutionary, revolutionary, and post-revolutionary, after he no longer belonged to the Party, and "began painting for the bourgeoisie".^ Liberation of the Peon, is a reproduction of a fresco from the Ministry of Education and the only one described, however briefly, in the exhibition c a t a l o g ~ eCompared .~~ in its aesthetic quality to Giotto, it was reported in the press in perfunctory terms, as depicting "tender pathos and dramatic intensity." For that critic, it was doubtful if "anything as poignant as the peon's drooping fom" had been painted before? In this movable fresco, that was reduced from the more vertical original, Rivera dismounted the soldier to the right, and placed hirn standing in front of his h ~ r s e . ~ ~ If the exigencies of both reduction and more horizontal composition required the soldier to be lowered and the background of a buming hacienda and the mountain range to be crammed into the top left of the fresco, there is, however, no such need for the other two major changes. The soldier is no longer clearly grieving, but simply looking at the scene, with a passive and cryptic expression on his face; as well, the rifle, to the bottom left, and the

54 E~ans.New Masses, op. cit., p. 22. Workers Age responded rather late to Freeman's attacks on Rivera's art. It accuses Freeman of himself being fraudulent in his description of the mural at the National Palace in Mexico City. If the paper admits to not agreeing with Rivera's "political line", it does, however, defend his art, and acclaim him as a great artist "producing revolutionary art which speaks directly to the masses and furthers the cause of Communisrn". "A Shameless Fraud", Workers Age (June 15, 1933). 55 "Revolutionary troops burning the hacienda and rescuing the lndian who has been bound and flogged. An adaptation of a fresco in the Ministry of Education, Mexico". Diego Rivera (1931),op. cit., p. 64.

56 Flint, Art News, op. cit., p. 7. 57 The original measures 4.38 x 3.48 m. It was reduced to 1.52 x 2.43 m; the reduction in height is twice that of the width, requiring adjustments in the composition.

sickle, to the right, were removed. According to some early publications in English about Rivera's work the original title of the actual fresco appears to have been Death of the Peon. If indeed this was the original title, it would be interesting to speculate as to why it would have been changed to Liberation of the Peon for the MoMA c o r n r n i ~ s i o nThe . ~ ~ images are not celebratory; the

peon has been tied, severely flogged and apparently lef?for dead. Painted in 1923, the original fresco in the SecretarÏat of Education (4.38 x 3.48 m) The DeatNLiberation of the Peon (fig. 30) was part of a group

of scenes depicting workers and peasants, fighting the injustices in the agricultural and industrial systems, like miners exploited by foreign owners, and peasants tilling a land they did not own. In its context, in the Court of Labour, opposite another scene entitled New School, it contrasted "tragic freedom at the moment of death when the peasant is finally released from his life of drudgery and exploitation" with "revolutionary freedom" through the educational programs provided by the post-revolutionary regime of the day.59

The background to Death/Liberation of the Peon, a desolate landscape, is . ~ ~ the used in both as a "metaphoric backdrop to human ~ u f f e r i n g "Like 58 Death of the Peon is the title used in Laurence E. Schmeckebiets Modern Mexican Art (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1939) and Ernestine Evans' The Frescoes of Diego Rivera (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co, 1929). The New American published a reproduction of this portable fresco with a caption that read "Entitled The Liberation of the Peon this fresco by the leading Mexican painter, Diego Rivera, is called, in Mexico, The Death of the Peon" (December 27, 1931). Pauf Rosenfeld refers to another Pitle, The Death of the Indian which he says has been changed to Liberation of the Peon for propagandistic reasons. Unfortunately he doesnttsuggest by who or where. Rosenfeld, New Republic, op. cit., p. 216. 59 Desmond Rochfort, The Murats of Diego Rivera (London: Journeyrnan, 1987), p. 25.

60 Olivier Debroise. 'A Cubist at the Crossroads: The Evolution of Diego Rivera, 1914-1935", in Valerie Fletcher, ed., Crosscurrents of Modernisrn: Four Latin American Pioneers (Washington: The Smithsonian Institution Press), 1992, p. 91.

others in the series, this fresco is steeped in Christian irnagery; the peon, who is being untied frorn a post and lifted by the revolutionary soldiers, is descending from the cross.61Only in death can he be liberated. Everything in this mural connotes violence, tragedy, desolation and suffering. The Mexican mural cf the brutal death of a peon lost its original significance when it was adapted, eight years later, to be exhibited in an American museum without its companion panel of revolutionary Iiberation through e d ~ c a t i o n . ~ ~ The third fresco, Sugar Cane (fig. 31),did not receive as rnuch attention as the other two, but in no way is it less intere~ting?~ On the contrary, it is remarkable because it undement, for the benefit of its new American audience, much more radical surgery than the others. The critic, Virginia Nirdlinger, notices that its left foreground has been strengthened, presumably from the original (4.38 x 3.48 m) (fig. 32).64Coming frorn one of the few reviewers who bothered to compare the MoMA frescoes with their original version, this apparently innocuous remark between brackets is not only an understatement, but appears reflective of the preeminent concern with form and composition generally found, at that time, among American art

61 Rochfort, The Murals of Diego Rivera, op. cit.. p. 28.

62 The aspect of exploitation of the peon, or Indian, is further weakened with Art Digest's shortened caption "The Liberation" placed under the illustration of that painting in an article reviewing the exhibition. "Ugly or Beautiful, New York Sees the Art of Diego Rivera", Art Digest (January 1, l932),p. 3. 63 In the catalogue it is described as "an adaptation of one of the scenes in the Cuernavaca frescoes. Presented to Mexico by the late Ambassador Morrow" (p. 64). In Portrait of Mexico, op. cit., n. p., Rivera calls the original fresco "Morelos Sugar Plantation: The Conquest is Converted into Permanent Feudal Exploitation." (plate 202). G4 Virginia Nirdlinger, "Diego Rivera. Museum of Modern Art", Parnassus. op. cit., p. 10.

critics. The eight bent-over, hard-working peons who gather, :ie and carry away heavy bundles of sugar canes in the original have been reduced, in the new fresco, to four, only one of whom can be fully seen, and none of whom has a face. Reduced in numbers and size, they have al1 been reiegated to the middle ground, along with the originally impressive and dominant figures of the arrogant and detemined Spanish foreman, and the white horse he mounts. The horse, no longer white or decorated, and the foreman, no longer proud and mean, have been shnink to the point of losing their fornidable presence. The ten naked lndians pulling a heavily loaded cart, like beasts of burden, have disappeared along with the workers in the refinery. The plantation owner in his hammock is no longer pointing at the men in a threatening way, but relaxing surrounded by his dogs. A guard and another foreman have been eliminated. The "greatly strengthened left foreground" to which the critic refers is made up in the new version of the back of a large fernale figure cutting fruit from above her, a young girl next to her, waiting for her basket to be filled. Now, in the right foreground, a young boy carries a

basket full of fruit. No wonder the New York Times gave it the title "Life in the Ha~ienda"!~~ With the reduction in size, nurnbers and intensity, and the addition of these large figures in a market-like scene, the exploitation of the peons has been made less central, more palatable for its new audience, more like an

65 Jewell, "Rivera Is Painting Museum Frescoesn. op. cit. p. 11.

exotic costombrista painting.66 It was interpreted as "dealing with the native occupations of the Mexican people", and appraised as the fresco that would have "the widest appeal on account of its great range of c0lor".6~The introduction of images of a woman and two children, who by their position and their comparative size overshadow the harsh realities of the colonial system, feminizes and primitivizes what, in the original fresco, was a vivid record of the brutal clash of the Conquest. As one critic describes it "the painful character of the theme [...] is offset by the charm in the f o r e g r ~ u n d " . ~ ~ Ironically, this fresco adaptation not only lost the power of the original by the shift in social emphasis, but also by a much weaker composition. It became, as another critic put it, "as free and colorful as a syrnphonic scene by Brahmsn.69 Uprising and Knight of the Tiger received little, or rnostly no attention. Knight of the Tiger (1-04 x 1.33 m), as far as can be ascertained, was mentioned only in four reviews, from which it appears that it had nol been . ~ ~smaller fresco completed yet at the time of the December ~ p e n i n gThis

66 For one critic it "buues with activity and reminds us of the agricultural phase of life." The Art Students Guitd Review, "Paintings of Rivera", Ridgewgod (NJ) Herald (January 22, 1932). 67 "Rivera Paintings To be Exhibited Privately Today", op. cit.; Murdock Pemberton, 'The Story of Diego Rivera - Young Americans - On Titles", New Yorker (January 2, 1932).

68 Breuning, "Modern Museum Shows Rivera Frescoes", op. cit. 69 Flint, "Rivera Frescoes Seen at Museum of Modern Art", op. cit., p. 7.

"A Master From Mexico -The Pioneers - Mythology and Freudn, New Yorker (December 26, 1931), pp. 8-10; New York Herald Tribune (December 22 and 27, 1931), op. cit., and New

York Times (December 22, 1931), op. cit. This is confirmed in Stanton L. Catlin "Mural Census", Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, op. cit., p. 331.

received a number of different titles creating confusion,71and was described as a terrifying picture, depicting "a Mexican lndian dressed in the skin of a jaguar or some such animal, head and all, killing a Spaniard in armor with a

Stone knife", and as "a tiger-like monster fighting the S p a n i a r d ~ "Knight . ~ ~ of

the Tiger, which appears to be a very close reproduction of part of the original mural, was suddenly worthy of attention by the press when it became the only fresco deemed safe by Rivera to travel to the Philadelphia showing of the retrospective, in February 1932.73 A photograph of Uprising (fig. 33), although it appeared in the press a

few times on its own, was mostly shown as a fresco in the process of being painted by Rivera. In most cases, no mention was made of either the title or

71 This smaller fresco received a number of titles, which created some confusion: Indian Warrior, Conquest, Knight of the Tiger, and others. Catlin, in his inventory of portable frescoes, mentions lndian Fighting (painted for MoMA, not exhibited, and of unknown location"), and The Knight of the Tiger (painted while in New York, and presently at the Smith College Museum of Art), Catlin, "Mural Census", Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, op. cit., p. 331-2. However, these two frescoes are one and the same. The two cataloguing cards in the Archives of the Smith College Museum, each displaying a different title, might have caused the confusion. Catlin's error is surprising though, considering he had analyzed the original mural, Aztec Ocelot Knight and Spaniard, in an earlier work "Political lconography of the Diego Rivera Frescoes at Cuernavaca, Mexico" in Henry A. Millon and Linda Nochlin, eds., Art and Architecture lii the Service of Politics (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1978), pp. 439-49.

72 "A Master From Mexicon, op. cit. (it is the only fresco mentioned in this review); Cortissoz, "The Art of José Maria Sert and Diego Rivera", op. cit. Other animais mentioned to describe this fresco were "ocelot" and "woIfn.

73 (MoMA to Henri Marceau, curator of the Pennsylvania Museum, January 16,1932. MoMA archives, File 97 [IO]). The so-called movable frescoes, were not only heavy, but were subject to damage. Clifford Wight, Rivera's assistant in New York, had to go to Philadelphia to "retouch" lndian Fighting. (Jere Abbott to Henri Marceau, January 30, 1932, MoMA archives, File 97 [1O]) Diego Rivera). The show does not appear to have travelled to other cities after Philadelphia.

the work itself. 74 The critics, who differ on the origin of this fresco, trace it back to a mural in the Secretariat of Education in the "Cortez Place (sic) in Cuernavaca", or see it as inspired by a number of previous Mexican murals. They disagree on its rural or urban nature, though the people portrayed are clearly donning the urban clothes of workers? This fresco (1.88 x 2.39 m), which differs greatly in style from the more clearly "Mexican", more folkloric ones, places its four protagonists in the foreground. In the centre, an angry female worker with short hair, dressed in a short bright red dress, and wearing high-heel shoes carries a baby in one a m and pushes away a threatening soldier, who brandishes a sword in front of her. Next to the woman a male worker who retracts his right arm threatened by the sword does not show the assertiveness and confidence of his female companion. Behind them are the heads of menacing soldiers pounding on workers who defend themselves. On the ground there are two workers who have

74 Now in a private collection in Mexico, the fresc-Oseems to still be very rarely mentioned or reproduced. A colour reproduction graces the cover of the Mexican magazine Curare, numero 9, otofio de 1996.

