Western Journal of Speech Communication 41 (Spring 1977): 70–82.

Diego Rivera at Rockefeller Center: Fresco Painting and Rhetoric Robert L. Scott*

On May 9, 1933, Diego Rivera climbed Rivera, whose early art education had down from the scaffold where he had been in Mexico, lived, studied, and been working on a mural above the painted in Europe, mainly in Paris, for central bank of elevators in the RCA thirteen years. There he went through a Building, Rockefeller Center, then under number of phases, much like Picasso; like construction in New York City. But who is Picasso, he was amazingly adaptive and Diego Rivera? How did he get on that yet retained his own unique stamp. scaffold? And why is the date important? When he returned to his homeland in The date is important in the history of 1920, Rivera was a convinced Marx- art, and so is Diego Rivera. But I am [70/71]ist, but he was also a man who primarily interested in the rhetorical felt more and more thoroughly Mexican events that surround what must be from as his years in Europe wore to an end. His any point of view one of the most growing identification with peasants and scandalous affairs in twentieth century industrial workers was strengthened on a art, scandalous in the New Testament study tour of Italy during which he gazed sense of skandalon, a stumbling block. at the walls painted obviously for ordinary The story, however, must precede the congregations of people. He resolved to rhetorical analysis. paint public art. Rivera rationalized his determination neatly: only the rich could THE TALE buy fine easel art and for the most part they hid it away. Diego Rivera, 1886–1957, with José Although the impact of Europe and Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro ideology may account significantly for Siquieros formed a triumvirate that Rivera’s thirst to create monumental art, spearheaded “the Mexican Renaissance,” one must recognize also a strong cultural a movement that flourished in the period component. For F. S. C. Northrop the fact between the two World Wars. All three that Rivera was a Mexican, thoroughly were fine easel painters, but their murals, embued with the spirit of the Indian which one confronts at every turn in the aesthetic, is explanation enough for his cities of Mexico today, are simply mammoth, vivid public works.2 Without overwhelming in size, color, and doubt his works manifest both ideological message. Because of their work in Mexico and cultural components. His fresco City, one must go to Rome to find a rival paintings are usually historical display of frescoes. These men, and panoramas, building a welter of diverse especially Rivera, may be said nearly to strands from the sides and below to an have re-invented the art of working elevated central figure of future, utopian pigments into fresh plaster, making the transformation. There is little mistaking art integral with the buildings where men the message of radical liberation after and women live, work, and rest.1 generations, even centuries, of inhumane 2 exploitation; the ideological component pigment himself. It is little wonder that he is clear. But neither is there any mistaking considered himself a laborer in art. the great strength of the Aztec portions of During the 30’s Rivera’s work became the frescoes nor, when recognizable well known in the United States. revolutionaries are painted, as they Knowledgeable, wealthy art collectors commonly are, the vigor of the Zapatistas began to buy his work years before. compared to the rather perfunctory Among the earliest of these were John D. Bolsheviki; the cultural component is also Rockefeller, Jr., and his son Nelson, or clear. perhaps especially their wives, even From the middle 1920’s on, Rivera was though a panel at the Ministry of Public in constant trouble with the Communist Education contained a caricature of John Party in spite of his self-perceived loyalty. D. Rockefeller, Sr., as a part of “The Night In 1929 he was officially expelled front of the Rich,” which is contrasted to “The the Communist Party of Mexico. The Night of the Poor”; the contrast could be simplest explanations for his problems are considered vicious. that he represented too well a The Museum of Modern Art in New nationalistic bent at a time when the York City presented a retrospective official line demanded a rigorous exhibit of his art in 1931, the second one- internationalism; in addition, he accepted person show in its then short history (the commissions from the wealthy and from museum was founded in 1929; its main “corrupt” governments. His benefactors were the Rockefellers); the commonsense defense that no one else first such exhibition there was that of could pay for art or had walls to paint for Matisse. Rivera’s route to Rockefeller the people was irrelevant to most Center, however, was not from West 53rd Marxists. Rivera deeply and steadfastly Street but from San Francisco. considered himself a communist and He went to California to paint frescoes, wanted to be recognized as such. He was having been offered a small wall at the so recognized by the party, but not until California School of Fine Arts and later near the end of his life, after extreme and extended a larger commission to paint a servile