Painting on Walls

 “Diego Rivera – the Detroit Industry Murals,” Gala Art and Heritage Publishers Ltd. - Official Museum Booklet

If you haven't visited the Detroit Institute of Art you have missed the magnificent murals that Rivera called his best work. In a glass-covered courtyard, they depict the production of the automobile from agricultural products, iron ore and rubber to engine blocks, chassis frames and a tiny, fully-assembled car. Swarming over this are hundreds of workers creating the finished product. The workers are actually the main focus of the murals. It took 11 months from April 1932 to March 1933 to finish the project. Rivera was accompanied by his wife and artist Frida Kahlo, who hated the cold and sterility of Detroit. Having a miscarriage didn't help. She called Detroit 'Gringolandia.'

Rivera studied impressionism in Paris in 1907, then went to Italy where he borrowed Renaissance fresco techniques and adapted them to modernity. The technique is incredible. It involves layering three levels of plaster, with the fine, final one being painted on while wet so as to embed the water-based colors into the plaster as it dries. He used huge sketches (called 'cartoons') as templates over tissue paper. The tissue paper outlines are attached to the wall, then perforated at the outlines. Charcoal dust is blown through the perforations onto the wall to create the basic black dot lines in the wet plaster. The tissue is then removed. These dotted lines are used for the final outlines, then darker shading added, then color. The murals are still vibrant today, in long panels, huge panels and smaller ones, in a rectangular courtyard. It is similar to the method used by Michelangelo. In Italy its called 'buon fresco.'

Rivera spent hours in River Rouge, the giant Ford factory, along with other plants, accompanied by a photographer, studying how things were done. He used the photos to create various mural scenes, so they were not exclusively from memory. He had always been fascinated by machines and here the machines come to life – an extension of human labor. Airplanes, steam powered generators and ships are shown. Workers are depicted punching in, unloading raw materials at the docks, making steel, working on engine parts, assembling the automobiles and having lunch. Some of the faces are those of real people. They are presided over by giant proletarian figures with 4 skin colors (which the guide-book incorrectly calls 'races') – along with the raw materials nature provides. This illustrates Marx's comment in the “Critique of the Gotha Programme” that labor and nature are the keys to production. In one corner panel, much like Renaissance art, Rivera's patrons are depicted. They were Edsel Ford, head of Ford Motor Company and William Valentine, the director of the Art Institute. The former was a designer of cars and interested in art; the latter believed “art springs from the common man.”

In practice the work represents both a Marxist approach but also capitalist view of technology - most of all highlighting labor, machines, female fecundity and raw source materials. Only two supervisors are pictured (both in a somewhat negative way) while Henry Ford is depicted in one small panel giving a lecture. Unlike the political content of the mural in New York's Rockefeller Center that was destroyed by Rockefeller, there is no overt political commentary – no Lenin, Marx or Trotsky, no Depression, no red flags, no open class struggle. There is an anti-war panel regarding the misuse of science to create poison gas; another contrasting panel showing a good use of science to create vaccines. Medicine and chemistry are also heralded. There is one panel that depicts Brazilian workers providing latex to be shipped to Detroit for rubber tires, showing the international dimensions of production.

At the opening of the exhibit, there was controversy from different conservative directions. While the murals' guide book tries to liken some of the 27 panels to Biblical scenes or motifs, Rivera was an atheist and subverted these images, which the Catholic Church later protested as 'sacrilegious.' Symbolic depictions of two nude earth mothers, based on Mexican style, offended others. The original architect who designed the rather bland outdoor courtyard was angry that his courtyard was taken over. Others attacked it for being done by a Marxist and a Mexican. Others claimed it was either advertising for Ford or 'communist propaganda.' Ford and Valentine consistently defended the work as 'monumental realism' representing 'the spirit of Detroit' and eventually the hubbub died down... until the Red Purge of the 1950s, when it blossomed again. The mural panels foreshadowed the mural projects of the WPA Federal Art Project initiated by Roosevelt in 1933. Valentine said at the time: “In the years to come, they (the murals) will be ranked among the truly great art treasures of America.”

The booklet itself is a work of paper art, as pages fold out and also up, adding dimension to the physical booklet, the narrative and the color pictures. Thanks and “a tip o' the Hatlo hat” to comrade Jeff Balfour for providing the booklet.

This is one of many art reviews on this blog. Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “The Lacuna” (Kingsolver); “Frida Kahlo, Walker Art Center,” “The Cradle Will Rock,” “The Marxist Theory of Art” (Laing), “Ways of Seeing” (Berger); “Diego Rivera,” “Left in London,” “Art is Dead,” Art of the Soviets” or the words 'art' or 'museum.'

The Cultured Marxist

January 1, 2024