American Communists View Mexican Muralism: Critical and Artistic Responses1
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AMERICAN COMMUNISTS VIEW MEXICAN MURALISM: CRITICAL AND ARTISTIC RESPONSES1 Andrew Hemingway A basic presupposition of this essay is 1My thanks to Jay Oles for his helpful cri- that the influence of Mexican muralism ticisms of an earlier version of this essay. on some American artists of the inter- While the influence of Commu- war period was fundamentally related nism among American writers of the to the attraction many of these same so-called "Red Decade" of the 1930s artists felt towards Communism. I do is well-known and has been analysed not intend to imply some simple nec- in a succession of major studies, its essary correlation here, but, given the impact on workers in the visual arts revolutionary connotations of the best- is less well understood and still under- known murals and the well-publicized estimated.3 This is partly because the Marxist views of two of Los Tres Grandes, it was likely that the appeal of this new 2I do not, of course, mean to discount artistic model would be most profound the influence of Mexican muralism on non-lef- among leftists and aspirant revolutionar- tists such as George Biddle and James Michael ies.2 To map the full impact of Mexican Newell. For Biddle on the Mexican example, see his 'Mural Painting in America', Magazine of Art, muralism among such artists would be vol. 27, no. 7, July 1934, pp.366-8; An American a major task, and one I can not under- Artist's Story, Boston, Little, Brown and Company, take in a brief essay such as this. Here, 1939, pp. 263-7. Newell's The Evolution of Western Civilization for Evander Childs High School in the my aims are more modest, namely to Bronx, New York, executed under the WPA trace changing attitudes towards Los Federal Art Project in 1938, is clearly indebted Tres Grandes in the American Commu- thematically and formally to Orozco's American Civilization cycle at Dartmouth College (1932), nist press to establish the ideological although the style of the individual figures is framework within which their example more Riveraesque. See James Michael Newell, was received, and to indicate something 'The Evolution of Western Civilization', in Francis of the artists' responses. V. O'Connor (ed.), Art for the Millions: Essays from the 1930s by Artists and Administrators of My concern is with both the the WPA Federal Art Project, Boston, New York mythologies of Orozco, Rivera, and Graphic Society, 1973, pp.60-63, 287; and also Siqueiros as individual agents, and with 'Field Notes', Magazine of Art, vol. 24, no. 4, April 1932, p.303. the perceived qualities of their works. 3The phrase "Red Decade" comes from That these two things were unders- Eugene Lyons's anti-Communist tract The Red tood to be inextricably related is only Decade: The Stalinist Penetration of America, to be expected given that Romantic Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1941. The classic study of American writers and Communism is Daniel concepts of expression were still Aaron's Writers on the Left: Episodes in American such common currency in this period. Literary Communism (1961), New York, Columbia The character (moral qualities, social University Press, 1992. Among recent books on the subject, see especially Barbara Foley, Radical and political outlook) of the artists Representations: Politics and Form in US Proletarian thus became inseparable from their Fiction, 1929-1941, Durham, NC, Duke University art. Whether or not this assumption Press, 1993. –moulded as it was in part by politi- In relation to the visual arts, the main lite- rature includes: David Shapiro, Social Realism: cal exigencies– invalidated all critical Art as a Weapon, New York, Ungar, 1973; and 14 judgements is another question. Boston University & Bread and Roses, Social historiography of twentieth-century of its aspects) meant to Communist American art has been so skewed by and fellow-travelling artists in thirties the ideological promotion of Abstract America.5 However, this focuses on Expressionism and later avant-garde one city (San Francisco), where, Lee tendencies as exemplars of cultural argues, Communist cultural politics freedom during the Cold War that the was in some degree exceptional, and very different kinds of art that domi- the general picture thus still needs to nated in the United States during the be established. interwar years (and particularly those Before addressing the historical associated with the left) have been record, the question begs to be asked as relegated to the functions of a prolo- to why Mexican muralism appealed so gue to the great drama enacted after strongly to artists of the American left 1940 when American art (supposedly) when it was the Bolshevik state rather first achieved global significance -fortui- than the Mexican one they looked to tously at the same time as the nation's as a political model. And particularly pretensions to global hegemony began so, since Communist and fellow-travel- to be realized. The presumed lack of quality of most art of the twenties and thirties Concern and Urban Realism: American Painting made it not worth taking seriously, of the 1930s (exhibition catalogue by Patricia Hills et. al.), Boston: Boston University & Bread and consequently interest in Mexican and Roses, 1983. Cécile Whiting's Antifascism in artistic influence in the United States American Art, New Haven & London, Yale Uni- was confined to figures validated by versity Press, 1989, is erroneous in important respects – see Andrew Hemingway, 'Fictional the dominant institutions such as Unities: "Antifascism" and "Antifascist Art" in 30s Pollock and Guston. The palpable America', Oxford Art Journal, vol. 14, no. 1, 1991, effects of Mexican muralism on some pp. 107-17. 