75 Laurance P. Hurlburt claims it is a reproduction from an Education Ministry f resco and describes it as "the necessary struggle against oppression". He does not include a reproduction of it in his book. The Mexican Muralists, in the United States (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989),p.123. The New York Herald Tribune interprets it a s "republican soldiers in a clash with peasants", "Rivera Paintings", op. cit. The Ridgewood (N.J.) Heralddescribes it as "soldiers dealing with the mob", Art Students Guild Review, "Paintings of Rivera", op. cit. The New York Evening Post calls it a "general and familiar scene of Mexican revolution", Breiining, "Modern Museumn, op. cit. The New York Times suggests it is "a strike scene", "Rivera Is Paintingn, New York Times (December 15, 1931), but later, in another review, it suggests that it illustrates "a Mexican revolution scene", Jewell, "An Impressive Exhibition", op. cit.

succumbed to the soldiers' b l o ~ sCuriously, .~~ the only character whose eyes are clearly shown is the woman. With the force she exudes and her central position in the fresco, she steels the show, and offers a glaring contraçt to the fruit-picking woman in Sugar Cane? Why would Rivera paint such a provocative work, and why was it not reviewed? In his long article, Joseph Freeman fails to mention this ~ o r k . ~ * According to the artist, Uprising represents a strike scene, "not a specifically Mexican one, but a general scene" meant to 'Yom a transition" between the Mexican series of frescoes and "two paintings with New York subjects".79 If this was the artist's intent, the meaning of this fresco-as

a

more universa! theme depicting the struggles of workers in the modem capitalist world-and

its role in the exhibition -as a work of transition between

the Mexican and New York series-were

not conveyed clearly, in part

because not al1 the murals were ready when the show opened. If we examine

76 No longer is the soldier part of the trilogy, or of the building of post-revolutionary Mexico depicted by Rivera in his frescoes as part of the people's struggle. He has now joined the ranks of the oppressor on the other side of that struggle.

The New York Herald Tribune reports that the Weyhe Gallery bought ail the frescoes inchding Rebellion (another title for Uprising, also called Soldiers and Workers), "8 Large Rivera Paintings Purchased By E. Weyhen, New York Herald Tribune (February 17, 1932). This fresco, aiong with the New York series, was in the possession of the Weyhe family at ieast until a Sotheby auction of Mexican art in 1977, at which time it was estimated to be worth aimost twice the vaiue of the most reviewed panel of that series, Frozen Assets. Modern Mexican Paintings, Dra wings, Sculpture & Prinfs, Sotheby Parke Bernet, Inc., 1977, p. 21.

78 Actually, he fails to mention any of the frescoes, and instead, oniy makes hiç comments on the Zapata symbol. There is little doubt that he would have seen, or heard of these works, as his article appeared at least a month after the second opening, which included al1 the frescoes. Evans, "Paintings and Politics", op. cit., pp. 22-5. 79 "Rivera is Painting", op. cit.

the post-revolutionary situation that Rivera had left in Mexico, Uprising rnay weli allude to the anti-strike attitude of the so-called labour govemment, especially when the companies involved were American.*O But, this fresco of urban strife, even if it depicts Mexico, would have appeared rnuch more threatening in the United States of the thirties than Frozen Assets, one of the three New York frescoes added for the second opening in January. Though Frozen Assets (fig. 34) presents a gloorny portrait of New York and is bluntly critical of the inhuman aspects of capitalism, especially after the Crash, Uprising, as its title indicates, must have been viewed as inciting rebellion, as a piece of obvious communist propaganda where only the hammer and sickle were missing. The red dress, the red flags, the fists, the anger, and the brutality of the law enforcers wouid have displeased, if not scared a few, especially if this contemporary Mexican scene could be interpreted as an American one. Another fear could have been generated by the powerful image of the rebellious fernale worker, protesting her exploitation as a woman, wife, mother, and worker. As Rivera pointed out, this fresco does indeed lead into the New York series that depict oppressed or unemployed workers. Unfortunately, the scanty and contradictory reports in the press make it difficult to assess the critics' reception of Uprising.*' What seems clear, though, is that, in spite of Rivera's atternpt, however feeble, to

80 Wolfe, Portrait of Mexico, op. cit., pp. 186 and 200. 81 Though Wcrkers Age was sympathetic to Rivera's work, the paper does not analyze, or

even speak specifically about any of the works in the show; however, it mentions Rivera's promise \'O give the sketch he made for Uprisingto the New Workers School in New York. Workers Age (June 15, 1933). This sketch is not included in the catalogue's list of works shown in the exhibition.

create some kind of a story for this exhibition, unlike the narratives woven in Rivera's murals in Mexico, here, at MoMA, the narrative was broken, as the last three frescoes were not completed and hung until January. But even if they had al1 been ready for the opening, they would still have been divested of their original raison d'être by having become the mere reproduction of specimens in an exhibition setting. In fact, there is evidence that the museum original request was for three frescoes only, since what was really important was not so much to tell the story behind the frescoes, but mainly to show examples of the technique of fresco painting.82 The made-to-order movable frescoes were reduced from architectural

murals to large easel paintings, from public art to museum art, from what was meant as a continuous historical narrative to a fragmentary, individual, decontextualized work of art. "Detached from their conditions of production and use" they were "seen as autonomous and groupable objects" with easel p a i n t i n g ~What . ~ ~ they became were colourful and exotic decorations, appealing to an American public in search of a different art filled with brightness and exotic primitiveness and naturalness, and "with the frankly tribal quality that cornes from the painter's quintessential M e ~ i c a n i s r n " . ~ ~ These fragments of frescoes have in fact replaced the original murals: in more recent art and educational publications the MoMA frescoes are more

B2 (Frances Paine to Abby Rockefeller's secretary, AAR, Box 7, folder 97, Rockefeller Family Archives). 83 Néstor Garcia Canclini. "Memory and Innovation in the Theory of Art", South Atlantic Quarterly, volume 92, no. 3 (Summer 1993), p. 438.

a4 "Diego Rivera", Art News (January 16, 1932).

often reproduced than the originals, and worse, they are shown sometimes

as representing the original^.^^ The catalogue of the MoMA retrospective, so much praised by the reviewers, confirms the apparent intent behind the showing of these frescoes, which was to strip them from their local context, in order to incorporate thern into the rnodemist canon and universalize thern. In the catalogue Frances Paine made it quite clear that "Diego's very spinal column is painting, not politics", and mereiy noted that the rnovable frescoes "illustrate the technique and tonality" he used in Cuemava~a.~6 The movable frescoes did not, as some reviewers agreed, ana could not replace the Mexican rnurals. They could not function in the way the painters of the Mexican Renaissance had originally intended for their murals, but instead they were reduced to fragments of rnurals, rneant to be shown as "samples" of an old European technique, rediscovered by an "American" artist. At earlier stages of history, the uprooting of European religious paintings from their original and specific places in churches onto Museum walls had obliterated their meanings and roles within their particular context of production. The organizers of the MoMA exhibit, unable to remove Rivera's frescoes from their public buildings to show them in their own galleries, did, however, the next best thing they could think of: they had thern reproduced

85 One of the major books on Rivera's work reproduces the MoMA fresco Liberation of the Peon correctly identified as such (figure 158),but in its Mural Census, where it describes the original mural at the Ministry of Education, it refers the reader to that same figure 158. Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, op. cit., p. 78.

86 Paine adds that Rivera's art "speaks [...] a simple language that al1 can understand", a universalizing wish shared by Fortune. Diego Rivera (1931), op. cit., pp. 34 and 35.

271 by the painter hirnself, thousands of miles away from Mexico, and in the format of large easel paintings destined to hang on museum ~ a l l s . ~ ~

Culture at the Service of Civilization: Pan Arnericanism

The integration of the Other was sought through the process of economic and cultural Pan Arnericanisrn. Econornic Pan Americanism surfaced in the 1880s as a solution to eradicate potential European interference in the American program of assimilation of the indigenous populations, and in the process of the modemization, or Americanization, of Latin America!8

If "the 1930s saw the apotheosis of this idea", back in 1928,

"Pan Americanism was at ebb tide"; at the disastrous meeting of the Pan American Union held in Cuba, Latin American delegates criticized American . ~1929, ~ right after that conference, interventionism and its economic p o l i ~ yln the need for a change in American attitude received the immediate attention of the new White House a d m i n i s t r a t i ~ n In . ~ Mexico, ~ Dwight Morrow, the American ambassador, had already started darnage control by trying to ward off anti-Yankee feelings in the country, but at the same time ensuring that American interests, especially for the oil companies, remained hugely

87 MoMA bought Agrarian Leader Zapata in 1940. Sugar Cane and Liberation of the Peon were acquired by the Museum of Phiiadelphia. indian FightingKnight of the Tiger is owned by the Smith College Museum of Art. Uprising is privately owned in Mexico. 88 Pike, The United States and Latin America, op. cl., p. 172. 89 Whitaker, The Western Hemisphere Idea. op. cit., pp. 131 and 109. Ibid.

profitable. Of the four issues which confronted Morrow when he took over as ambassador-the question-it

debt, the agrarian reforrn, the religious problem, and the oil

was the oi! one which he started to settle under the pressure of

the powerful oil companies. Production had decreased steadily, especially since 1922; in 1927, it was down to a mere third of the 1922 output. In 1928, Morrow finally extracted from the Calles government an agreement which amended the 1925 oil law the American's found so obje~tionable.~' Morrow became Rivera's first infiuential American patron. In 1929, as mentioned earlier, he commissioned the artist to paint frescoes at the Palace of Cortés in Cuernavaca as "a token of friendship between the two c o ~ n t r i e s "This . ~ ~ important commission came after the unsuccessful Pan American meeting of 1928, a few days after Rivera's expulsion from the communist party, and while diplornatic relations between Mexico and the Soviet Union were in the process of breaking d ~ w nThis . ~ ~ gesture was a genial move to create "a genuhe tie between the intellectuals of the two countries", who felt greatly relieved at this official sign of change in attitude

91 Though this agreement effectively gave American oil companies the property rights they had wanted, they continued, to no avail, to pressure their governrnent for iron clad guarantees. Among these powerful companies, Standard Oil and its Mexican subsidiaries were owned by the Rockefeller family. For more on the oil crisis between the two countries, see Lorenzo Meyer, Mexico and the United States in the Oil Controversy, 1 917-1942, trans. Muriel Vasconcelos (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977).

92 Hurlburt, "Diego Rivera (1886-1957)",op. cit., p. 71. 93 Rivera had also declared his sympathy for Trotsky's position. Relations between the two countries finally broke on January 20, 1930.

towards Mexico.g4Three of the five Mexican fresco fragments shown at the

MOMA,as well as 19 drawings in charcoal for the frescoes, were reproductions from these freshly executed Cuernavaca murals, a choice which helped publicize Morrow's achievements in improving relations.95 In other words, three of the MoMA commissions were reproductions of works which had thernselves been commissioned by an American official as an earlier overture. Morrow, his govemrnent, and that of Mexico, clearly saw the importance of the culturai application of Pan Americanisrng6The arnbassador collaborated with the Mexican authorities on the exhibition of Mexican Art which toured the United States in 1930-1931, and in which Rivera was both a rnember of the advisory cornmittee and one of the featured painters and book illustrators. On both sides of the border, individual and official initiatives in the promotion of cultural Pan Americanism paralleled the evolution of its econornic corollary through archaeological joint ventures, PanAmerican exhibitions, publications, conferences and lectures, ail reflecting the

94 McBride, '7he Palette Knife", op. cit., p. 93. Dwight Morrow, an ex-associate of J.P. Morgan, the millionaire banker, was appointed in 1927 to help solve the Mexican debt problem. Though he did not achieve that goal, he helped to resolve the cristero crisis and the American oil interests "problem". His responsibilities also included dealing with issues such as agrarian reform and landownership by United States citizens.