self-criticism. mural at the new San Francisco Stock By 1930, however, his fame as an Exchange Building. He arrived in 1930 artist, and particularly as a fresco painter, after a long period of controversy about was world-wide. Critics came to Mexico whether or not such an undesirable to see his frescoes at the Secretariat of person should be admitted and some Education, the National Preparatory considerable protest by artists who School, the State Agricultural School at argued that California walls should be Chapingo, and the National Palace. The painted by California painters. sheer size of the paintings was Rivera was fascinated with the staggering. The 124 panels at the industrial might of the United States. Ministry of Public Education, a building Then, as now, there were voices who told two city blocks long and a city block of the corrupting force that the machine wide, where he painted most of the three had loosed in the lives of humankind, but stories of the inner courtyard, total over Rivera’s was not among them. He saw the 17,000 square feet. A monumental fresco machine as potentially liberating for the painter, of course, must work with masses. In his mural at the California assistants, with plas-[71/72]terers and School of Fine Arts, “The Making of a apprentices who help transfer the Fresco,” there occurs a central figure that sketches from long strips of paper to the strikes the dominant, recurring motif in walls, but Rivera always laid in all the his work in this country—an industrial 3 worker with his hand on the control lever; his metier. Picasso did not even reply. clearly he is the future, dominating the Rivera was warmly interested, but he machinery. Rivera left San Francisco for objected that he was quite beyond Detroit having painted, characteristically, competing for a commission. He would a mural at the Art School of 1200 square offer sketches and a description that feet although he had been commissioned could be accepted or rejected, but no to paint 120. competition; furthermore, he was known In Detroit he had a commission to as a fresco painter and color was his forte. paint an inner court of the Art Institute, The architect, with what call be mainly through the astute and quiet work interpreted as relief, took Rivera’s reply as of Edsel Ford. He spent more than three rejecting the offer. But Nelson Rockefeller months touring industrial plants and stepped in and smoothly negotiated a finally decided to paint four walls contract, accepting Rivera’s sketches and although his original contract called for verbal description, on the theme that had him to paint one. Edsel Ford, again been set for him: “Man at the Crossroads quietly, doubled his fee. Punches, presses, Looking with Hope and High Vision to the and conveyor belts were to Rivera as Choosing of a New and Better Future.” roads, canals, and trees to Constable, or Rivera set to work in Radio City in Courbet, or Eakins. His Detroit Murals are March 1933. The fresco took shape considered his best work in this country, gradually on the wall. The familiar motifs but they were controversial. One panel, appeared. Around the edges were turmoil called “The Vaccination,” was seen as a and exploitation contrasted with joyful caricature of “The Holy Family”; indeed, cooperation. And in the center the the white cap of the nurse has the effect commanding industrial worker, his hand of a halo as [72/73] she holds a child, on the controls, his eyes forward. The whose white hair seems halo like, to be crossroads was formed of two long, vaccinated. A horse, a cow, and sheep narrow ellipses—one a microscopic slide, stand in the foreground. To those who the other a telescopic view—intersecting said that the animals suggested the just below the worker, dividing the panel stable, Rivera pointed out blandly that the into four sections. painting was quite straightforward and Soon, however, another face became that we owe vaccine to the gentle recognizable. A figure to one side uniting creatures pictured. the hands of a worker, a soldier, and a Rivera received letters from the negro, a figure labeled in Rivera’s verbal Rockefeller family even while the description as a “worker-leader” and controversy raged in Detroit. Nelson outlined only roughly in his preliminary Rockefeller wrote that he and his wife sketches now took on the unmistakabl[e] were looking forward to coming to see features of Lenin. The public furor began the murals. There were hints of a with a story in the New York World- commission to paint in New York, where Telegram, April 24, 1933, headlined, Nelson Rockefeller, then twenty-nine “Rivera Paints Scenes of Communist / years old, served as executive head of the Activity And John D. Jr. Foots Bill.” corporation building the Center. When For the next two weeks, Nelson the commission was proffered, the terms Rockefeller, and others, attempted to were absurd. It was to be a competition persuade Rivera to remove Lenin’s among Matisse, Picasso, and Rivera, and portrait and substitute another, perhaps the painting was to be monochrome on simply a generalized person; the painter’s canvas. Matisse politely declined to assistants threatened to strike if he altered submit sketches; the work simply was not that portion of