Research: Museum Visit #2

 Museum Visit #2
4/16/2014

Images for use:

Diego Rivera: Man at the Crossroads. Palacio de Bellas Artes
:

• Visions of the debauched rich watched by the unemployed while war rages + socialist Utopia ushered in by Lenin.
• Mural repainted at the Palacio de Bellas artes by using a photograph as a reference.  

The image demonstrates past influence on Rivera's prints. We see how Rivera tied Socialism to Western influence. Some images demonstrate figures of socialism such as Trotsky or Lenin. When Rivera was influenced by these powers, we see them manifested in some of his works during this period. The print "Zapata" is part of a whole mural. In the mural that Zapata is in, we see western inspiration and political beliefs. By taking into consideration these influential hidden messages when interpreting any of Rivera's murals, we get a different significance out of his works. 

• How is Rivera's work manifesting his socialist beliefs/themes & western influence while interpreting Mexico's history?
• How did I research it? 
• Which moments do we pin-point this images to?
• Choose an image that uses the same subject matter

• while the revolution was occurring Rivera was abroad. 
• he knew Picasso & Chagall
• Back in 1921: joined Mexican communist party
• expelled in 1928: expressed sympathy for Trotsky's views dumped by Stalin. He fled Russia in exile.
• 1937: Rivera helped Trotsky and sent him to Mexico.

May 1939: Trotsky disagreed w/Rivera so he moved out.

1940: David Siqueiros was involved in Trotsky's first assassination attempt. 

Rivera fled to California after the attempt. US State Dept involved.

20 Aug, 1940: Kahlo called Rivera to notify of Trotsky's death.

Museum Visit Research Day 1: 4/14/2014

"Rivera continually reinvented the image of Zapata for didactic purposes."

-intended to teach, particularly in having moral instruction as an ulterior motive.

-Aimed at a broad audience of diverse ages, social and economic classes, and nationalities, 

Diego Rivera. South wall of the mural cycle History of the State of Morelos: Conquest and Revolution, with image of Emiliano Zapata. 1930

The general is not in any way superior to the men, he is one of them. This clearly connects to the socialist themes prevalent throughout the Mexican Revolution. Diego Rivera also personally joined the Communist Party, which would help to explain why he created art in this style.  A Communist would not put leaders above the people they lead.

• Rivera’s connection with socialism went deep, for the power of his work was bound up not just with the radical nationalist Mexican Revolution, but also with the establishment of the first worker’s state in Russia in 1917.

4.12. 2014
Research Week 2 Day 2

More about western influence:

https://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/michigan/detroit/riveramurals/east.html

"The placement of the frescoes is purposeful with images of fertility and new life in the east while a version of death and the Last Judgment occupy the west wall. Diego had seen Giotto's frescoes in Italy, and just as the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua depicts the Annunciation in the east/altar end, (the Annunciation being the moment of Christ’s conception in Catholic theology), here positive images of fertility and birth are represented."

Description of Rivera's Zapata:

"Emiliano Zapata, a champion of agrarian reform and a key protagonist in the Mexican Revolution, here leads a band of peasant rebels armed with makeshift weapons, including farming tools. With the bridle of a majestic white horse in his hand, Zapata stands triumphantly beside the dead body of a hacienda owner. Though Mexican and U.S. newspapers regularly vilified the revolutionary leader as a treacherous bandit, Rivera immortalized Zapata as a hero and glorified the victory of the Revolution in an image of violent but just vengeance."

More useful information on the print:

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/rivera/content/mural/agrarian/hotspots.php

"Dressed as a humble peasant in huaraches and a white cotton shirt and trousers, Rivera’s portrait of Zapata departs from portrayals propagated by popular press images and by the rebel himself."

"Rivera’s vision of Zapata as a humble peasant offers a sympathetic portrait of a folk hero tirelessly devoted to Mexico’s disenfranchised agrarian workers."


Some thoughts:
Many western works had images of humble figures such as Christ. Rivera probably wanted Zapata to resemble this humble figure as well by having him dressed in a certain fashion rathen than nice military clothing.

Paolo Uccello (Italian, c. 1397–1475). The Battle of San Romano (detail). c. 1438. Tempera on wood. Full panel: 71 3/4" x 10' 5 1/2" (1.82 x 3.22 m). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Photograph by Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York

Important find:"Rivera ennobles Mexican history—and Zapata—in this work by linking them to the grandeur of European artistic tradition. The steed, whose owner Zapata has just dragged from his saddle, shares the color and imposing presence of horses in Paolo Uccello’s early 15th-century painting The Battle of San Romano, which Rivera studied on a 1920–21 trip to Italy."