95 The three frescoes were: Agrarian Leader Zapata, Sugar Cane and Knight of the Tiger. The publicity surrounding the Cuernavaca frescoes as a gift from the American ambassador shows how strategic a gesture it proved to be; originally, unsure of his gamble, Morrow had asked that the donor be kept a secret. (Morrow to Rivera, Mexico, December 5, 1929, Dwight Morrow Papers, Box 4, folder 60). 96 So did the Pan American Union which claimed that "this exhibition [was] one more evidence of the increasing interest of the United States in Mexico and Mexican culture." Pan American Union Bulletin, (January 1932).

desire in understanding each other and "harmonizing opposites". American intellectuals, who were critical of materialistic values in their society dunng the depression, did not propose alternatives. Neither the right nor the left intelligentsia based their analysis of the problems they criticized on the notions of "capitalism versus so~ialism'~, but rather on that of "culture versus civilization". Civilization, which stood for capitalist individualism and urban industrialization, was rejected in favour of culture, which stood for collectivism and agrarianism. For American intellectuals, "both agrarianism and socialism often seemed more compelling as myths than as political alterna?ive." They felt that the social and economic problems were such that they would require more than ideological analysis, and they chose to offer symbolic criticiçm rather than political theory. Besides, living in a society which had never been anything else than capitalist, they did not have a tradition of ideological contention between systems. In cultural matters, they tended to judge art "solely on the basis of whether or not it adopted the "correct" position on contemporary issues", rather than to analyze art works within their historical and economic c o n t e ~ t . ~ ~ For a large number of these intellectuals and artists, to whom ideological means appeared inadequate, the solution was to go South to escape from the society of which they disapproved. They looked for a culture to cal1 their own, and for smaller communities or rural areas with which to identify. The lndian people, with their pristine and unspoiled ancient cultures

97 Richard H. Pells, Radical visions and American Dreams: Culture and Social Thought in the Depression Years (New York: Harper & Row, 1973),chapter III; ibid. p. 105; ibid. p. 174. According to Pells, this also applied to Cornrnunist critics such as Joseph Freeman.

and their communal ways, became the tradition, the past roots that America needed to anchor its national identity. As Aldous Huxley notes, for sorne New York writers lndian Mexico was "a place where wishes are fulfilled, and the intolerable evils of the civilized world are c ~ r r e c t e d "The . ~ ~ lndian past was common, so they thought, to both Americas, although the older the civilization the more valuable. After all, Hegel's Philosophy of Histow made it clear that the Americas were a young continent and, if it could be proven that the indigenous past civilizations of Mexico were as developed as that of the Greeks, and had produced artistic treasures as worthy as the Hellenic ones, than the so-called New World could gain its legitirnate place in universal history, and equal or surpass that of Europe.99 This is why the archaeological project was so important for both countries.100 American archaeologists offered Mexico their help in discoverhg the pre-Columbian heritage of the Americas with the unearthing of great Mayan and Aztec monuments and art objects. If for the United

98 Aldous, Huxley, "Mexico: The Industrial and the Primitive" in The Spectator, 152 (April 13, 1934), p. 569. 99 Hegel's influence on José Vasconcelos becomes apparent when the former's Philosophy of History is compared to the latter's La raza cosmica. In an effort to counter Hegel's Eurocentric characterizaiion and exclusion of South America from universai history, Vasconcelos paradoxically uses Hegelian argumentation, as well as three "states" in the evolution of history that closely mimic Hegel's three "phases". I developed this point in my Discurso hegeliano en México: la misibn cbsmica de Vasconcelos, unpublished paper, 1994.

60th Rivera and Morrow were aware of this. Morrow considered the work done by American archaeologists "to be one of the small crevices through which perhaps a person of good will may enter." (Dwight Morrow to Robert W. de Forest [President of the Metropolitan Museum], Enroute (sic) Mexico City, October 20th, 1927, Dwight Morrow Papers, Box 1, folder 167). Rivera claimed that the popularity of Mexican art in the United States was primarily due to the fact that both Americans and Mexicans were returning to "the same sources: archaeology." El Universal (9 de febrero de 1932).

States, the archaeological program in Mexico helped anchor American identity in an ancient civilization on their continent equal to any claimed by the Europeans, for Mexico it served the dual purpose of creating an originary myth of national and cultural identity at home and of putting Mexico on the tourist map, in a Eurocentric world that revered the antiquities more than the contemporary culture of "exoticT'colonies.101As the Mexican indigenista, Gonzalo Aguirre Behan, suggests "archaeology in Our country has, as its predominant practical function, that of supplying the Mexican with an identity, If archaeology provided the that is with a root in the most remote pa~t".~02 roots, indigenismo, a cornpanion project, was used for nation building by melting the lndian ingredient into the resultan-tmestizo, and therefore integrating him completely.This integration was actively pursued by a number of academics and govemment officials, like Vasconcelos, Manuel Gamio, Moisés Saenz, and others, in far reaching educational and cultural policies. These men also gave lectures to Americans in Mexico and in the United States explaining what they referred to as "the lndian problem" and the "integration of the ~ n d i a n " .In ' ~his ~ book, Forjando patria, Gamio declares that "unfortunately the lndian does not understand, does not know, the

An American critic, Gregory Mason, illustrates this attitude in the context of the United States. He wants more American protection of discoveries against "storms, forest fires, and the depredation of half-savage men and half-wild cattle" because he thinks answers could be found to the actual origin of man in the archaeological sites of Mexico. "The Riddles of Our Own Egypt" in Centuty 107 (November, 1923),p. 57.

O2 Alan Knight, "Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940 in Thomas Skidmore, Aline Helg and Alan Knight, eds., The ldea of Race in Latin America, 1870-7940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1 990),p. 81 . These are titles of lectures given by Vasconcelos and Gamio. Aspects of Mexican Civilization (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1926).

appropriate means to achieve his l i b e r a t i ~ n "According .~~~ to him, friendly ethnographers, intellectuals and anthropologists were to "work for your redemption [...) and forge [...] an lndian S O U I " As .~~ the ~ Mexican sociologist, Roger Bartra points out, the indigenous ideology "after contributing to the social disappearance of the indigenous resuscitates him at the level of cultural reality".'o6 Rivera's work, which glorified lndian culture, helped visually to reinforce the national myth of Mexican national identity. And "national identity", the Mexican sociologist Roger Bartra explains, exists in ternis of the relationship between culture and power, and "is a spectacular performance that legitimizes the Mexican state a p p a r a t ~ s " . 'It~was ~ Rivera's idealist

indigenista vision, his collecting and depiction of lndian folk and primitive arts that American academics and art promoters, in Mexico and in the United States admired:108 those in Mexico, through their acquaintance with the very sociable artist, and those in the States, through the writings and pictures

As quoted in Alan Knight, 'Racisrn, Revolution, and Indigenisrno", op. cit., p. 77. Ibid. Roger Bartra, "El problema indigena y la ideologia indigenista." Revista mexicana de sociologla, 36/3,(1974), p. 480, (my translation). Roger Bartra. "Culture and Political Power in Mexico", Latin American Perspectives, 16 (Spring 1989), p. 62. In the beginning, the Revolution had to create a national identity. For this purpose it promoted a set of interdependent myths such as Revolution = State = People, the promotion of national heroes, the notion of mestizaje, indigenismo, and agrarianism. It is important to recognize the legitimate need that Mexico, like other postcoIonia1 states, had to resort to the inevitable nationalism built on a return to the native sources, the land and the original inhabitant - in this case the Indian - in order to build that new identity. O8 Hans Haufe considers that "Archaeology is an important source of [Rivera's] indigenismo" (my translation). "Rivera, la historia y los mitosnin Goya, VI no. 207 (noviembre-diciembre, 1988), p. 152. See Catlin, "Political lconography in the Diego Rivera Frescoes at Cuernavaca, Mexico", op. cit., pp. 194-215.

published by American expatriates and visitors to Mexico.1ogHow would the American public react to Rivera's vision of their country?

The New York Series

Of the three frescoes in the New York triptych the rnost contentious was the central panel, Frozen Assetsfl0 After the genteel American life of industrial and rural harmony, portrayed in his recently painted mural at the San Francisco Stock Exchange, these new scenes of a less than perfect urban America would not have been expected. Balmy California, a mild blend of cultural and populist traditions and capitalist modemization, had not prepared Rivera for the inhurnanity and degradation of the New York of 1931, the ugly side of a capitalist metropolis in the depth of a depression. Frozen Assets (2.39 x 1.88 m)l1' is a multi-layered cross-section view of New York,

O9 Among them: the archaeologist, Anita Brenner, author of ldols Behind Altars (1929). Frances Toor, editor of Mexican Folkways, Carlton Beals, Frank Tannenbaum, René d'Harnoncourt, Stuart Chase, Hubert Herring, his long time friend Bertram Wolfe, and others who wrote about Mexico (see Chapter Three here), William Spratling, who introduced Rivera to Morrow, and Car1 Zigrosser, who bought works by Rivera in New York, in the late twenties, before meeting him again in Mexico. There is evidence of only two New York works having been commissioned by MoMA. It is not clear why the third one was painted and included in the exhibition, and what themes, if any, were suggested by the sponsors, but it appears that Rivera did not follow his own declared intentions. The New York Herald Tribune (December 22, 1931) announced frescoes which were to "deal with American building construction and American sport, two of the outstanding factors of American life as seen by the artist visitor", "Rivera Paintingsn,op. cit. On the other hand, he is reported in a Mexican paper as saying that he was going to paint an "allegory of the rhythm of American industry". Excelsior (5 de noviembre de 1931), p. 1. Some reviewers called it New York, 1931. According to Rivera, a journalist referred to it as Froren Assets and that name was adopted by his agent, Frances Paine. Rivera, My Art, My Life, op. cit., p. 181.

showing sinister looking skyscrapers, cranes used in the excavation of foundations for more buildings (the Rockefeller Center?), a long subway tunnel filled with people, an enonnous cell-like space where the sleeping bodies of hundreds of unemployed workers -the reserve army of labour-are being warehoused, and below, a bank vault with a rich wornan looking at the contents of her safe.'

l2

This central panel is flanked by two scenes depicting industrial workers: Electric Welding (fig. 35) at a General Electrîc plant, and Pneumatic Drillingfor the new Rockefeller Center, in which Rivera would later paint his controversial muraL1l3 The triptych, especially Frozen Assets, critical of the depressed conditions in New York at the time, was not as well received as the Mexican frescoes, as these American scenes rnight have touched a sensitive chord with American critics. Henry McBride considered it "unofficial and second-hand", the product of the preconceived ideas a communist would have of America. As a foreigner, Rivera couldn't possibly interpret the Arnerican situation.m4 Harrison Kerr deplored Rivera's sermonizing in what he described as a "three-decker agony", and criticized the artist's "righteous wrath and pitying indignation" expressed in that f r e ~ c o . ~ ~ ~

l2 Alicia Azuela suggests that these men are corpses, but there is no such evidence. Alicia Azuela, "Rivera and the Concept of Proletarian Art" in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, op. cit., p. 126.

Pneumatic Drilling is also known as Drillers.

l4 McBride suggests that Rivera might have corne to New York, "but his muse rernained at home". McBride, "The Palette Knife", op. cit., p. 95.

'5 Kerr, "Matisse and Rivera", op. cit., p. 18.

The New York series was not ready for the opening in December, and was therefore, acknowledged only as a possibility in the catalogue.116 However, the new opening, in January, to introduce the series, rekindled the initial excitement for the exhibition. and ensured further publicity. Next to the daily newspapers and art magazines which had already covered the show, and were now reviewing these new works, the New York frescoes also attracted the attention of other types of magazines, among which three are particularly worth noting: The N.E.L.A. Bulletin, Power Plant Engineering and Fortune.

The N.E.L.A. Bulletin, a magazine for the National Electric Light Association reproduced Rivera's fresco Electric Welding, on the cover of its February 1932 issue with the caption: "Electric Power, a modemistic impression by Diego Rivera7'."7 That apparentiy innocuous gesture profoundly offended the editors of another magazine, Power Plant Engineering, published in Chicago. in its March issue, in an article entitled "Pseudo Art and Engineering", they strongly object to this "crude and uncouth [...] example of so called modemistic art". The objection is against what the

author ternis the "grotesque" and "exaggerated representation" of his own industry, particularly, of the "fine men" who work in it, rather than against a "foreign" artist portraying American industry; at the same time, the writer condemns another example of what he refers to as "a degenerate type", a

Diego Rivera (1931), p. 64.

l7 N.E.L.A. Bulletin (February 1932). No article accompanied the reproduction on the cover. Electric Welding is also known as Power.

painting at The Art lnstitute of Chicago depicting a lineman. He claims to be in favor of "modemistic rnovements provided they are in good taste and [that] . ~ ~ a~ strong reaction in they do not offend our inherent sense of b e a ~ t y "Such a magazine for engineers, is a striking example of the growing concem by a new technological elite for the way it is represented in the arts. This concem was also present in the world of big business, which profited from the technology, and needed to improve its image severe!y tarnished by ths abysmal economic situation, and by the critical attacks from its intellectuals. MoMA1srole as a "reflexive agency" of the normalization of modernity in American artistic and business cultures in the 1930s is paralleled by that of Fortune magazine; both institutions were either started or conceived in

1929.'