4E.g., see Francis V. O'Connor, 'The of the work produced under the Influence of Diego Rivera on the Art of the New Deal arts programmes could United States During the 1930s and After', not be ignored, but then these pro- in Founders Society Detroit Institute of Arts, grammes of state support were seen Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, New York, W.W. Norton, 1986, pp. 156-83. as a great detour from the historically 5Anthony Lee, Painting on the Left: Diego ordained route to individual artistic Rivera, Radical Politics, and San Francisco's Public achievement that had produced a vast Murals, Berkeley, University of California Press, body of art almost uniformly with- 1999. On the broader vogue for Mexican cul- 4 ture, see James Oles et. al., South of the Border: out aesthetic consequence. Anthony Mexico in the American Imagination, 1914- Lee's Painting on the Left (1999) is 1947, Washington & London, Smithsonian the first study to offer a sustained Institution Press, 1993; for American artists working in Mexico, see James Oles, 'Walls and nuanced analysis of what the to Paint On: American Muralists in Mexico, example of Mexican muralism (in one 1933-1936', PhD thesis, Yale University, 1995. 15 ling artists were no less organized than did not become the official Soviet aes- writers through the John Reed Clubs thetic until the Soviet Writers Congress (1929-35) and other Party organizations. of 1934, and even then its implications Indeed, formally speaking, John Reed for writers and artists outside the USSR Club members were members of an were unclear.9 If Communist writers international Communist organization, and artists did not feel any compul- the International Union of Revolutionary sion to model their work on Soviet Writers, which did not hesitate to give injuntions to its affiliates. 6For instance, A. Elistratova was shar- Such directives could extend to ply critical of the graphics in New Masses in the visual arts, and the main organ of her appraisal of the magazine's work in 'New the IURW, International Literature, car- Mases', International Literature, no. 2, 1932, pp. ried reports on the painting, sculp- 107-14. Thereafter, however, reporting of Ame- rican Revolutionary Art in the pages of Inter- ture, and the graphic arts, as well as national Literature was affirmative. (In fact, the literary matters.6 However, just as artists and writers of the New York John Reed Max Eastman's contemporary charac- Club both rejected Elistratova's critique, –see Joseph Freeman to Alexander Trachtenberg, 10 terization of Communist writers as August 1933 [copy], Freeman Papers, Hoover "a corps of obedient pen-pushers Institution, 39-1). Correspondence between dressed up in blue blouses and ready the John Reed Clubs and the IURW and the to write whatever any Russian politi- International Bureau of Revolutionary Artists is preserved in the papers of Louis Lozowick cian tells them to" does not work (International Secretary to the New York John for the Party's novelists and poets, Reed Club), Archives of American Art, unfilmed neither does it match with the expe- and AAA1333. 7 7Max Eastman, Artists in Uniform: A Study riences of its artists. In fact, internal of Literature and Bureaucratism, New York, Knopf, Party documents and other reports 1934, p. 21. For writers and the Soviet example, indicate that the John Reed Clubs see Foley, Radical Representations, pp. 63-85, and James F. Murphy, The Proletarian Moment: The were fractious and undisciplined. Controversy over Leftism in Literature, Urbana & Moreover, Party authorities had a Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1991. For limited understanding of what was the Reed Clubs, see Eric Homberger, American at stake in Soviet cultural debates, Writers and Radical Politics, 1900-39: Equivocal Commitments, Basinstoke & London, Macmillan, and the pace of change in the USSR 1986, chapter 5. meant that characterization of the 8As Joseph Freeman acknowledged in situation there was always provision- the main account of Soviet culture published 8 from within the American Communist move- al. In brief, while there were gen- ment - see Joseph Freeman, Joshua Kunitz, eral slogans such as "Art is a Weapon and Louis Lozowick, Voices of Octuber: Art and in the Class Struggle", there was no Literature in Soviet Russia, New York, Vanguard clear Party line in cultural matters.