the fresco. Rivera offered 4 to balance Lenin with the portrait of an substantive, and the strategic. I shall use American liberator; Abraham Lincoln them in turn to discuss the affair at hand, seemed appropriate to him. [73/74] Another way to express the dynamic When the situation seemed at quality of rhetoric is to say that whatever stalemate, Rivera hired a photographer to else it may be, the human milieu is also take pictures of the nearly finished fresco, rhetorical. We may be blissfully unaware but construction guards would not let of the rhetorical aspect of our existences, him enter. One of Rivera’s assistants or choose to ignore it, or find it trivial; smuggled a camera into the work area just as we may be blissfully unaware of, or and took photographs surreptitiously. choose to ignore, or find trivial other Finally Rivera was called from the scaffold aspects of our experiences. But we are on May 9. After a brief conference, he nonetheless surrounded by a flow of and his assistants left for the day; the argument. fresco was immediately covered, and The controversy, the immediate Rivera was not permitted to re-enter the rhetorical discourse, of the affair at RCA Building, which was opened to the Rockefeller Center was formed to some public with the mural neatly masked from degree by the controversy over the view. Detroit murals. And when the furor broke The end of Rivera’s work on the wall in New York City, the argument renewed was not the beginning of the controversy; its life in Detroit. In Detroit it had a it had begun long before. Rivera feared markedly religious side. Seen from some that the painting itself would be angles, the blasts at the “Holy Family” destroyed, even though the Rockefellers panel was a small part of a continuing pledged not to; some argued that the controversy about the role of religion in painting should be finished and the lives of people, a controversy that a displayed, and others that it should great deal of Rivera’s art had a way of remain covered for the judgment of bringing to the [74/75] surface. From future generations or that it should be other angles, the controversy in Detroit removed intact. could undoubtedly be seen as involving Here I must end the narrative and the rhetorical working out of the roles of begin to consider briefly the ebb and flow certain religious leaders and religious of the controversy, trying to draw some groups in that community. conclusions about its significant rhetorical When Marie Hochmuth Nichols wrote properties. her fine study of Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, she presented in THE MORAL meticulous detail the setting for the speech.4 These details included excellent Four years ago I argued that “rhetoric” descriptions of the physical environment shared with every other term in natural and a careful examination of editorial language and with human experience opinions about the speaker and his party, generally a certain ambiguity.3 It seemed about the ideas for which he stood, and to me then, and still does, that the the actions throughout the nation that ambiguity of “rhetoric” cannot be fixed could be expected, in short, a description (in the sense of repaired) in a definition of what Carl L. Becker has called “the but may be fixed (in the sense of climate of opinion.”5 But she did not stabilized) momentarily by taking a attempt to trace the debates in which the plurality of perspectives. I proposed theories of the Federal Union as a somewhat arbitrarily three perspectives; “compact” or a “contract” were these I labeled the dynamic, the hammered out, nor did she do more than 5 mention the failed effort of the so-called Archibald Macleish composed a [75/76] “Crittenden Compromise” which remarkable cycle of poems entitled occupied much of the time of the Senate “Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller’s City.” during the fall preceding the Rivera and Bertram D. Wolfe got out a inauguration. Should she have? A yes-or- book, A Portrait of America, which, no answer is not relevant to my argument published in 1934, told the story of at this moment; rather I would point out Rivera’s work in this country and that the open possibilities of associating contained sixty illustrations, including one the various strands of argument that of the unfinished and destroyed mural. always surround us, subordinating and The protest meetings, pickets, superordinating some to others, gives editorials, letters to the editor, petitions, rhetoric its dynamic quality. and manifestoes continued for the better Rhetoric, in its dynamic sense, seems to part of a year. Rivera spoke on the radio, need some center of interest, some at meetings, and on street corners. One nucleus, so to speak, to shape its speech strikes me as especially significant character. The arguments over the for a reason that may seem strange: it is Rockefeller Center mural had cooled peripheral to the controversy. perceptively when, on the night of Shortly after he was locked out, Rivera February 9, 1934, workmen entered the appeared at a meeting on the Columbia RCA Building, reduced the painting to University campus protesting the firing of dust, and resurfaced the wall. Donald Henderson, an instructor in The fresco was