AMERICAN COMMUNISTS VIEW : 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 . 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 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 and James Michael ies.2 To map the full impact of Mexican Newell. For Biddle on the Mexican example, see his ' 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 (), 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 & , 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 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 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 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 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 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 's contemporary charac­ Club both rejected Elistratova's critique, –see to , 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 , 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. Press, 1930, p. 58. 9See, for instance, Louis Lozowick, Although Socialist Realism was a 'Aspects of Soviet Art', New Masses, vol. 14, 16 term that was in currency by 1932, it no. 5, 29 January 1935, pp. 16-19. examples during the phase of the ."12 Whereas Soviet art Comintern's Third period line (1928- was increasingly associated with for­ 35) when proletarian international­ mal conservatism, Orozco and Rivera ism was at its height, still less did they –and especially the former– stood as feel that imperative during the Popular exemplary moderns, who combined Front, when national cultural traditions a modernist approach to form with –providing they could be interpreted as commitment to an art of common in some sense popular and progressive– public meaning. One of the factors were given a new value in Communist that made their example pertinent criticism. In any case, for the most part was the quite widespread interest in American Communist artists do not the decorative possibilities of the new seem to have been much impressed by commercial buildings that had sprung what they saw in the three major exhibi­ up in cities across the United States tions of Soviet art in the United States during the construction boom of the in the interwar period, or by the works 1920s. Liberal critics who dominated shown at the Carnegie International or in the art press (such as Lloyd Good­ seen in reproduction.10 Representative rich) were looking for a modern mural was probably the frank observation of style that would supercede "the frigid the cartoonist and printmaker Russell pomposities of the average academic Limbach, writing in New Masses in decorator", epitomized by Edwin Blash­ 1935, that Soviet paintings were either field and Kenyon Cox.13 painted in the "illustrative style familiar Although the commissions awar­ to readers of the Saturday Evening Post ded to Orozco and Rivera would pro­ and other slick paper publication", or were works "no better or worse than 10There were exhibitions at Grand the usual bourgeois art found in the Central palace in New York in 1924 and galleries of this country and Europe".11 1929, and a travelling show organized by the Pennsylvania Museum of Art, College Art Conversely, if Soviet art was not Association, and American Russian Institute of high standing among Communist for Cultural lations with the in artists in the United States or among 1934-6. 11Russell T. Limbach, 'Soviet Art', New their artworld compatriots more gen­ Masses, vol. 17, no. 9, 26 November 1935, erally, that of modern Mexico most p.25 (review of Studio Publications Inc., Art in cer tainly was. Orozco and Rivera the USSR). 12George J. Cox, 'Modern Art and this received extensive coverage in maga­ Matter of Taste', Magazine of Art, vol. 25, no. zines such as The Arts and Creative Art 2, August 1932, p. 82. See also the special from the mid 1920s on, and in 1932 number of Creative Art, vol. 4, no. a writer in the prestigious Magazine of 1, January 1929. 13E.g., Lloyd Goodrich, 'Mural paintings Art asserted that "the greatest native by ', The Arts, vol. 16, no. paintings in America today are in 6, February 1930, pp. 391-3. 17 voke a certain amount of controversy the last few years of American capital­ because of claims that their work had ism" the "public character of the mural" an un-American "racial" quality, none had been perverted by the demands the less, they demonstrated triumphan­ tly that public art in a modern style 14For instance, see the responses to was possible.14 Thus the significance Orozco's Dartmouth College murals: peyton Boswell, 'An Alien Ar t', and 'Orozco's of Rivera's Rockefeller Center mural "American Epic" at Dar tmouth Star ts a lay not only in the political contro­ Controversy', Art Digest, vol. 8, no. 19, 1 August versy ignited by its iconography, but 1934, pp. 3, 5; and to Rivera's Detroit Industry in 'Misconceptions' and 'Men, Machines, and also in the challenge it offered of a Murals - Detroit', Magazine of Art, vol. 26, no. 5, style of muralism that claimed to be May 1933, pp. 221, 254-5. Cf. Goodrich's con­ "American", at a time when the nature trast of the Americanism of Benton's murals of Americanism in the arts was hotly at the New School for Social Research with 15 the "plastic sense" of Orozco's, "part of his debated. Symptomatic of this climate blood and racial heritage". (I should stress that was the putting on of the Museum