[lit-ideas] Re: Art and the Wall

  • From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 14:05:11 -0700

Andy wrote:

Diego Rivera's art was not beautiful to Rockefeller. I personally think "art" on building walls looks like graffiti.

Diego's Mural (which was in the lobby of Rockefeller Center) wasn't destroyed because it offended Rockefeller's aesthetic sensibilities but because it contained the figure of Lenin, leading a parade. Rockefeller did not act immediately to have the work destroyed, but asked that the figure of Lenin be removed and replaced simply by some unidentifiable person; Rivera refused, but offered to place a figure of Lincoln at one end of the mural ('Man at the Crossroads'); however, this did not satisfy Rockefeller. Rivera and his supporters tried to negotiate for the work to be moved to the Museum of Modern Art, but late one evening he was called down from his scaffold, handed a check for the remainder of his fee, and dismissed.


Rivera later painted essentially the same mural in Mexico City, adding the figure of John D. Rockefeller, in a nightclub.

I've seen the Detroit murals; they're moving enough, but I suspect that most people who see them no longer recognize most of the people depicted in them, so their former (attempted) didactic power is lost.

I wonder if Andy considers the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or ceiling s by e.g. Tiepolo,—not to mention the 'cave paintings' at such sites as Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc—'graffiti'

Robert Paul
Reed College
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