Fortune, actually influenced by MoMA, projected for its "gentlemen"

business class representations of themselves, offering its authoritative

e which made use of high quality opinion on business and taste. ~ h magazine, art reproductions, used Rivera's works more than once, including on its front covers. In January 1931, Fortune reproduced illustrations of the Cuernavaca fres~oes.~20 In the March 1932 issue on the Soviet Union, it produced a piece by Rivera on its front cover, depicting the May Day parade in MOSCOW, owned

by Abby Rockefeller, and shown in the exhibition. Once again on the front cover of the February 1932 issue of Fortune, Rivera's work, Frozen Assets,

* "Pseudo Art and Engineering", Power Plant Engineering (Chicago, III. March 1st. 1932). See Chapter Five in Terry Smith. Making the Modern: lndustry, Art, and Design in America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993). It is not clear whether the Rivera exhibition was already planned or whether this issue of Fortune might have contributed to the decision to have a Rivera retrospective.

was beautifully reproduced in colour for the first time. The caption, 'The Industrial civilization of New York seen in the cross section of a Rivera fresco", is clarified in the accornpanying short article. Rivera, who Fortune considered the contemporary leader of fresco painting, and "perhaps the first great painter of the modem American continent", is divested of his communist ideology, to which he is said to have preferred his art. He has, however kept his "fundamental human loyalty" which penneates his ~ o r k . ' ~ '

Fortune describes this fresco as 'hot symbolic" but "legible" to all, whether Mexican lndians or New York industrialists, and gives Rivera authority as a critic of the present inhuman aspects of the North American industrial system, thus playing its self-assigned role as an "authoritative" and critical magazine representing "the dignity and the beauty, the smartness and the excitement of modem industry" as practised, not by "money-grabbers", but by ethical and "responsible ~ i t i z e n s " . ~ ~ ~ In a few short lines, and with a large classy reproduction of the fresco,

Fortune manages to consecrate Rivera, strip him of his unwanted politics, endow him with a humanistic outlook, and appropriate the work and the artist for its own critical purposes. That this was an effective strategy to preempt the possible use of Frozen Assets by the left is obvious; what is less clear, is whether the left would have made use of this work had it been given the

121 Fortune. vol. V, no. 2 (February 1932), p. 40-41 122 lbid; Smith. Making the Modern, op. cit. p. 162-3.

chance. 23 The American Communist Party, upset at Rivera's desertion from the Communist Party of Mexico, and his new loyalty to Trotsky, was very critical of Rivera's dependency on patronage from big business, and may have decided to ignore this and the other f r e s c o e ~The . ~ ~ostensible ~ reproduction of Frozen Assets in its magazine was a strategic move by Fortune, a timely illustration of the general message it was trying to convey to the American corporate world of the Depression era.

The Court Painter: From State Patronage to Corporate Patronage

In the United States, 1931 and the years immediately preceding it, represent to some extent, a historical rupture, but within the continuous general pattern of the previous decade. The new industrial and mechanical age with the expanded use of electricity and the automobile, and the growth of large urban areas, was now facing the beginning of the Great Depression following the crash of the stock market at the end of 1929.125The crash exacerbated feelings of lack of collectivity and fear of control by the machine 123 While I use "left" here for lack of a better word, I am well aware that it refers to a number of possible groups. These were by no means united in their opinion of Rivera, as can be seen in the debate between New Masses (February, 1932) and Worker's Age (June 15, 1933). The issue of the reception of Rivera's art by the left certainly calls for further research. 124 See Evans "Painting and Politics", op. cit., pp. 22-5,and "Diego Rivera and the John Reed Club" in the New Masses (February 1932),op. cit., p. 31.

l 2 5 Lawrence W. Levine sees the "Great Depressionnas "a complex world of conflicting urges: a world that looked to the past even as it began to assume the contours of the future; a world in which a crisis in values accompanied the crisis in the economy; a world of special interest to historians because the normal process of cumulative and barely perceptible change was expedited and made more visible by the presence of prolonged crisis." "American Culture and the Great Depression" in The Yale Review, 74 (Winter 1985), p. 223.

already prevalent in the 1920s among intellectuals of both the left and the right.126 Unemployment went from 4 million in 1930 to 7 million in 1931 as 1931, New York saw an industrial production plunged d r a r n a t i ~ a l l y . ln '~~

average of 31 breadlines every

da^.'^^ Due to this high level of

unernployrnent, close to 200,000 Mexican workers were repatriated to Mexico causing a worsening of relations between the two c ~ u n t r i e s . ~ ~ ~ In light of the disastrous state of the economy, big business needed to boost its image and restore the capitalist myth that "free enterprise made America great and had produced the highest standard of living".130 Philanthropy and patronage of health, educational and cultural endeavour were used very effectively to counter the public negative feelings towards big business.131The likes of Ford, Rockefeller, Guggenheim and Carnegie redistributed some of their huge fortunes through the largesse of their

126 Pells, Radical Visions, op. cit., p. 98. 127 "ln 1932 it dropped 50 per cent from the 1929 level". Paul Goodman and Frank Otto Gattell, America in the Twenties: The Beginnings of Conternporary Arnerica (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1972), p. 200. 28 Ibid., p. 202.

129 Ibid., p. 200. Manuel Gamio, the anthropologist and student of Franz Boas, who received funds from the Social Science Research Council to study Mexican immigration patterns, attempted to change American perception of that contentious situation. In a letter to Ambassador Dwight Morrow he concludes, in a preliminary report, that the type of immigration-permanent rather than seasonal-which has caused "racial, economic and cultural conflicts" has not increased, but in fact decreased since 1920. He suspects the conflicts to have been caused by Iimited nurnbers of illegal immigrants. (Gamio to Morrow, Mexico, May 21, 1929, Dwight Morrow Papers, Box 2, folder 63).

Goodman and Gattell, op. cited, p. 187. 31 For an analysis of American patronage, see Edward H. Berman. The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy: The Ideology of Philanthropy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983).

foundations; for example, the Guggenheim grants to intellectuals to do research in Mexico, the Carnegie-sponsoredexhibitions of Mexican art, and the Ford's and Rockefeller's patronage of Mexican artists. Their cultural patronage, which was directly linked to their economic interests in Mexico and the political necessity to encourage understanding between the two peoples

very conveniently fed the emerging need of American intellectuals and artists to go back to continental sources for identification.132 Viewed from Latin Arnerica, patronage in the United States helped mitigate the image of the al1 powerful neighbour by humanizing the negative label of American materialism. As one Latin American intellectual asks, "what country in the world is less utilitarian than the United States, where private philanthropy [...] has expressed itseif in wayç never before seen or dreamed of-in

marvellous hospitals [...] in libraries, universities and educational

establishments [...] which are the enshrinement of the highest and most disinterested forms of human i d e a l i ~ m ? " ~ ~ ~ American philanthropists were immensely valuable to Mexican artists, particularly Rivera, who received such extensive patronage in the United States that he could be compared, as his fellow muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros suggested, to a court painter for the American financial elite, albeit

32 "Much of America's international philanthropy remained in private hands, but was closely tied to government objectives, to decrease agricultural surplus, to check Bolshevism, to cement econornic and political ties, and to encourage international reform on an American model." Emily Rosenberg S., Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890-1945(New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), p. 120. 133 As quoted in Reid, "The Rise and the Decline of the Ariel-Caliban Anrithesis in Spanish America", op. cit., p. 353.

a controversial court painter. As Max Kozloff, the art cntic, correctly points out, Rivera had a proven record in political patronage. His previous repute as a celebrant of a national revolution, in the pay of a client govemrnent that identified with that revolution, might have appealed to those families eager to propagandize their own innovating roles in technoloyy-and beyond that, their rising political ~ 0 w e r . I ~ ~ It would appear, though, that Frozen Assets, like Uprising was not

patron-driven, but, on the contrary, was meant to thwart the efforts of the business etite at restoring its pre-depression image. Yet, soon after the MoMA exhibit, Rivera painted public murals in New York and Detroit for Rockefeller and Ford. Kozloff suggests that this is not surprising considering the mutualiy convenient relationship between Rivera and his American patrons, in which "both parties [...] knew quite well that they had opposing ideologies, if less surely that they were enmeshed in contradiction^".^^^ The criticism expressed in Froren Assets, was offset by the tribute to technological advances, and to the new industrial worker, particularly in the side panels of the triptych, a tribute which Rockefeller and Ford wanted Rivera to paint on the walls of their new industrialist r n e ~ c a s . But ' ~ ~then where does Uprising fit? It does not glorify industry and technology. Industrial patrons must have considered it an aberration that was better left ignored

134 Max Kozloff, "The Rivera Frescoes of Modern Industry at the Detroit lnstitute of Arts: Proletarian Art Under Capitalist Patronage." Millon and Nochlin, eds., Art and Architecture in the Sentice of Politics, op. cit. , p. 222.

35 Ibid. 136 Dwight Morrow was on the board of General Electric whose plant Rivera visited prior to painting Electric Welding. Hurlburt, The Mexican Muralists in the United States, op. cit., p. 124, and Rochfort, The Murals of Diego Rivera, op. cit., p. 67.

than publiciy criticized. Maybe Uprising was an atternpt by Rivera to dispel recent communist attacks on his work and politics. If this was his intent, there is, however, no immediately apparent evidence of a reaction to it from Commun ist critics. With the crash, Americans suffered more than the disintegration of an econornic system which had offered great promises of progress; they also witnessed the shattering of their aspirations for a better civilization. The concept of civilization as opposed to barbarisrn, or primitivism, had been radically shaken by the savagery of World War one in the Europe the Americans so much admired, and, now, at home, the cruel effects of the Depression and the alienation brought on by modernization further eroded the myth of progress. Frozen Assets might have 'shocked' the Rockefellers, but it expressed very perceptively the feelings of disaffection of the American public, and their distrust of businessmen and financiers who "had built empires at the expense of thousands of workers and [...] had precipitated the economic crisis through bad management and the misuse of capital and public fundsn.137 However, in spite of the large number of visitors to the exhibit, it can be safely assumed that not many from among that disaffected public saw Frozen Assets at MoMA or its reproduction and reviews in the press: its critical impact on the American public in general was no doubt

37 New Leader (AmericanAppeal), (Saturday, January 16, 1932); Alicia Azuela, "Rivera and the Concept of Proletarian Ad', op. cit., p. 126.

A h , as suggested earlier, Rivera's apparent condemnation of the capitalist system was reduced to a waming to those in the corporate world who did not show enough social concern. Rivera's friendly relationship with American residents in Mexico certainly helped publicize his art in the United States, which in tum brought him to the attention of the philanthropists. In San Francisco, the sculptor Ralph Stackpole found him patrons in that city, where a large retrospective was held in 1930, and where he painted two rnurals at the San Francisco Stock Exchange and the Califomia School of Fine Arts.139 Also in San Francisco, that same year, Dr. William R. Valentiner, the influential director of the Detroit Art Institute, who happened to be visiting and met Rivera there, introduced him to Edsel Ford. If Stackpole was instrumental in providing Rivera with local patrons and extensive Califomia exposure, Valentiner's direct and indirect part in introducing the artist to his New York patrons may have been far more reaching than generally acknowledged. Through his long association with John D. and Abby Rockefeller, as art adviser and friend, Valentiner played a crucial role in the creation of MoMA and the selection of Alfred H. Barr as first Director of the r n u s e ~ r nBarr, .~~~

38 The New York City World Telegram (February. 1932) published a cartoon in its "Metropolitan Movies" section (fig. 37) on the exhibition which depicts the museum going crowd.

39 In 1929, Rivera received a Fine Arts Medal from the American lnstitute of Architects. In the exhibition of the Architectural League of New York organized by Frances Paine photos of Rivera's murais in Cuernavaca were shown in the Mexican section.