Research Week 2

4/7/2014

• 1922 Rivera's First murals in Mexico; worked with Orozco and Siqueiros; joined Mexican Communist party.
• For what purpose did he make prints?
• "Despite rejection of easel painting in their manifesto of 1924, the muralists relied on the sale of portable paintings and prints to supplement the meager wages they earned on the scaffolds." (246, Oles) 



Zapata was made in 1934 by Diego Rivera.

Rivera made Zapata's print to support himself and the high demand there was for his art. 
• Another purpose for the print was for Rivera's shaping image of Mexico.
• Rivera made works that depicted Mexico's history "mainly in terms of Mexico City" .
• His works were made to "impact visitors with a totalizing and awe-inspiring visual display: fireworks more than a textbook" (269, Oles)

Emerging question based on quote:

"Hennessy (1999) claims that a distinctive characteristic of the reconstruction of society after the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) was the way that artists as opposed to writers came forward as the intellectual vanguard" (Picot, 30)

Vanguard: a group of people leading the way in new developments or ideas

Other clues that Rivera did indeed utilized Western Art inspiration:

"In 1921, Rivera expresses his long-term aspiration to engage with the people's art: in Paris in Madrid, in Rome, in all of the countries I have visited, it was my wish to study popular art, the runs of our great past, with the purpose of crystalizing certain idas about art those that will give new and broad sense to my work" (Rivera quoted in Folgarait 1998)

• In Rivera's print Zapata we observe his idea to crystalize certain ideas about art. He clearly wanted to use Western influence because it added essence to his work. 
• What type of ideas did he want to crystalize?
• Maybe he had his own personal opinions about the great masters that he studied from. Rivera must have observed those masters with great inspiration if he decided to use some composition values seen in their art to his own work.
• Other ideas:
• the Zapata print has a character on the ground. This seems to be an hacienda owner. Rivera referred his print to the Hacienda System. Zapata is seen standing tall and about to start a revolt now that the hacienda owner is on the ground.
• (the hacienda system absorbed local lands in big estates, there was a widespread exploitation of estate workers which reached near-slavery. This led to impoverishment and landlessness amongst the indigenous as well as the breaking of ancient traditions - Picot)

Research Week 1 part 2

Research April 5, 2014

Brief timeline of Diego Rivera's life:

• 1886 Born on December 8 in silver-mining town, Guanajuato
• 1896 Began study of art, Academia de San Carlos,Mexico City
• 1902 Joined student strikes; left academy because he disagreed with system of photographic realism introduced by new director

• 1907 Awarded grant to study art in Spain
• 1908-09 Traveled in Europe; exhibited with Indépendants in Paris
• 1910 Returned to Mexico; experienced beginning of
• Mexican Revolution
• 1911-21 Spent time in France, Spain, and Italy, learning from modernists and old masters
• 1922 First murals in Mexico; worked with Orozco and Siqueiros; joined Mexican Communist party
• 1929 Married artist Frida Kahlo, his third wife
• 1933 Worked on Rockefeller Plaza mural, which was destroyed because he included Lenin’s portrait
• 1936-40 Worked exclusively on easel painting: landscapes, portraits
• 1940-57 Numerous wall murals in Mexico and United States
• 1957 Died in Mexico City

Emerging questions:

-Who taught Rivera during 1911-21 in France, Spain and Italy? Who were the modernists and old masters party? How is their influence manifested in Rivera's future works such as his first murals?

Quote in article that caught my attention:

"He (Rivera) knew that in Europe there were great painters and the work of the old masters from whom he could learn. Rivera thought that perhaps he could raise money for his passage by selling his paintings but he knew he would still need money to support himself." (Norwood)

reference link:

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1999/2/99.02.06.x.html

Further research:

 "In 1907, the governor of Veracruz granted the young painter money to travel to Europe, in order to further his artistic education, and in January 1908, Rivera left for Spain. While in Europe, Rivera experimented with a great variety of styles and techniques, emulating the old masters like El Greco and the painters of the Italian and Northern Renaissances, experimenting with Classicism and Impressionism, dabbling in the contemporary movements of Cubism and Post-Impressionism and finally settling on the simple, straightforward Realist style that would characterize most of his later work."  (Mataev)

Research link:

http://www.abcgallery.com/R/rivera/riverabio.html