destroyed; but, of economics. The dissenting students course, in other quite literal senses it was marched, threw eggs, besieged briefly the not. Immediately after he was locked out, home of the university’s president, and, Rivera offered to reproduce the mural on when the rally was invaded by “loyal any suitable wall in New York City. He students,” had fist-fights. In his brief was offered several, but none were suited speech Rivera urged the students to to the plan of that mural. Declaring that “wrest the control of the university from he would use the Rockefeller money in Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler,” or so the interests of the masses (he had been translated the New York Times, since the paid his entire fee), Rivera painted a series painter, whose English was difficult to of panels at the New Workers School in understand, addressed the crowd in New York. After the destruction of his French.6 Surely, given the circumstances work at Radio City, the Mexican and the language, even when translated government gave him a wall at the Palace on the spot, the specific words that Rivera of the Fine Arts in Mexico City, where he spoke could not have had much painted a fresco, “Man at the significance; but the sheer presence of the Crossroads.” That mural can be seen radical artist, himself the target of today and compared with the concerted criticism from the right, must photographs of the version hammered off have been symbolic. the wall in New York. They are different; Specific symbols are like logs in a fire. as Rivera said, the walls are different. As Horace Gregory observed, the Art spawned controversy; the hammers in the RCA Building on the controversy spawned art. E. B. White night of February 9, 1934, did not so wrote verses in the form of a dialogue much destroy as create a symbol: “The between “John D.’s grandson Nelson” real issue was raised when the Rockefellers and Rivera—“A Ballad of Artistic dismissed Rivera. The blank space is now Integrity”—which echoed many of the a better testimonial to the cause of art words both parties had spoken or written. 6 and revolution than the work itself would In one instance, for example, a Times have been.”7 editorialist chided John Sloan, an So the first moral of the story of Rivera American artist who raised the specter of at Rockefeller Center is this: although a censorship, for not understanding, as he controversy is formed by the individual should have, the differences between acts of specific persons, it has nonetheless easel painting and mural painting: “It is a reality of its own. Put another way, once censorship to suppress a picture or a in motion, controversies use people and statue. It is not censorship to suppress a form people as much as people form and mural display which is in shrieking use them. I take the human world to be contradiction with its environment, with one in which rhetoric is a natural force, its own purpose. A mural painting is a but rhetoric is also the everpresent signboard. People don’t hang signboards manifestation of that force. in front of inns announcing that poison is The dynamic flow of rhetoric takes its on sale within. They don’t put up over shape from substrata of values. Just as the doors of schools Latin inscriptions rhetoric, as dynamic, may reveal the stating that children’s minds are underlying substantial value levels, it befogged inside. Yet that is what a Lenin contributes to these, as if by such mural on a Rockefeller business structure geological processes as erosion and amounts to.”10 sedimentation. In 1973 I argued that the Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., a Columbia old rhetoric was strategic (a quite University professor, saw the matter a legitimate and necessary perspective) but little as the Times editorialist did, but that the dynamic and substantive aspects, resolved the issue quite differently: “Is the taken together, revealed a new rhetoric of propaganda soaked up in the art, or does value-evolution.8 it remain more or less like the cherry in In the case at hand, a very old conflict the cocktail? A propagandist attitude will in values is played out; the conflict was generally add to a painter’s difficulties, as [76/77] scarcely settled, and I shall not requiring visualization of matter normally settle it here. But the dominant opinion in conceived in verbal terms; it may also our culture is that advocacy is the powerfully reinforce his emotional antinomy of fine art; that opinion may be, capacity, and if that can be concentrated and often has been, challenged. visually, his art will become the gainer.”11 So often was Rivera attacked as a As Edmund Wilson observed perceptively, “mere propagandist” that he learned to at one juncture in a running controversy make the label into a banner of with Joseph Freeman, a Marxist critic who superiority, arguing, in effect, that denounced Rivera, propaganda is a defect propaganda was the only force that in art mainly when one dislikes the justified art; and that properly justified, ideology, “but the same people who take propagandistic art was art in the interests propaganda for granted when Virgil or of the people.9 Giotto has done it, will outlaw it when The difficulty with the reversal of values Eisenstein or Diego Rivera does it.”12 Rivera repeatedly attempted was that it [77/78] opened the claim to legitimacy in the In life, values tend not to occur singly suppressing of his art. The editorialists in or stand neatly isolated from one another; the New York Times, for example, argued when they occur mixed naturally in consistently that if the value of his art was day-to-day affairs, they seem to generate chiefly propagandistic then the dissonance. This circumstance, it seems to Rockefellers, or presumably anyone else me, is the genesis of Stephen Toulmin’s who could, might well obliterate murals. 