The murals by Fiego Rivera that are located at San Francisco City College and at the San Francisco City Club are very beautiful and impressive.
https://www.ccsf.edu/en/about-city-college/diego-rivera-mural.html
https://cityclubsf.com
6
Finally, recognition for Rivera, instead of the perversion of history by fans of Kahlo.
4
During this same period two million people of Mexican heritage were forcibly deported back to Mexico. 60% of those deported were American citizens. Least we forget, we are repeating the same hate.
13
If you liked this show, be sure to visit Coit Tower when you are in San Francisco. It is full of murals celebrating working people and socialism. They also respond artistically to the destruction of Diego Rivera's Man at the Crossroads mural intended to Rockefeller Center.
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"Why on earth would we want to stop the flow now?"
Because Mexico has become a flood of gangs who send dope to America, not painters, and America has become a place where art is only a question of money and sniffing, smoking or shooting up Mexico's products.
In 1945 I went to UNM to study painting and there and Taos discovered Mexican art. It bowled me over.
I decided not to be a professional painter. I was good, but not good enough in my opinion. I became an art critic. In 1961I moved to Paris where excellent political art was in the style of Mexico (Uhart), yet different.
In the 30s and 400s there was political art in America via Depression painting like Thomas Hart Benton , Hopper, and in a way, Rockwell. It quickly became Joe McCarthy time. Political art never got off the ground in America. The left was quickly squelched and never rose again. Today's Left was Light Right yesterday. And painting is a soggy, dollar driven mess.
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@Anonymot That is really too amusing, you weren't good enough to paint, but good enough to be a critic?
12
If you look closely at the Rivera mural "Man Controller of The Universe", you will see on the lower right-hand side, below the portraits of Lenin, Trotsky and Marx, a red banner with an inscription in Yiddish. It's the translation of the first words of the anthem "Workers of the World Unite in the 4th Internationale". According to my family's legend, Diego asked my dad, Aaron Mam, who was then a little boy watching him paint the mural in Bellas Artes, to translate the words to Hebrew letters and my dad obliged, in Yiddish. Diego and my dad were friends until they parted ways over Diego's undying admiration of Stalin.
We have a small pencil sketch of my dad as a young boy, signed and dedicated by Diego. If this is not a story of the richness that immigrants bring and the richness they get in return, I don't know what is.
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Thank you for sharing this! I love a bit of secret knowledge.
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The show was unbelievable, and the review gives it due credit. My only criticism of the show is that it neglected the Russian emigre Victor Arnautoff, who studied with Rivera and then went back to San Francisco and executed many wonderful and deeply political murals there.
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Fantastic review about an epic exhibition. I'll make time to travel to NYC to walk the aisles of the Whitney. Please visit Mexico City to really enjoy the grandeur and magnificence of Siqueros and Rivera, and to Guadalajara to appreciate Orozco.
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Thanks to Mr. Potter for writing one of the most lucid and informative reviews of a museum exhibit I've read in a long life of reading about art. It's not as good as being there to see the paintings in person, but it's about as good as this genre of writing gets.
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I'm surprised no mention was made of the exhibition's inclusion of the works of Bendor Marks. Although he passed away a few years ago, Mark's paintings and sketches have become all the rage with collectors. The writer missed an opportunity here.
2
The paragraph that mentions Anita Brenner's book "Idols Behind Bars" includes the all to common mistake of geographically removing Mexico from its partners in North America.
4
IN 1927 John Dos Passos, an American writer and artist, returned from a long stay in Mexico where he had been soaking up the vibrant cultural scene south of the border. Reporting on what he found in an article for the New Masses, he proclaimed: “Everywhere the symbol of the hammer and sickle. Some of it’s pretty hasty, some of it’s garlanded tropical bombast, but by God, it’s painting.”
10
I'm sure the show points out that the treasures of Mexican mural art lie within Mexico. Mexico City is where much of Rivera's work can be & should be seen. Admission is free for almost all of it. Orozco & the other muralists should be sought out as well. Thanks to the Whitney for exposing this great tradition to North Americans.