14* In Valentiner's unpublished papers as mentioned in Margaret Sterne, The Passionate Eye: The Life and Tïmes of W. R. Valentiner (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980),p. 234.

who strongly supported Valentiner's creation, at the Detroit Art Institute, of a gallery dedicated to American Indian art, and which included "primitive Mexican and Penivian pottery and textiles" as sources of influence, rnight weli have received enthusiastic reports by Valentiner about Rivera's success in San Francisco, and concluded that New York's new modem museum had to put together an even larger, more complete and more spectacular retrospective of the Mexican muralist than the Califomia Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco had d o r ~ e . 'After ~ ~ meeting Rivera in 1930, Valentiner related in his diary that he had "always hoped to have on my museum walls a series of frescoes by a painter of Our time".142He might have discussed this desire with Abby Rockefeller or Alfred Barr, thus possibly giving thern the idea of movable frescoes expressly made for MoMA, frescoes which might have also been meant as a trial run for the Radio City mural, cornmissioned by Rockefeller. After Valentiner's role in bringing Rivera to the East Coast, the American ambassador to Mexico, Dwight Morrow, and his wife became another important and more direct link to New York and M O M A . ' ~ Elizabeth ~ Morrow, Frances Paine, Abby Rockefeller, and other influential business and

I4l Ibid., p. 172-3. The San Francisco retrospective exhibited 120 works by Rivera. Hurlburt The Mexican Muralists in the United States, op. cit., p. 99, white the MoMA one boasted 143 pieces, not including the eight large frescoes. The San Francisco retrospective was held November Decernber 1930. There is evidence that by September 1930, the Rivera exhibit at MoMA had not yet been decided, and only a show of Mexican painting was tentatively scheduled for May 5, 1931. (Conger Goodyear to Abby Rockefeller, September 26, 1930, AAR, Box 7, Folder 99, Rockefeller Family Archives).

-

j4*

Sterne, The Passionate Eye, op. cit., p. 192.

143 McBride makes the link from Morrow, to intellectuals, to MoMA, in "The Palette Knife", op. cit., p. 95.

cultural figures founded the short-lived Mexican Arts Association in 1930.'" The association chose Rivera as the first artist who would exhibit as part of their prograrn to prornote (according ta their first objective) the trade of Mexican folk and fine arts, and to foster (according to their second objective) understanding and friendship between Mexico and the United States. Rivera, painstakingly, and sometimes ruthlessly, had already made sure he became the leading exponent of the Mexican Renaissance. In addition, the many friends, acquaintances, and patrons he made in the world of art in the United States would help him in his ascent to the pantheon of modem art. ***

Though Rivera believed the MoMA show had not been entirely a success, it proved important for hirn for he considered it had allowed him to reach what he called "the pinnacle of professional suc ces^".^^^ And a success it was with the museum-going public and the reviewers. But in the United States the audience to which Rivera most wanted to appeal was a more select group that could offer him public walls. Rivera felt the show had failed because if the eight frescoes gave a good idea of his technique, it unfortunately did not "give American museum directors and architects a grasp of the character of mural painting" or "of the true uses of the rnediumV.146 Rivera was aware that reaching the pinnacle of MoMA came at a high price, which was the subjugation of Mexican muralism to a reductionist process. By

44 Art News (Dec. 13.1 !BO), p. 15. 45 Diego Rivera. My art, My Life,op. cit, p. 180. 146 Ibid, p. 181.

confining within museum walls a few distilled 'copies' and samples of frescoes, stripped of their political and social context and audience-as the case for the Mexican portable frescoes-MoMA

was

reduced public art to

gallery art. Yet, in spite of what Rivera considered a Vailure', his two new rival patrons each gave him an important mural to paint, Ford in Detroit and Rockefeller in New York. While these two highly controversiai murals may have captured the imagination of the American critics more than his other work in the United States, there is no doubt that the MoMA exhibition deserves more attention as the instrument that provided Rivera with his initiai exposure on the East Coast. Both the older Ford and Rockefeller, had been savagely portrayed by Rivera in one of his Mexican murals attacking American capitalism; what better way could the younger Ford and Rockefeller-who industrial and technological age-have

personified the new

found to counter the negative image

Rivera had painted of their fathers, than by offering him commissions he could not refuse? Besides, he was not only more famous than his two other serious contenders, Orozco and Siqueiros, but also his work was more optimistic and decipherable than that of the former, and he was more politically adaptable than the latter, who was intensely active in radical union poiitics. More importantly, Rivera had becorne fascinated by North American industry, and also shared the corporate world's belief in Pan Arneri~anisrn.'~~ If for Rivera this amounted to a naive and utopian fantasy, for the American

47 Rivera's belief continued to grow; in 1939, he painted a fresco on Pan Americanism for the World Fair in San Francisco.

elite it was very serious business, and the Mexican artist became a pawn in that p u r s ~ i t . ' ~ ~ Rivera, the inevitable choice, was willingly entrapped. He had recentiy corne back frustrated from Russia where he had discovered that he could not exert his influence as a proponent of an art which, not only should depict the results of a successful revolution, but also the continuous struggles of the masses to gain control. In the rest of Europe, according to Valentiner, he was "misunderstood by the top European experts because his naive and primitive art [was] too uncomplicated for the overcultured brains of the E u r ~ p e a n s ! " ~ ~ ~

That left the United States, which offered him the ultimate field in which to observe the nature and functioning of modem industry at its best, to admire avant-garde architecture and the walls it might provide for large frescoes, and at the same time, the fertile ground of a still dependent and undefined national art, awaiting Rivera's new artistic movernent, new visions and new techniques. If some of MoMA1saims in showing Rivera's art were to present New York with examples of the fusion of the ancient European, but also 'American' art of fresco painting, and to incorporate Rivera's work into universal

Modernism, the exhibition received an unexpected boost from other artistic events in town. Rivera's social realist frescoes and Matisse's purely

14* Francisco Reyes Palma points out that fantasy is an essential feature of Rivera's makeup, a feature which is "faraway from the rational discourse of politics", "Diego y el trotskisrno", op. cit, p. 3. Terry Smith ponders on the possibilitythat Rivera might have used his Pan Americanism for strategic ends. Making the Modern, op. cit., pp. 212-3. 149 W.R. Valentiner as quoted in Sterne, The Passionate Eye, op. cit., p. 208.

decorative work juxtaposed as they had been in the two sequential oneperson shows at MoMA were not the only modemities competing for attention during these troubled and changing times in the rising modem art center that New York was becoming. As the work of an artist of the New World, Rivera's social realist frescoes also challenged the allegories of the religious and anstocratic Old World of José Maria Sert, the Spanish artist whose recently executed murals for the Duke of Alba's chapel were being shown concurrently at the Wildensteinysgalle rie^.^^^ At the same tirne, the cool, formal paintings of the American rnodemist, Charles Sheeler, were exhibited at the Downtown Gallery.I5l While Sheeler aestheticized American corporate industry in his work, as for example, in his famous paintings American Landscape (1930) and Classic Landscape (1931)-snapped

by Mrs. John D. Rockefeller and Mrs. Edsel Ford-Rivera,

up respectively

in his New York

frescoes and in Uprising, took a critical look at the capitalist system behind that industry, and at the people working for it.lS2 The 1931 MoMA exhibition of Rivera's work served the cause of the museum's collecting practises, and its project for the univenalization of

"By a coincidence as curious as it was interesting, on the very afternoon of the private view of the cornmunistic art of Rivera at the Museum of Modern Art, the critics were also asked to view [...] the murals painted for the Duke of Alba's private chapel in Madrid by J. W. (sic) Sert, the rnost fashionable painter of the day. The two opposite poles of art are thus to be met within a short distance of each other on the avenue." McBride, "Diego Rivera's Murals Create a Stir", op. cit., p. 19.

151Sheeler's work, including American Landscape, was shown from November to December 1931. 152Abby Rockefeller later donated American Landscape to MoMA. This buying cornpetition is a good illustration of how the economic rivalry between the Rockefeller and Ford families extended to the cultural sphere. Smith, Making of the Modern, op. cit., p. 200.

modemisrn. The rnuseum's efforts at incorporating into the modemist linear movement the work of Rivera as the decontextualized art of an individual 'genius' representing the Mexican 'avant-garde', paralleled, to some extent, the efforts of the political and financial elites at integrating Latin America, and Mexico in particular, into continental modernization for economic purp0ses.~~3 It also corresponded to the need for complementarity expressed

by American intellectuals and artists. Waldo Frank wrote in the New Republic that "to us al1 who would Iive like human beings, rather than insects or wolves, in the capitalist Jungle, Mexico is a mother [...] A connection far deeper than economics joins the American worlds in their crisis of transition".154 Rivera, better than any other, had integrated the essentialized folk and the mythologized pre-Columbian into a nationalistic Mexican art. At a time when American artists were searching for an identity, he had proclairned that there were great artists in the United States, but they needed to sever their ties to Europe and look to early American art, that is, ancient Mexican a1-t.~55 Rivera, "one of the few living painters who can be unresewedly called great [... and who came] from North America", was used as an emblem of the

emerging American cultural renai~sance?~ Such were the conditions that made the 1931 Rivera retrospective "inevitable".

53 Brian Wallis, "The Man who Made the Modern Modern", Art in America (December 1989), pp. 39-43. 54 New Republic (July 1, 1931). p. 184.

l 5 5 "Art Center of the World", New York Times (July 19, 1931). Rivera had already made declarations to that effect in San Francisco in 1930. 156 Helen Appleton Read. 'Winter Exhibitions", Vogue (January 15. 1932).

Conclusion

Was Rivera "inevitable", or "at the right place, at the right time"? Both may have appeared so to some critics Whether in Europe, Mexico, or the United States, he found trernendous opportunities, but also great obstacles. His successes made him appear "inevitable", and "opportunistic", yet these were the result of the strategic responses he gave to the challenges he met. For wherever he went, the difficulties and opportunities were mainly caused by the relative degree of modernity these places experienced, and by the necessary confrontations and negotiations between cores and margins. His position in the cultural field and his reception were, therefore, always mediated by the unequal and equivocal relations between modernities, relations that dictated his own moves to adopt, adapt or reject. Rivera was not able for al1 his eccentricity and "savagery" to match Picasso's success, and even was criticized when he introduced Mexican elernents in his Zapatista Landscape. While Picasso's encouragement of the exotic view that others had of him contributed to his success,' Rivera's playing out of the Mexican savage only resulted in insults personally and publicly proffered at him. After the so-called "affaire Rivera" in 1917, Pierre Reverdy

1

John Berger, Success and Failure of Picasso (1 965),London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, 1980, p. 131.

called him "l'indien sauvage", "l'anthropoïde honteux", and even "rna~aque".~ Following this, there appeared to be a viitual "boycott" against the Mexican ~ a i n t e rBy . ~ the time Rivera realized that he could not position himself advantageously in Pans, and decided to retum to Mexico, he had not merely received extensive technical "training" and the pedigree that came with having been part of the Parisian artistic circles, but he had also leamed many aesthetic and political lessons from the Western avant-gardes. Having been in the hub of imperial culture, he left Europe with a more acute sense of his own identity, and the differences between his country and Europe. If he was at the Eght place at the right time there, it is only because he experienced "pnmitivisrn" in al1 its manifestations, on the artistic as well as the personal level. The experience allowed him to gain a more direct perspective on the relations that existed between modernities, and to start assessing how to position himself between them. The challenges that had confronted hirn in Europe were only a ternporary setback. Europe might have "ignored" him, but it had shown him the way back to Mexico. After he retumed, he began to see that he could rearticulate for the Mexican context aspects of the cultural practices he had witnessed. In fact, if we

Pierre Reverdy, "Une Nuit dans la plaine" in Nord-Sud, no. 3 (1917) as quoted in Christina Burrus, "Diego Rivera" in Diego Rivera-Frida Kahlo: regards croisés (Paris: Fondation Dina Vierny-Musée Maillol, 1998). p. 22. 3

Oh i e r Debroise, Diego de Montparnasse (México: Fondo de Cultura Econornica, 1979), p.

90.

agree with John Berger that, had Picasso left Europe "he wouid have found his work"? than Rivera's exile from Mexico, was the condition of possibility whose "inevitable" consequence would be the discovery of his own work. Though he had started to find his way in Europe, his own work could only be produced at home. And while "Picasso soon abandoned his sleeping peasants and " ~ gave them a monumental nudes [. ..] Rivera took his back to ~ e x i c oand "Mexican" look. In Europe, Rivera had leamed the strategic anti-bourgeois use of primitivisrn. In it, he saw the critical and didactic possibilities that the technique of shocking the viewer provided. The anti-colonial criticism implied in some primitivist paintings could be adapted to the situation of post-revolutionary Mexico. By painting the Indian, the rural, the popular in his murals Rivera would shock. He started to shock with his first fresco, Creacion, by including distinctly lndian characters painted in unconventional ways. The students of the Preparatoria, his first public, were shocked to the point of demonstrating against it and other murals. An often-told anecdote illustrates both the negative reactions to the mural and Rivera's didactic use of the opportunity. A student asked: " ~ E s oes arte? [. ..] Mire nomas a esa mujerzota desnuda. L L gustaria ~ casarse con una persona asi?" [Is this art? Just look at that enorrnous naked woman. Would you like to rnarry a person like her?]. To which Rivera retorted: 4

Ibid, p. 178.