7 insight that “conflicts of duty are an business, business; furthermore, Rivera inescapable feature of the moral life.”13 himself was militantly antireligious, wasn’t In discussing religious celebration, he? And there always nagged his Northrop makes this contrast: “There is argument about the wider ownership of another difference between the Mexicans’ art the fact that he accepted commissions and the Anglo-Americans’ approach to from persons with private fortunes. That democracy in its bearing on religion. For fact was hurled at him by the left as well the Mexicans, art is a necessity of life, not as the right. His answer to leftist a luxury.… For people of the English- opponents at one mass meeting, that speaking world, art tends to be a luxury they must bring the revolution to [78/79] or an afterthought, or else a hash of fruition and own the walls or he would souvenirs without integrity because of the have no choice but to paint the walls he use of old art forms for modern could get with the fees offered, institutions and doctrines which deny the undoubtedly did not help Americans in theses which the art forms represent.”14 general rethink the relationships of private Can it be that many who take art as very property and public art.16 serious, having an integrity that cannot Intermingled with the values of brook propagandistic use, could at the ownership and of art are fascinating same time experience art as “a luxury … questions of honesty. The conduct of the or else a hash of souvenirs”? If there is Rockefellers was contrasted from several dissonance in these values expressed time points of view with that of Rivera who, and again in the letters to the editor seemingly by his own admission, supporting the Rockefellers, it is reduced concealed his purposes while taking the in favor of art as luxury or souvenir items commission.17 The substance of these by the notion that art objects are private questions would be well worth detailed property which, consequently, can be consideration in a separate paper. Their treated in any way owners may choose. mention here may serve as a transition, Rivera challenged the precedence of for the arguments can be seen from the private property in a radio address: “The perspective of ethos, a traditional aspect case of Diego Rivera is a small matter. I of the strategic art of rhetoric. want to explain more clearly the Before turning to the consideration of principles involved. Let us take as an rhetoric as strategy, a judgment example an American millionaire who concerning the substantive level of buys the Sistine Chapel, which contains rhetoric may be appropriate. A second the work of Michelangelo.… Would that moral of the story of Rivera at Rockefeller millionaire have the right to destroy the Center is this: since human acts are value Sistine Chapel?” And he said later in the laden and the appreciation of art is a speech, “We all recognize, then, that in confluence of acts, we should expect human creation there is something which controversy to be expressed in as well as belongs to humanity at large, and that no to grow out of art. A demand for individual owner has the right to destroy aesthetic purity is fundamentally a or keep it solely for his own demand simply to ignore an aspect of enjoyment.…”15 being human. Such a demand is But the arguments of Rivera and his successful only tentatively as a strategy of supporters apparently did little to refocus focus. Ironically, as such, it suddenly values for most Americans. He and they exhibits a rhetorical thrust. often choose examples of long Prior to considering the topic of ethos recognized religious art. Perhaps to with which I shall close, let us consider Americans, religion is religion and briefly the strategies of the surface of 8

Rivera’s art, which does not mean its But few Americans, caught up in the superficialities, but rather what appears to edges of the controversy at least, looked the viewer. As a muralist, Rivera was a at his walls, or, indeed, had the story teller; his work is saturated with opportunity to see many of them. For historical detail. The teeming detail of his most Americans, undoubtedly, Rivera was narrative art swarms from the edges to exotic, but the Rockefellers—in many the usually clear summary figure ways more remote than he—were commanding the center. Such a style and accepted parts of their world. A letter execution serves the purposes of an written to the New York Times by a man I advocate well. Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., assume to be typical, Harry D. Robbins, who did not find “Man at the Flushing, New York, illustrates the case Crossroads” quite satisfactory (“in with which the patient, polite general, the invention seems too literary Rockefellers, who scrupulously paid their for a mural in a concourse—too much in monetary debt to the ungrateful artist, need of an explanatory text”) praised the were accepted: panels Rivera completed for the New Workers School: “The procedure recalls Diego Rivera’s changes in his murals at the close-up of the cinema reinforced by Rockefeller Center may have been, as cut-backs, or more remotely those Dudley Johnson asserts in his letter to abundant exempla which illustrate the THE TIMES, ‘those of detail, not of form main theme of a medieval homily.”18 or general concept’ [which quotes one That examples may be relevant to a of the artist’s own statements], but I do not believe that even a noted foreign thesis seen as well as thesis heard should artist is entitled to abuse American be apparent enough. The rhetoric of standards of political thought or Rivera’s surfaces is straightforward: his art introduce objectionable propaganda is that of iteration and emphasis. But it is under the guise of art and under the color that arrests the viewer and makes it protection of a contract and approval of possible for iteration and emphasis to original sketches which, I take for have their effects. I can still remember, granted, failed to reveal his subtle after twenty years have intervened, being intent. Mr. Rockefeller’s attitude is to be stopped [79/80] literally in my tracks on warmly commended. It is not a question my first sight of Rivera’s murals in of the attitude of a capitalist but the attitude to be expected of any proper Cuernavaca. Of these murals, Phillip N. 20 Youtz wrote: “It is a hard test for any American citizen. painting to be set as a rival to nature herself. One of Rivera’s murals covers the Although many artists defended Rivera, three walls of a court in the Palace of others took positions much like that of Cortés. The fourth side is entirely open to this letter-writer. Rivera, after all, was a a view of the valley. The painted Communist, an atheist, and a foreigner. landscape which is background for the The cry raised before Rivera entered figures in the Story of the Conquest of California was heard again: American Mexico has to stand against the real walls for American painters. landscape which is one of the most A third moral: to be effective as striking in the world. The result, which strategy, a strategy should be has both unity and contrast, proves that conventional. (If true art conceals itself, man, too, can create a world.”19 what garb could be more appropriate And the world created by Rivera has than the conventional?) What is meaning. conventional, of course, is quite relative to culture. One might consider the apparent efficacy in our times of the 9 commercial use of testimonials of athletic revolutionary and works for the and cinema stars and the apparent capitalists? ineffectiveness of the same technique in People have and seem to need a sense straight-forward political causes. Recently of place: work-place, dwelling-place, the Time magazine line-up of stars-for- resting-place. They attach to place what Ford against [!] stars-for-Carter call best they mean to themselves. The plastic be interpreted as comic relief in the midst artist may have a privileged position in of that periodical’s serious [80/81] communicating such a sense, and some commentary.21 Most Americans found do their work with a strong sense of Rivera doubly improper, i.e., strategically advocacy. Rivera did. and valuatively: improper means to Rivera’s work methods often dismayed improper ends. his patrons. In San Francisco, for example, he spent months being a charming, social CONCLUSION lion. The press, which had been apprehensive about the entry of the In the sense of a means-to-an-end in undesirable person, learned that he made discourse, ethos is a common rhetorical marvellous copy. He was the hit of the strategy. But clearly what we call ethos is Stanford-California football game in also an end. There is a pervading sense of 1930, which he attended in a sombrero ethos as an open process-product with his wife, the artist Frida Kahlo relationship, one that takes character as dressed in a full native Mexican costume; something-in-itself and as generative. In afterwards he gave an interview in which the myriad of incidents, weighty and he compared football to a bullfight—but trivial, that swirled around Rivera’s work joyous, not brutal—and called the card- at Rockefeller Center the question section “art in the mass, a new form of constantly is posed: What is the meaning art.”22 Then suddenly after what seemed of America? What is the character of this to be interminable play, Rivera set to country? The corporate wholeness must work, again worrying his patrons: would be taken for granted, but the moment it the man drop dead? He would work for is, it threatens to dissolve. What days, weeks, months with little rest. If the substance does it have? sports writers were to have seen him, they To begin to answer such questions would have had to write of his physical demands strategies of response. The feats in terms of four-minute-[81/82]miles mingling responses inevitably creates a or