27
During my preteens Diego Rivera was commissioned to do a mural at the world fair on Treasure Island in San Francisco (1939-1941). One of his assistants, Johnnie Cumming, who grew up as part of an American family living in Shanghai, then Manila, rented a room in my grandmother's boardinghouse and soon became a close family friend. On several occasions Johnnie took me over to Treasure Island where I served as one of two models for one of the children depicted in the mural. The mural is now located in the auditorium at the University of San Francisco. I still have a painting by Johnny Cumming of a Mexican street scene, which I watched him paint in his room in the boardinghouse. Whether Cumming might have become one of the American artists mentioned in this review we will never know. He died in his early twenties in Burma, a world war II casualty.
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It's interesting that artists see the beauty of Mexico and Mexicans. Too bad artists aren't our politicians.
32
This exhibit is more important than ever. Given the hate spewing out of Trump it reminds us that Mexico is a dynamic, intelligent and rich country. One may agree or disagree with the politics but the intelligence that created these murals cannot be doubted. In a world increasingly fractured by nationalism it is wonderful for the Whitney to have this exhibition on display .It also reminds us that the impulse to create and communicate knows no national boundaries.
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And check out the Orozco murals at Dartmouth College: http://www.dartmouth.edu/digitalorozco/
23
Why bring politics into this? It's sad. You can't enjoy anything without some injection of weak-minded political leftist view.
3
Politics was, and is, an integral part of these artworks. It’s quite the luxury to think that politics isn’t part of life. And the richness that immigrants and international culture bring to the US is—well, what would be without it?
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@Vanessa: No one has brought politics into this show: it is political through and through. This is the art of a revolution, communist art. Diego Rivera’s “Man, Controller of the Universe” features an image of Lenin. What are you are going to believe? If you like this art, you might see that your political thinking is faulty.
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@Vanessa the artists themselves were political beasts. It's evident in the art and should be acknowledged.
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We’ll be watching for cheap flights this spring. 😍 (and we’ve never thought to travel for an art exhibition before)
11
Unfortunately, IF you want to go to Tehauntepec (to see the dancers) you have to go to Oaxaca, not the Yucatan.
7
American art!
4
So sad this isn't coming to California.
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There is something else to consider, the refuge offered by California to artists of all stripes including Mexican Muralists. There was a CA soup of Surrealism, Socio-Political art from Mexico, avant-garde creatives of all stripes, and a major center of new painting around San Francisco.
The East Coast bias of critics like Cotter denies the tremendous influence of California, which is WHERE ALL THIS INSPIRATION PLAYED OUT.
The late Peter Selz was adamant that the West Coast, and in specific the SF Bay Area, had an outsized and denied presence in the arc of American painting and creativity.
There is no Diego Rivera influence without the muralist's work in California. Let's recall that even the holy of holies painter, Mark Rothko, was in Clyfford Still's studio in SF as he made the break to his late masterpieces. There are pictures of him painting there. Why is all this heretical?
Clearly because it contradicts the primacy of NYC as the locus of power in Mid Century art. This is the bogus fantasy of a singular place for the break through of American art that MUST HAVE BEEN NYC. This Alfred Barr orthodoxy lives on, mounted on MoMA's storied walls.
Sure now it's fashionable to reveal a more complex genealogy for American art.
Let's recall, as Selz told me, it was common knowledge at MoMA that the CIA was promoting Ab Ex and Pop Art. They had a guy inside the museum crafting this Cold War narrative. Cotter outta trip out west more often. We have stories to tell.
11
@Smokepainter* How sad that certain "helicopter parents?" in San Francisco are now demanding the destruction of a wonderful series of historical murals by Arnautoff in George Washington High School depicting scenes of early America. That these murals cannot be appreciated and discussed as evidence of history we wish had never happened rather than disparaged as hurting the feelings of some high school students in 2020 is, in my opinion, a misguided way to help kids understand that "bad things happen" and we hope they never happen again. Ignoring history is the quickest way to allow it to re-occur.
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Señor Crítico: Wonderful article. Thanks for sharing your mind. Tehuantepec is in Oaxaca, not Yucatán. Come on down!
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@AlGenis One of the best gentle corrections ever!
2
Superb review that calls me to New York to see this exhibition. So much of great art has been an attack on the ruin perpetrated by humans on other humans and defense of that which makes us whole. The Mexican artists did this with such power and immediacy that all viewers were embraced by their messages. I do not see that genius as much in today's artists, even in such a menacing and ridiculous time as we live in now.
10
Where are the painting of FrIda Kahlo? She was a giant of the same era of those men mentioned in this article. Oh
that is right, she was just a woman.