"Joven, tampoco a usted le gustaria casarse con una piramide, pero una piramide también es artey'[Young man, you wouldn't want to rnarry a pyramid either, but a pyramid is art tao]?' That would be one of Rivera's first fessons in modem art to his first public in Mexico, college students who were part of the Mexican establishment, and would go on to occupy infiuential posts in society. They had leamed the canon, and would transmit it. They were an important audience for Rivera, in the same way that educated youth had been before for José Enrique Rodo in Ariel, and later for Xavier Icaza in Magnavoz 1926. In Rivera's first murais, the shock effect was created by the unfamiliarity of the viewer with both the techniques of avant-garde art and the popular themes being represented. In Western primitivism, the appropriation of objects, or forrns abstracted from the context of another culture, and recontextualized, or rather rearranged, erased their specificity. Then, affinity between modem art and the "primitive" art foms of another culture could be claimed. However, following the lesson from Russian neoprimitivists, Rivera appropriated his "primitive" people along with the context of their own culture to create his imaginary Mexican worid. That world did not include only the Indian, but also the urban mestizo, alongside the peasant, the workers, and the revolutionary

5

6

Gerhard H. Magnus, "Revising Rivera" in New Art Examiner, vol. 13 (Summer 1986),p. 21.

Quoted in Carlos Monsivais, "Diego Rivera , creador de publicos" in Diego Rivera Hoy (México: SEP, 1986),p. 7. In this chapter al1 translations in square brackets are mine unless specified.

soldiers. Rivera's relationship with alterity differed from that of Westem artists because of their respective positions between modemities. If in Les Demoiselles"othemess was used to ward off others (woman, death, the primitive)",'

in Rivera's rnurals, othemess was used to bring in others

who had been ignored or negiected in their own country, and prirnitivized, when not ignored. in the centre. Rivera's hdigenismo involved a process of inclusion. However, if "in Les Demoiselles Picasso rnediate[s] the primitive in the narne of the r

est",^ Rivera's attempt at reclaiming this representation cannot escape

mediation either, this time in the name of Mexicanismo. In other words, m o the Western negation of the bourgeois culture corresponds to a Latin American art of "affirmative mediation" airned at forging an independent national Latin American s ~ b j e c t . ~ While Rivera was captivated by the indigenous people, he did not share the same relationship with them as Manuel Gamio or José Vasconcelos. For Vasconcelos, the lndian was a nuisance that really stood as an obstacle to his project of inclusion of Mexico into the orbit of Westem rnodemity and modemization. To that end, he wanted to teach the classics to the Mexican population. The fusion of the races that he advocated sternmed from an abstract philosophical (Hegelian) position that he did not really know how to achieve in

7

Hal Foster, 'The "PrimitivenUnconscious of Modern Artn, October 34 (Fall 1985),p. 46. Ibid., p. 46.

9

Neil Larsen, Reading North by South: On Latin American Literature, Culture, and Politics (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1995)'p. 160.

practice. He was in a hurry, and the cultural solutions he implemented proved impractical. Gamio's approach as an anthropologist was more scientific and methodical. His aim was to acquire al1the knowledge possible in order to proceed with a more humane integration. Theirs appears to be a classical case

of gaining knowledge (about the Indian) for the purpose of doniinating (hirn), under an illusion of humanism. On the other hand, Rivera was drawn both emotionally and aesthetically to his people and land. He did not express any shame, but great admiration and respect for them. He worked relentlessly on two fronts by being active in political rnovements that worked for social justice, and by rnaking the indigenous people a historical subject. While Gamio and Vasconcelos wanted to civilize them, Rivera wanted to proletarianire them. Theirs were different redemptory missions. Mexican Folkways illustrates Rivera's relation with alterity as different to that of others in the magazine. Folklore was of interest to hirn not as collectable objects or rituals, but only because it was an integral part, and the artistic expression, of his people whom he wanted to introduce as a subject, not an object. By placing the indigenous people in the historical context that he constnicted, he chose to tell that story from a "Mexican" perspective both aesthetically and politically. His earlier depiction in Creacibn tries to make sense of the heferogeneous character of post-revolutionary Mexico. Later, he celebrates difference, that which opposes the colonized lndian to his Spanish

colonizer, as well as that which opposes poorer classes to the elite. Octavio Paz sees the painting of Rivera's murals on baroque colonial buildings as an aberration, while Garcia Canclini would view it as hybridization. I would add that Rivera's paintings on those walls amount to a re-appropriation or reclaiming of, or even to an assault on, those buildings as symbols of colonial domination and colonial bourgeois taste with the purpose of "recoding" them, as Hal Foster would Say. In his estridentista calligram Rivera performed the same operation. All the words that start with d e signalled in effect a disalignment with academicism and Europeanized bourgeois thought, and the re- words, to use Nellie Richard's terminology, called for a "re-alignment" or a "re-signlication" to achieve a new and distinct culture. In this particular endeavour, Rivera found an opportune, as well as whirnsical, use of his initials by iilustrating into words the two essential strategies proposed in the work of Mexican avant-garde artists and writers in the twenties! Rivera's calligram, like many of his murals, shows that his work was not a mere ''transplant" (Néstor Garcia Canclini) from the metropolis, but more a L'transcodificationll(Nelly Richard) across the ocean, from one modemity to another. When Rivera went back to Mexico, the popular hit him with full force, and he realized that what distinguished Mexico from the West was the

predominance of the p o p ~ l a r .So ' ~ the potential he had perceived in European primitivism(s) was reinforced by the impact that the popular and the indigenous had on him. Rather than transcend the popular, which stands for authenticrty, Rivera's relationship with it was to rearticulate it with his modem aesthetics, which stands for originality. If I agree that generally the discourse of Mexican

Folkways characterizes the lndian as "intrinsically incapable of entering modernity", I believe however, that Rivera, for his part, tried to relate the popular and the indigenous to the modem. On some rnurals, and in many of his drawings in Folkways, he introduced elements of modemization, in both representations of urban and rural areas. He complemented this, as we have seen, with his lessons on modem art, and its relationship to the popular. In the magazine, as in his rnurals, he combined urban culture with the rural culture of an indigenous people. As must be expected, the main focus on any study of Rivera is his

painting, both rnurals and easel work, eclipsing therefore, his small, but original, unusual and significant contribution to the literary field. This contribution is significant because, in his poem, he makes strategic use of words and design to advance the cause of the Mexican avante-garde and as a literary character in Magnavoz 1926, he becornes, Iiterally, the embodiment and the emblem of

' O See William Rowe and Vivian Schelling, Memory and modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America (London: Verso, 1993).Rowe's and Schelling's general characterization of this distinctive feature of Latin America is even more compelling when it cornes to Mexico.

Mexican post-revolutionary culture. Like in Magnavoz Rivera's audience "was construed as spectators at a performance in which the political presence of the painter is inscribed"." His association with the literary world is significant because it shows an active involvement with writers of the blexican avantgarde, and illustrates his determination to penetrate ail available spaces of the cultural field. Magnavoz, itself, acts as a microcosm of the cultural climate of the period, specific to the year, and provideç therefore, a kind of more cornplete context in which to view Rivera, much in the way Mikhail Bakhtin recommends that fiterature be analyzed. Bourdieu's discussion about exchanges between painters and writers in 1gthcentuty France is applicable to the Mexican twenties.12 Latin American

modemisrno had promoted the professionalizationand autonomy of writers, similar to the earlier French movements where writers had helped painters break away from the academy. In Mexico, when Rivera came back, the cultural field did not offer the requisite elements of consecration such as museums, galleries, art dealers, an art public, and publishing houses, that Europe had by then. Writers and magazines became marketing agencies, and eventually agents of legitimation. In the absence of art critics, poets and novelists began to write about painters, for whom they were like mirrors reflecting back ont0 them 11

Ant hony W. Lee, Painting On the Left: Diego Rivera, Radical Politics, and San Francisco's Public Murais (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 44.

and therefore, reinforcing, notions such as creativity, originality, rebelliousness, and scandalousness, without forgetting the struggle to survive. By the same token, the painters' achievernents helped develop the cultural field to the benefit of the writers. Rivera understood well this interdependency and the advantages of these exchanges between writers and painters. He used them to help him dorninate the field of painting and eventually, the whole cultural field as well. By legitirnating popular art as part of the New Worid art, Rivera was able to differentiate his worù from that of European artists and cawe a position for hirnself in a field where there were vacancies and voids, unlike in Europe where he had found no space unoccupied. A year after Rivera reached Mexico, Marius de Zayas wrote to Alfred Stieglitz that "America is too young and Europe is too old to produce art".13Rivera thought that Mexican art was just old enough to make the whole hemisphere the new centre. After he becarne dominant in Mexico, and ran out of walls (and into a few pr~blems),'~ he went north to prove that the "new" type of Mexican art could be exported to the United States, where it could serve as a model to American artists. For Rivera's good fortune in his quest for domination, Siqueiros had basically exchanged painting for trade

12

See Pierre Bourdieu, Les règles de l'arf: genèse et structure du champ littéraire (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1992),pp. 189-200.

13

Marius de Zayas, "How, When, and Why Modern Art Came To New York" (August 3,

1922)'Arts Magazine 54, (April 1980).p. 126. 14

For example, he was thrown out from his leadership post as director of the Escuela de Artes Plasticas in May 1930. Four months later, he received a commision to paint a mural at the Stock Exchange in San Francisco.

union work between 1925 and 1930, and Orozco had left Mexico for the United States in 1927, only to retum in 1934. If these absences left Rivera in Mexico without major cornpetition as an exponent of muralism and modem art in general, Orozco's exposure in the United States constituted a challenge that required irnrnediate action. Rivera's failed attempt to gain walls in the Soviet Union in 1927-1928 made it al1 the more crucial to set his sight firmly on two fronts: home and the country to the north in pursuit of his hemispheric goal.

Mexican Folhays played a big part in preparing his reception in the United States. In Rivera's Mexican murals, there is a blurring of the distinction between the Mexican rebellion and the socialist revolution, and his project for cultural domination went together with his political project of spreading the socialist revolution on a hemispheric level. His nationalism and intemationalism, not unlike that of other vanguard artists and writers in the rest of Latin America who envisioned an art that would be both local and international, did not prevent him from advocating anti-imperialist action and from having dreams of a Pan Arnerican cultural association. The arnbiguities and contradictions in his actions

and work reflect the constant need he had to negotiate with rnodemities that tried to define his people and his art. One such example is the negotiations between Rivera and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, for the retrospective of his work, particularly, as we saw in the last chapter, the

cornmissioning by the museum of so-called frescoes and the arnbiguous messages conveyed by the painter in these frescoes. Rivera had wanted to create his own "galleries" where no other curator than himself could hang his major work on their enclosed walls and according to their own logic. In contrast to paintings hanging in museumç, his murals could not be removed and reshuffled to fit renovations or new acquisitions or any other critenon used by curators in galleries. The paradox is, however, that starting with that exhibition at MoMA, parts of these murals are constantly taken out of context, and used to illustrate many different things, often unrelated to the original intent. This colonization of the rnurals, among other things, reveals the utopian nature of the rnuralist project. The final irony is that one of Rivera's movable frescoes, Agrarian LeaderZapata, now shares the walls of the Museum of Modem Art in New York with Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon; two different encounters with the modem and the primitive. Rivera did, after all, achieve the position he wanted when Fortune magazine declared hirn to bs "perhaps the first great painter of the modem American continent'? Touted as the re-discoverer of an ancient art, the fresco, which had appeared both in the "Old World" and The "New World", he became an emblem of the originality of American art, of its own ancient roots, and of its

independence from European influences. But, the trajectory had been a tough

15

Forfune,vo.. 2 (February 1932),pp. 40-1.

one. His "travel history-a

spatial pra~tice"'~ between centres and margins is

wonderfully illustrated in Self-Portrait-The

Ravages of Time, 1949. (fig. 37). His

rather traditional portrait is surrounded by the cubistic depiction of the places between which he navigated, from the volcanoes and pyramid of Mexico, to the Panthéon and the Eiffel Tower of Pans, to Red Square in Moscow,and to the skyscrappers of New York. The grey-haired and wrinkled face of the sixty-three year old Rivera shows the ravages left by his negotiations between modemities.

