[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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