6
@Jeff Actually there was an exquisite Frida Kahlo painting from a private collection (Friday with her parrots). She was a great painter and there have been many exhibits about her, I would say more than the Mexican muralists. The focus of the show is on the murals these Mexican men created. I love Frida Kahlo, but she did not do murals. My family is Mexican and I am proud to see any great talent from the country celebrated, man or woman, especially when this country's leadership has such disdain for our people.
28
@Jeff There are several Kahlo paintings. I think the case can be made, and is, in the show, that she did not have the influence on the American painters that the others did. Pollock, for example, studied with Sequeiros in NY. Diego Rivera was in NYC, as well. She was a giant of the same era, but that is a recent expression of her fame. If you're worried about women in the show, there are a whole bunch of Tina Modotti works on display. And let us not forget that Kahlo had her own big show recently at the Brooklyn Museum.
20
Nonsense. The show at the Whitney includes pieces by Kahlo.
And The New York Botanical Garden had a large, long-running show of her work just a couple of years ago.
Please stop with knee-jerk objections to non-existent problems.
5
A very refined review. Makes me arrange for a trip to NY. I only miss Siqueiros’ Niña Madre (Mother child) that boldly portrays the ever present drama of childhood maternity.
Thanks for such instructive reading.
8
I have appreciated many great murals in Mexico, including at the The National Autonomous University of Mexico. Also, living in Miami, I have noted political murals at Wynwood Walls, furthering the traditions of the 20th-century Mexican muralists. Will be in NY and won't miss this exhibit.
6
Wow! What a wonderful acknowledgment of Mexican art and how magnificent it is and continues to be.
17
Et tu, Georgia O'Keeffe?
Doesn't much of her work in the 20s and 30s (maybe later, for those who know her work well), also echo the influence of Mexican artists/art of the time?
That doesn't diminish it in any way, but does yet again call for, as the author tells us, better understanding and appreciation of the multiple (non-European) influences on art, literature and music.
We are all one big world after all. Too bad some of the most public figures in our country, refuse to accept this and instead insist on a nonsensical narrative of the great blessings provided in greatest measure by European and Europeans' contributions.
20
Heading that way next month and will visit. Grew up in Brooklyn, but moved to El Paso, TX, 1978. I have witnessed the explosion of Mexican cuisine across this country so that salsa has replaced ketchup as the number one condiment. It is high time that this country acknowledge the contribution that Mexico's art community has made to this country in all genres.
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I hope those who admire the Mexican mural tradition will visit the old City Hall in Hermosillo, the capital city of Sonora. The interior of this building is a piece of art in itself, with essentially every wall space covered with stunning scenes of Mexican history in the finest mural tradition. It seems that relatively few visitors walk across the square from the nearby cathedral to experience these wonderful works of art.
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@Golden Bear The Government Palace in Aguascalientes also has amazing murals on the walls of an extraordinary building located on the Plaza Mayor.
4
And to think "The Life of Washington" school murals by Victor Arnautoff were barely saved from permanent destruction (on a complete misreading of their intent) just months ago . . . and in 'forward thinking' San Francisco.
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Nice review; but, as usual, impossible to pay proper tribute to the rich Mexican art that 'enriches' us all, with their culture, and revealing the inequities we humans are 'so well endowed with'. Too bad that time and space didn't allow to depict Diego Rivera's master pieces, the Industry Murals in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Next time perhaps, hopefully sooner than later...so some of us oldies may yet wake up to the marvels of human ingenuity, no matter what our differences may be (can you imagine how poorer we would be if we were all homogeneous, indistinguishable, with no fresh ideas and lacking creativity to exhalt our individuality?).
43
@manfred marcus the Diego Rivera murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts are magnificent.
19
I wonder whether many know of the fabulous murals in the United States Courthouse in Pittsburgh. The building was a WPA project (completed in 1934, if I recall) and grand murals were painted in several courtrooms; additional murals were added in a recent renovation. In my opinion, the older murals are masterpieces, and the newer are quite good. One of the older in particular stands out: a depiction of phases in the production of steel. As a youth, I worked in a Pittsburgh steel mill. This particular mural captures the light with unerring accuracy. Later in life, when I was a lawyer, many were the hours I spent in that courtroom, enjoying the painting's unmatched evocative power.