16

Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 115.

Fig. 1 Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1 907 Oil on canvas, 93 % x 92 1/2" (Reproduced in Picasso: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, a Sketchbook, f rontispiece)

Fig. 2 Diego Rivera, Zapatista Landscape-The Guerilla, 1 9 15. Oil on canvas, 56.75" x 48.375" Museo Nacional de Ar?e, Mexico City (Photo: Barbara Braun, Pre-Columbian Art and Post-Columbian World: Ancient American Sources of Modem Art, p. 1 89)

Fig. 3 Diego Rivera, Creacion, 1923. Encaustic and gold leaf, 708 x 1219 cm Anfitceatro Bolivar, Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, Mexico City (Reproduced in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, p. 236)

Fig. 4 Diego Rivera, Detail of Central Section of Stairway Mural, First and Second Floors, 1923-28. Fresco Court of Labor, Secretaria de Educacion Publica, Mexico City (Photo: Barbara Braun, Pre-Columbian Art and Post-Columbian World: Ancient American Sources of Modem Art, p. 196)

Fig. 5 Paul Gauguin, D'où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? O ù allonsnous? 1897 Oil on canvas, 4 ' 6 x 12'3.5" Tomkins Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Photo: Barbara Braun, Re-Columbian Art and Post-Columbian World Ancient American Sources of Modem Art, p. 86)

Fig. 6 Diego Rivera, ~ a n d s c a ~ (Majorca), e 1 9 14 Watercolour and pencil, 50.8 x 32.5 cm Museo Diego Rivera, Guanajuato (Reproduction Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, p. 4 1)

Fig. 7 Natalya Goncharova, Apple Trees in Bloom, 1912. Oil on canvas, 105 x 84 cm Collection Mrs. Morton E. Rome, Baltimore (Photo: Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism, 1902-1934, p.

59)

A LOS POBRES NO SE OPONE A LAS

ENSENANZASDE NUES RO SENOR JESUGRISTO~ DE LA ANTAMADRE

d IGLESIA.

I EL PUEBLO MEXICANO PELEO

l

QUER~ENDOHALLAR LA PALABRA

DE NUESTRO SEROR JESUCR~STO

Fig. 8 Diego Rivera, Illustration for the pamphlet El repart0 de tierras, 1922. Drawing (Reproduced in Diego Rivera Hoy, p. 71)

--

-

~ i ~Vasily % Koren, Picture Bible, 1696 Woodcut, 32.7 x 28.8 cm (Reproduced in The Lubok, nQ.18)

--

--

-

- .

nrr ~f?H~arnrpO~~.~I

a

-

Fig. 10 Vasily Koren, Picture Bible, 1696 Woodcut, 35.2 x 28.6 cm (Reproduced in The Lubok, nP. 19)

I --

A M I R O I S E VOLLARD.

PO* MAiitO DE =VAS-

R E V I S T A N O R T E C E N T R O Y SUDAM-ERICANA DE VANGUARDIA.

-

-

FRANC^

PRECIO 2 PESETAS 4 : .-: 40. C DE DOLLAR Fig. 11 David ~ l f a r o Siqueiros, cover of Vida Amerimna (illustration by Marius de Zayas), 1921. (Reproduced in Modemidad y modemizacich en el arte Mexicano, 19201960,p. 42) b

--a--

Fig. 12 Diego Rivera, Untitled, Mexican Folkways, vol. 2,nP2, JuneIJuly 1926,p. 18. Drawing (Photo: Mexican Folkways)

Fig. 13 Jean Charlot, cover for Mexican Folkways, vol 3,October/November, 1925.

(MexicanFolkways)

Fig. 14 Diego Rivera, cover for Mexican Folkways, nP 8 , AugustlSeptember, 1926. (Mexican Folkways)

Fig. 15 David Alfaro Siqueiros, La unidad del Campesino el Soldado y el Obrero in El Machete, April 1- 15,1924. Woodcut (Reproduced in Art Journal, Spring 1993, p. 85)

Fig. 16 Agustin Lazo, cover for Mexican Folkways, nP8 , August/September 1926. (Mexican Folkways)

-- - ----- .. --- -- --.---- ----.----.. Fig. 17 Diego Rivera, cover for Mexican Folkways, vol 3,nP4, 1927. (Mexican Folkways)

- - --

7-

. .

Fig. 18 Diego Rivera, El mosquito americano, in Mexican Folkways, vol 2 , nG 2, 1926 (p. 24) Drawing (Mexican Folkways)

Fig. 19 Diego Rivera, cover for Mexican Folkways, vol 6, n9 1 , 1930. (Mexican Folkways)

Fig. 20 Advertising page of Rivera's f rescoes in Mexican Folkways, vol. 1 , n9 2 , AugudSeptem ber, 1925 (n.p.) (Mexican Folkways)

Fig. 21 Advertising page in Mexican ~ o l k w a ~vol. s , 3 , nQ2,1927 (n.p.) (Mexican Folkways)

500 Engrauings from original I cuts by José Guadalupe Posada, with introduction by Diego Rivera. A linïited,: . -. edition .. .

/

1.

PRICE $5.66. (AMER.)

-

Fig. 22 Adveitising page in Mexican ~ l ~ k w a yvol. s , 4,nP3:' 1928 (n.p.) (Mexican Folkways)

NCIAL ,+ 2

Fig. 23 Diego Rivera, CaIigrama "IrradiadorEstridencial", 1924, in Irradiador. (Reproduced in Serge Fauchereau, "The Stridentists" in Art Forum, 24 [February, 19861, p. 86.)

permpoema bolchevique en 5 cantos

-

Fig. 24 Jean Charlot, cover of Urbe, 1924. Woodcut (Urbe, super-poema bolchevique en 5 cantos)

Fig. 25 Ramon Alva de la Canal, Magnavoz 1926, 1926. Woodcut (Xavier Icaza, Magnavoz 1926,1926,n.p.)

Fig. 28 Diego Rivera, cover of the Journal Krasnaya niva (Moçcow) nQ12, 1928 (From a photograph courtesy of Mr. Alfred H. Barr, Jr. New York, reproduced in Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, p. 275)

Fig. 2'9 Diego Rivera, Agrarian Leader Zapata, 1931 Movable Fresco on steel reinforced concrete, 238 x 188 Museum of Modem Art, New York (Reproduced in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, p. 1 86)

C.-- .m.

Fig. 30 Diego Rivera, Liberation of the Peon, 1931 Movable fresco on steel reinforced concrete, 152.4 x 243.8 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art (Reproduced in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, p. 78)

Fig. 31 Diego Rivera, Sugar Cane,adaptation from a fresco in the Palace of Cortez at Cuernavaca, 1931 (title used in the catalogue) Movable fresco on steel reinforced concrete (measurements da) * (Reproduced in Diego Rivera [1931],exhibition catalogue, n.p.)

Fig. 32 Diego Rivera, Morelos Sugar Plantation. The Conquest is Converted into Permanent Feudal Exploitation, Palacio de Cortés, 1929 (title used in the book) Fresco (Reproduced in Portrait of Mexico, plate 202)

Movable fresco on steel reinforced concrete Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Marcos Micha Levy (Reproduced on the cover of CURARE: Espacio critico para las a;tes México, otofio de 1996)

Fig. 35 Diego Rivera, Electric Welding,-1931 Movable fresco on steel reinforced concrete, 142.5 x 239 cm Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Marcos Micha Levy (Reproduced in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, p. 1 28)

cartoon (New York City World Telegram, Metropolitan Movies)

Fig. 37 Diego Rivera, Self-Portrait-The Ravages of Tïme, 1949 Watercolour on canvas, 31 x 26.5 cm Collection of Marilyn O. Lubetkin (Reproduced in Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, p. 193)

Bibliography 1. Archival Sources

Amherst College, Archives, Amherst, Massachusetts Dwight W. Morrow Papers Museum of Modem Art, Archives, New York Diego Rivera Files Conger Goodyear Scrapbooks Rockefeller Archives Center, North Tarrytown, New York Rockefeller Family Archives Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Papers, Record Group 2 Cultural Interest Series, Record Group 2 Smith College Museum of Art, Print Archives, Northampton, Massachusetts Jere Abbott, Russian Diary, 1927, unpublished manuscript Smith College, Sophia Smith Coliections, Northampton, Massachusetts Elizabeth Cutter Morrow Papers

2. Books and Essays by Diego Rivera

Rivera, Diego. Arte y politica. Raquel Tibol, ed. México: Grijalbo, 1979. Rivera, Diego. "Edward Weston y Tina Modotti." (Edward Weston and Tina Modotti). Mexican Folkways, I1: 1 (1926):27-8 and 16-7. Rivera, Diego. "El dibujo infantil en el México actual." (Children's Drawing in Present Day Mexico). Mexican Folkways, 11: 5 (1926): 5-7. Rivera, Diego. "La nueva arquitectura mexicana. Una casa de Carlos Obregon." (The New Mexican Architecture. A House of Carlos Obregon). Mexican Folkways, 11: 4 (1926): 18-29.

Rivera, Diego. "La pintura mexicana. El retrato." (Mexican painting. The Portrait). Mexican Folkways, 1: 5 (1926): 4-10. Rivera, Diego. 'Las pinturas decorativas del anfiteatro de la Preparatoria." (1923). Diego Rivera. Arfe ypolitica. Raquel Tibol, ed. México: Grijalbo, 1979: 29-32. Rivera, Diego. "Los primeros murales. Los patios de la Secretaria de Educacion Publica." (El Arquitecto, septiembre de 1925). Diego Rivera: Los murales de la Secretaria de Educacion Publica. Ensayo critico de Luis Cardoza y Aragon; introduccion y comentarios de Antonio Rodriguez. México: SEP, 1986: 23-4. Rivera, Diego. "Los retablos, verdadera, actual y unica expresion pictorica del pueblo mexicano." (Retablos, The True and Only Pictoric Expression of the Mexican People). Mexican Folkways, 1: 3 (1925): 7-10. Rivera, Diego. "Mardonio Magaia campesino, el mas grande escukor mexicano contemporaneo." (Mardonio Magaha, Peasant, the Greatest Contemporary Mexican Sculptor). Mexican Folkways, VI: 2 (1930): 6671. Rivera, Diego. "Nombres de pulquerias." (Names of Pulquerias). Mexican Folkways, 11: 2 (1926): 16-18. Rivera, Diego. "On the Work of Carolina Durieux." Mexican Folkways, V: 3 (1929): 158. Rivera, Diego. "Pintura de pulquerias." (Painting of Pulquerias). Mexican Folkways, 11: 2 (1926): 6-15. Rivera, Diego with Gladys March. My A C My Life. An Autobiography. New York: The Citadel Press, 1960.

3. Books and Essays on Diego Rivera

Azuela, Alicia. "Rivera and the Concept of Proletarian Art." Diego Rivera: A Retrospective. Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts Founders Society; New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1986: 125-129. Baddeley, Oriana. "Diego Rivera, a Retrospective." Art History I I (June 1988): 271-5.

Garcia Barragan, Elisa y Luis Mario Schneider. Diego Rivera y los escritores mexicanos: una antologia tributaria. México: Universidad Nacional Autonorna de México, 1986. Braun, Barbara. "Diego Rivera: Heritage and Politics." Post-Columbian World: Ancient American Sources of Modem Art New York: Harry N. Abrams, lnc., 1993: 185-249. Brenner, Anita. "Diego Rivera". Idois Behind Altars. New York: Payson 8 Clarke, 1929: 277-87. Brown, Betty Ann. "The Past Idealized: Diego Rivera's Use of Pre-Columbian Imagery." Diego Rivera: A Retrospective. Detroit: Detroit lnstitute of Arts Founders Society; New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1986: 13955. Burrus, Christina. "Diego Rivera." Diego Rivera-Frida, Kahlo: Regards Croises. Paris: Fondation Dina Viemy-Musée Maillol, 1998: 33-43. Carpentier, Alejo. "Diego Rivera." Plural 21 1 (Abril de 1989): 36-44. Catlin, Stanton L. "Mural Census." Diego Rivera: A Retrospective. Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts Founders Society; New York: W. W. Norton and CO., 1986: 235-335. Catlin, Stanton L. "Political lconography of the Diego Rivera Frescoes at Cuernavaca, Mexico." Art and Architecture in the Service of Politics. Henry A. Millon and Linda Nochlin, eds. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1978: 439-49. Charlot, Jean. The Mexican Mural Renaissance: 1920-l925.New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1963. Craven, David. Diego Rivera: An Epic Modemisi. New York: G.K. Hall, 1997. Debroise, Olivier. Diego de Montparnasse. México: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1979. Debroise, Olivier. "Un cubista en la encrucijada: La evolucion de Diego Rivera, 1914-1935." ("A Cubist at the Crossroads: The Evolution of Diego Rivera, 1914-1935). James Oles, trans. Crosscurrents of Modemism: Four Latin American Pioneers. Vaterie Fletcher, ed. Washington: The Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992: 84-99. Evans, Emestine. The Frescoes of Diego Rivera. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1929.