sixty-home-run-seasons. He tried to dynamic flow of arguments. Given that soak up the life of a people in their flow across this country, from west to places—as he did the work-life in the east, one is forced to conclude that if the factories of Detroit—and then pour into head of Lenin had not appeared in the his murals that life and its places. mural, the eruption would have issued If Rivera failed in America, and in some from something else, but it would have senses he surely did, it was because he come although undoubtedly its time and failed to soak up enough. He wanted to shape would have been different: Rivera communicate the great energy and had forced too much stocktaking; he had democratic promise of the country as pushed his interpretations to the extreme. persuasively as he himself felt it. He was And, of course, at the same time the well convinced of the weaknesses and painter was being asked, What is the past crimes of the nation, but he could meaning of Rivera? What is the character easily record and accept these as of this man who claims to be subordinate to the promise. Finally, however, he was pulled beyond his own 10 vision by his internationalist needs which took the form of the Communist idea. In Modern Monthly, July 1933, pp. 275–277; and Mexico he was better able to control and “Rivera Says His Art Is Red Propaganda,” New York Times, 14 May 1933, sec. 1, p. 1, col. 2. See also: integrate these internationalist urgings. “Rivera in Hot Water,” Literary Digest, 27 May Rivera did, however, paint a portrait of 1933 pp. 13–14. America. His frescoes and the furor they 10 “Mural War Persists,” New York Times, 18 March created did reveal the conflicting value 1934, sec. 4, p. 4, col. 5. structures that are in our country. For 11 Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., “Rivera’s American Americans interested in the rhetoric of Murals,” Saturday Review of Literature, 19 May 1934, p. 697. this bit of our past, one datum should not 12 Edmund Wilson, “Art, the Proletariat and be overlooked: although the great Marx,” The New Republic, 23 August 1933, p. 44. Mexican fresco painter travelled with and Wilson found Freeman as wrong as the to Moscow, he was never offered a wall Rockefellers but concluded, sadly, “If our own there nor in any other city in the Soviet national ideals were in good health at this time, you may be sure that we should have works of Union. literature and art which would act as propaganda for them. One of the most dismaying things about • Mr. Scott is Professor and Chairperson of the crisis it seems to me—one of the worst the Department of Speech-Communication evidences of the surrender of the republic to at the University of Minnesota. financial and industrial power—has been our inability to muster for the emergency any symbols or myths from our national past” (p. 45). Mustering such myths was precisely the genius of Rivera’s Mexican murals. 13 Stephen E. Toulmin, The Uses of Argument (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1958), p. 1 The details of Rivera’s life and work are readily 117. available. The best single source, and one on 14 Northrop, p, 47. which my account depends heavily, is Bertram D. 15 Wolfe, pp. 330–331. See also: “Art Row Pressed Wolfe, The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera (New York: by Rivera Friends,” New York Times, 18 May 1933, Stein and Day, 1963). sec. 1, p. 22, col. 4. 2 For F. S. C. Northrop’s analysis of the Mexican 16 See: “Comrade Rivera Causes Red Row,” New historical and aesthetic spirit, and Rivera’s York Times, 15 May 1933, sec. 1, p. 9, cols. 4–5. relationship to these, see: “The Rich Culture of 17 Compare Rivera’s statement quoted in “Rivera Mexico,” the second chapter of his well-known Says His Art Is Red Propaganda,” New York Times, book, The Meeting of East and West (New York: 14 May 1933, sec. 1, p. 1, col. 2, with those made Macmillan, 1946). three days earlier, “Row on Rivera Art Still in 3 Robert L. Scott, “On Not Defining ‘Rhetoric,’” Deadlock,” New York Times, 11 May 1933, sec. 1, Philosophy and Rhetoric, 6 (1973), 81–96. 1, p. 19, cols. 1–2. 4 Marie Hochmuth [Nichols], “Lincoln’s First 18 Mather, pp. 698–99. Inaugural Address,” in American Speeches, eds. 19 Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Museum of Art, Feb. Wayland Maxfield Parrish and Marie Hochmuth 1932. Quoted by Wolfe, p. 275. (New York: Longmans, Green, 1954), pp. 21–71. 20 14 May 1933 sec. 4, p. 5, cols. 5–6. The letter See also: Walter R. Fisher, “The Failure of cited from Dudley Johnson may be found in the Compromise in 1860–1861: A Rhetorical View,” New York Times, 12 May 1933, sec. 1, p. 16, col. Speech Monographs, 33 (1966), 364–71. 5. 5 Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth 21 Time, 1 Nov. 1976, p. 38. Century Philosophers (New Haven, Conn.: Yale 22 See: Wolfe, pp. 276–296. The interview was Univ. Press, 1932), ch. 1, esp. p. 5. printed in the Oakland Post-Enquirer, 29 Nov. 6 “1,500 in Fist Fight at Columbia Rally,” New York 1930; quoted by Wolfe, p. 290. Times, 16 May 1933, sec. 1, p. 3, cols. 1–2. 7 “Texts and Murals,” New Republic, 7 March 1934, p. 103. 8 Scott, p. 94. 9 In connection with the affair at Rockefeller Center, see: Diego Rivera, “What Is Art For?”