40
@Jim Garrett There are several websites that list where WPA paintings reside. I was just in LA for two months and there are several places. Also so many as you point out government buildings that were constructed in that period. In one part of LA people kept walking into me as stopped and studies and looked up the entire building. There is so much art in the outside of these buildings as well. My late wife Tina had an aunt and uncle who did art work for guide books under FDR. The beauty of FDR and all those programs were he took individuals and what they were good at and put them to work providing art work, guide books, so many of the travel posters of the period for the National Parks were fantastic works of art and today worth thousands in themselves. Each guidebook was made for each state. Today we take people who are artists and if they want social benefits demand they take any job picking fruit, nothing to do with what their skills are. it is one size fits all. Tina's aunt and uncle could not make a living at art once they had children - aunt became an art teacher, ran an art and framing shop and the uncle did paintings for family (one was our wedding present over 50 years ago, drawings, but had to make money by owning a small trucking company. Can remember the first time I met him early Dec. 1968 visiting Tina's grandmother in Queens heard a truck horn blow went outside and there was the uncle throwing me a grandma's Christmas tree. Just back from Maine. Jim Trautman
18
@Jim Garrett The depression brought desperate times to the US. I believe you are right: the New Deal and WPA helped us remember our strengths. Now, again, we need to remember our strengths to overcome adversity.
16
What an amazing legacy the Depression gave us, despite its miseries. I drive the Blue Ridge Parkway every day and enjoy the WPA mural in our post office.
I’m not sure the WPA did all that much to change the trajectory of our economy, but it also gave us joys that will last for generations.
17
Still waiting for our artists to respond to the equally terrifying times we live in today.
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@Anxious Anonymous
They/we/I have been subdued by the immediacy of technology; much of our creativity is released in ephemeral ways; righteous anger evaporates in the false comfort of knowing likeminded people exist somewhere in the internet; and we return to the internet for comfort.
9
If you have any interest in Rivera, you have to come see the monumental Rivera Court at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Just superb.
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@misterarthur,
it is indeed a place to go whenever one's soul needs to be refreshed and fed. a feast for the eyes as well.
5
@misterarthur Yes-! I still remember the mural from a single visit several years ago.
5
This beautifully written review left me breathless: It so clearly lays out the relation-ships among art techniques, artistic vision, and cultural-political history. I can’t wait to come to NYC to see it.
33
What a wonderful gallop through an amazing time—love it!
I had the enormous pleasure of interviewing one of those WPA artists who had benefited from the “artists as plumbers” ethos and been commissioned to do a post office mural. He was 100 when I talked to him, but still vividly remembered how no one could stop talking about los Tres Grandes and “what the Mexicans were up to” while he was at art school and beyond.
Thanks for this fabulous piece. It’s made me itch to get up to New York and hit this one up for myself.
28
And where art meets politics. Most are familiar with the story of Rockefeller commissioning a mural from Diego Rivera in 1932. I'll let you look it up rather than spoiling the story. Search for Man at the Crossroads (Recreated as Man, Controller of the Universe).
18
@Warcraft
The e.b. white poem on the event is the best account:
(Rockefeller speaks):
But after all, it is my wall.
We'll see if it is, said Rivera.
10
By substituting big photos for murals, the Whitney undermines the importance of space and place in mural making suggesting that a mural is merely a large object that can be procured—and displaced—by a museum anywhere. Their ‘truth’ seems ultimately to be more about uncovering the previously overlooked, not-so-subtly-suggested influences of Mexican muralist on renowned artists—artists who have long been lionized by the museum industry. It is a wonderful show, but one whose persuasion is NYC provincial.
11
I've lived and worked in Mexico, so I am fortunate enough to have seen already many of these amazing paintings and murals. But I have NEVER seen so many of these artists in one place at one time.
One point that should be emphasized is that these examples of great Mexican art represent the first time that indigenous peoples and their lives were depicted on canvas in any meaningful way. For that reason, the sadness of most of the works I saw and the history behind them, left a lasting impression on me.
The Mexcian art scene is thriving even now with hundreds of museums and private studios. Mexicans have always cherished and preserved their art and crafts and as a result we are all able to enjoy this incredible exhibit.
A trip to New York is definitely in my future!
72
@Renee Jones Go to Mexico City and see even more!
3
Love it!
Thank you so much for the heads up, will be attending
11