Folgarait, Leonard. "Revolution as Ritual: Diego Rivera's National Palace Stainvay Mural." Mural Painting and Social Revolution in Mexico: Art of the New Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998: 86137. Garcia Maroto, Gabriel. "La obra de Diego Rivera." Contemporaneos (JunioAgosto de 1928),p. 48. Gomez de la Sema, Ramon. "Riverismo." lsmos (1931). Buenos Aires: Editorial Brcjula, 1968: 313-27. Haufe, Hans. "Rivera, la historia y los mitos." Goya (noviernbre-diciernbre de 1988): 150-5. Hijar Serrano, Alberto. "Diego Rivera: contribucion politica." Diego Rivera hoy: simposio sobre el artista en el centenario de su natalicio. México: Palacio de Bellas Artes (1986): 37-70. Huerta, David. "Diego en las dos orillas del Atlantico." Diego Rivera hoy: simposio sobre el artista en el centenario de su natalicio. México: Palacio de Bellas Artes (1986): 21-4. Hurlburt, Laurance P. "Diego Rivera." The Mexican Muralists in the United States. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989: 89-193. Hurlburt, Laurance P. "Diego Rivera (1886-1957): A Chronicle of his Art, Life and Times." Diego Rivera: A Retrospective. Detroit: Detroit lnstitute of Arts Founders Societr; New York: W . W. Norton, 1986: 23-331. Keller, Judith. "Rivera's Prints: Notes on the Weyhe Lithographs, 1930-1932." The Fath Collection: Selected Prints from the United States and Mexico, 1915-1950. Austin: The University of Texas (1986): 15-25. Kozloff, Max. 'The Rivera Frescoes of Modem Industry at the Detroit Institute of Arts: Proletarian Art Under Capitalist Patronage." Art and Architecture in the Service of Politics. Henry A. Milton and Linda Nochlin, eds. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1978: 216-29. Labastida, Jaime. "Diego Rivera por él misrno." Plural 276 (Septiembre de 1994): 71-9. Lee, Anthony W. Painting on the Left: Diego Rivera, Radical politics, and San Francisco's Public Murals. Berkeley: University of California f ress, 1999. Mabardi, Sabine. "The Politics of the Primitive and the Modem: Diego Rivera at MoMA in 1931." Curare (Espacio critico para las artes) 9 (1996): 143.

Magnus, Gerhard H. "Revising Rivera." New Art Examiner 13 (Summer 1986): 18-21. Mariategui, José Carlos. "ltinerario de Diego Rivera." ( Variedades, 1928). José Carlos Mariategui. El artiçta y la epoca. Lima: Biblioteca Amauta, 1959: 93-97. Marnham, Patrick. Dreamnig with His Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. Matute, Alvaro. "Diego Rivera, ateneista." Diego Rivera hoy. Simposio sobre el artista en el centenario de su natalicio. México: SEP, 1986: 15-19. Monsivais, Carlos. "Diego Rivera, creador de publicos." Diego Rivera hoy. México: SEP, 1986: 1-12. Mulvey, Laura with Peter Wollen. "Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti." Laura Mulvey. Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: lndiana University Press, 1989: 81-107. Novo, Salvador. "Cartas a un amigo." Hoy (14 de diciembre de 1957): 28-30. Reyes, Alfonso. "Recuerdos de Diego." Elisa Garcia Barragan y Luis Mario Schneider. Diego Rivera y los escritores mexicanos: antologia tributaria. México: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, 1986: 201-2. Reyes Palma, Francisco."Diego y el trotskisrno." La Jornada semanal (31 de agosto de 1986): 3-5. Rochfort, Desrnond. The Murais of Diego Rivera. London: Journeyrnan, 1987. Siqueiros, David Alfaro. "Rivera, the First Practical Exponent of Our Art." (1945). David A. Siqueiros. Art and Revoiution. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975: 73-8. Smith, Terry. "The Resistant Other: Diego Rivera." Making the Modern: lndustry, Atf, and Design in America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993: 199-246. Vorobëv, Marevna. Life with the Painters of La Ruche. Natalia Heselstine, trans. New York: Macmillan, 1974. Wolfe, Bertram. Diego Rivera, su vida, su obra y s u época. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Ercilla, 1941. Wolfe, Bertram. La fabulosa vida de Diego Rivera. Mario Bracamonte, trans. México: Diana, 1986.

349 Wolfe, Bertram. Portrait of Mexico. New York: Covici-Friede Publishers, 1937.

4. Articles from Contemporary Periodicals (1917-1933) (Pages of contemporary newspaper articles are not always available.)

"8Large Rivera Paintings Purchased By E. Weyhe." New York Herald Tribune (February 17, 1932). Abbott, Jere. Brooklyn Eagle (January 25, 1932). "A Master from Mexico - The Pioneers - Mythology and Freud." New Yorker (December 26, 1931): 8-10.

Appleton Read, Helen. "Winter Exhibitions." Vogue (January 15, 1932). "Art Center of the World: Diego Rivera Foresees It in This Country." New York Times (July 19, 1931): 21.

Art News (Dec. 13, 1930): 15. Art News (Oct. 1931): 12.

"A Shameless Fraud." Workers Age (June 15, 1933). Breuning, Margaret. "Modem Museum Shows Rivera Frescoes." The New York Evening Posf (December 26, 1931). Cortissoz, Royal. "The Art of José Maria Sert and Diego Rivera." New York Herald Tribune (December 27, 193 1). "Diego Rivera." Arf News (January 16 , 1932). "Diego Rivera Will Exhibit Work in New York." Providence, RI, Bulletin (December 22, 1931).

El Machete (April 1-15, 1924): 5. El Universal (9 de febrero de 1932).

Evans, Robert. "Painting and Politics: The Case of Diego Rivera." New Masses (February 1932): 22-5. Excelsior (5 de noviembre de 1931): 1.

Excelsior (25 de enero de 1932). Flint, Ralph. "Rivera Frescoes Seen at the Museum of Modern Art." Art News (December 26, 1931): 5 and 7. Fortune V. 2 (February 1932): 40-1 . Jewell, Edward Alden. "An Impressive Exhibition." New York Times (Decernber 22, 1931): 28. Kerr, Harrison. "Matisse and Rivera." Trend (March-May 1932): 16-9.

"Lo nacional, Io mexicano, lo pintoresco." El Nacional (18 de noviembre de 1917). McBride, Henry. "Diego Rivera's Mexican Murais Create a Stir at the Museum of Modern Art." New York Sun (December 26, 1931): 19. McBride, Henry. "The Palette Knife." Creative Art (February 1932): 93-7. Maçon, Gregory. "The Riddles of Our Own Egypt." Centuv 107 (November, 1923): 57. "Matisse in Review." Art Digest (November 1, 1931): 6. "Metropolitan Movies." New York City World Telegram (February, 1932).

Mexican Folkways, Mexico City, Frances Toor, ed. (AH issues from 1925 to 1933). "Museum of Modem Art Plans Important Shows." Art News (October 1931): 12. "Museum of Modem Art to Show Rivera's Work." New York Sun (Decembe: 19, 1931).

N.E.L.A. Bulletin (February 1932). New American (December 27, 1931).

New Leader (American Appeal) (Saturday January 16, 1932). New Republic (July 1, 1931): 184. New York City World Telegram (February 1932). Nirdlinger, Virginia. "Diego Rivera." Parnassus (January 1932): 10. "Paintings of Rivera." Ridgewood (NJJ Herald (January 1932).

Pan American Union Bulletir?(January 1932). Pemberton, Murdoch. "The Story of Diego Rivera-Young Title." New Yorker (January 2 , 1932).

American-On

"Pseudo Art and Engineering." Power Plant Engineering. Chicago, III. (March 1, 1932). "Rivera-Greatest Mexican Painter." Literary Digest (January 23, 1932): 13-4. "Rivera Is Painting Museum Frescoes." New York Times (Decernber 15, 1931): 11. "Rivera Paintings to be Exhibited Privately Today." New York Herald Tribune (Decernber 22, 1931). Rosenfeld, Paul. "The Rivera Exhibition." New Republic (January 16, 1932):

21 5-6. Sherbume, E. C. "Diego Rivera's Frescoes." Christian Science Monitor (December 26, 1931): 6.

Survey Graphic (May 1931). Tablada, José Juan. "Triunfo de los pintores mexicanos." Revista de Revistas (1 de agosto de 1920). "Ugly or Beautiful, New York Sees the Art of Diego Rivera." AH Digest (January 1, 1932): 3 and 12. Youtz, Philip. "Diego Rivera." The Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin (February 1932): 100-1.

5. Exhibition and Auction Catalogues

Crosscurrents of Modernism: Four Latin Arnerican Pioneers. Valerie Fletcher, ed. Washington: The Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. Diego Rivera: The Cubist Years. Text by Ramon Favela. Phoenix: Phoenix Art Museum, 1984.

Diego Rivera. December 23, 195 1 - Januat-y 27, 1932. Essay by Frances Flynn Payne, notes by Jere Abbott. New York: Museum of Modem Ait, 1931.

Diego Rivera-Frida, Kahlo: regards croisés. Paris: Fondation Dina ViemyMusée Maillol, 1998. Diego Rivera: Los murales de la Secretaria de Educacion Pubiica. Ensayo critico de Luis Cardoza y Aragon; introduction y cornentarios de Antonio Rodriguez. México: SEP, 1986. Diego Rivera: A Retrospective. Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts Founders Society; New York: W. W. Notion and Co., 1986. Diset70 antes del disefio: disefio grafico en México, 1920-1960.Estudio, notas y selecciones de imagenes por Cuauhtémoc Medina. México: Museo de Arte Carrillo GiI, 1991. Exposition coloniale internationale de Paris en 1931. Paris: Ministère des colonies, 1930. First Baltimore Pan-American Exhibition of Contemporary Paintings. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1931. First Pan-American Exhibition of Oil Paintingç, November 27, 1925 to January 31, 1926. Los Angeles, California: Los Angeles Museum, 1925.

Images Of Mexico. Erika Billeter, ed. Frankfurt: Benteli Catalogue Edition, 1987. Introduction to American lndian Art. Text by John Sloan 8 Oliver Lafarge. New York: The Exposition of lndian Tribal Arts, Inc, 1931.

Los Zapatas de Diego Rivera. Blanca Gardufio. México: Museo Estudio Diego Rivera, 1989. The Lubok: 17th-18th Century Russian Broadsides. Moscow: "Sovietsky Khudozhnik" Publishing House, 1968. Masfers of Modern Art. Barr, Alfred H. Jr., ed. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1954. Mexican Arts, 1930-1931. New York: The American Federation of Arts, 1930. Modernidad y modernizacion en el atfe mexicano: 1920-1960. México: Institut0 Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1991. Modern Mexican Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture 8 Prints. Sotheby Park Bemet, Inc., 1977. ~O~OZC 1883-1949. O! Oxford: Museum of Modem Art, 1980.

Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, A Sketchbook. Text by Brigitte Leal. Thames and Hudson, 1988. Picasso: The Italian Joumey 1917-1924. Jean Clair, ed. New York: Rizzoli, 1 998. South of the Border. Text by James Oles and Karen Cordero Reirnan. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993. The Exposition of lndian TribalArts, lnc. Introduction by John Sloan and Oliver LaFarge. New York: The Exposition of lndian Tribal Arts, Inc., 1931. The Fath Collection: Selected Prints from the United States and Mexico, 1915-1950.Austin: The University of Texas, 1986.

6. Other Sources

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