this contrast is not an invidious one.) Lloyd of Modern Art's exhibition Murals by Goodrich, 'The Murals of the New School', The Arts, vol. 17, no. 6, March 1931, pp. 399- American Painters and Photographers of 403, 442-3. For a claim as to the relevance of May 1932, five months after the same Orozco's "Americanness", see Dr. Stacy May museum's Rivera retrospective. of Dartmouth, quoted in , José­ Clemente Orozco (Delphic Studios, 1932), By contrast with the praise they New York, Hacker Art Books, 1985, pp. 11-12. regularly showered on the main Mexi­ 15For Rivera on the Americanism of his can painters, the most authoritati­ work, see 'Dynamic Detroit ­ an Interpreta­ ve art magazines regarded this as a tion', Creative Art, vol. 12, no. 4, April 1933, 16 p. 295, and quoted in , 'Diego "debacle". However, the controver­ Rivera: Fiery Crusader on the paint Brush', sial works by , William New York Times Magazine, 2 April 1933, p. 11. I Gropper, Ben Kopman, Ben Shahn analyse the critical discourse of Americanism in this period in my article: '".To personalize the and others included in the exhibition rainpipe": The Critical Mythology of Edward announced that the American left had Hopper', Prospects, vol.17, 1992, 379-404. adopted the mural form as its own 16Dorothy Grafly, ''Murals at the –had accepted the logic of Orozco's Museum of Modern Art', Magazine of Art, vol. 25, no. 2, August 1932, pp. 93-102¸James claim that the mural "is for the peo­ Johnson Sweeney, 'Murals by American ple... is for ALL".17 (It was probably as Painters and photografhers', Creative Art, vol. a counterblast to the MoMA exhibi­ 10, no. 6, June 1932. Cf. 'Critics Unanimously Condemn Modern Museum's Mural Show', tion that in 1933 the John Reed Club Art Digest, vol. 6, 15 May 1932, p. 7. organized a mural competition, which 17José­ Clemente Orozco, 'New World, seems to have taken as its focus decora­ New Races and New Art', Creative Art, vol. 4, tions for a Workers Club.) In an article no. 1, January 1929, p. xlvi; Hugo Gellert, 'We Capture the Walls!: The Museum of Modern of 1935, the New Masses art critics Art Episode', New Masses, vol. 7, no. 9, June 18 Stephen Alexander argued that "during 1932, pp. 28-9. placed on it by wealthy patrons and the partially awakened workers and the "capitalist class' utilization of the peasants on the one hand and the mural for its own propaganda in public influence of foreign capital, especial­ and semi-public places". By contrast, ly that of American interests on the the "recent Mexican mural movement other." This quite acute characteriza­ was almost entirely a public institution, tion of the situation is followed by devoted to the dissemination of social the assertion: "only in the work of ideas".18 But how were American art­ the philosopher, the artist, and the ists to interpret the Mexican example poet have the effects of the revolution given the manifest differences between assumed system and unity". No later the works of Los Tres Grandes and their Communist writer was to register so very different relations with the interna­ incisively the potentially mythical fun­ tional Communist movement? ctions of the murals. Although Wolfe referred to the activities of the "Com­ munist Union of painters and Sculp­ Critical Responses: Rivera, tors" (as he called the Revolutionary Siqueiros, Orozco Syndicate of Technical Workers, pain­ ters and Sculptors) and quoted from The first published response to its 'Statement of principles', the only Mexico's new mural ar t by an artist he mentioned by name was Ri­ American Communist seems to have vera, "Mexico's greatest painter", who, been Bertram D. Wolfe's article 'Art he claimed, "paints only for the Revolu­ and Revolution in Mexico', published tionary Government, or, rather, for the in the liberal magazine The Nation in more revolutionary depar­ments of August 1924. Although Wolfe was the Government".19 to be expelled from the CPUSA in As the qualifying clause here sug­ 1929, he had helped to found the gests, given that Mexican muralism was party in 1919 and during the 1920s primarily the fruit of state patronage, was one of its leading intellectuals. its status as Revolutionary Art among He also played an important role in Communists was going to depend the PCM over the years 1923-5, and heavily on their understanding of the represented it at the Fifth Congress character of the Mexican regime. As of the Comintern in 1924. Wolfe opens his article by describing the 18Stephen Alexander, 'Ar t: Mural as "a very patchy Painting in America', New Masses, vol. 14, no. and unsystematic affair", and the gov­ 9, 26 February 1935, p. 28. 19 ernment as "a political power rep­ Bertram D. Wolfe, 'Art and Revolu­ tion in Mexico', The Nation, Vol. 119, No. 3086, resenting not a single class but an p. 207-8. For Wolfe in Mexico, see Karl M. uncertain balance of power between Schmitt, Communism in Mexico: A Study in 19 relations bet­ significance of the art it co­missioned ween the PCM in important ways,20 but given the and the regime instrumentalism of the dominant Com­ deteriorated at the end of the d­cade, Rivera's Political Frustration, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1965, pp. 10-12; Robert J. Alexander, success as an Communism in Latin America, New Brunswick, official painter NJ, Rutgers University press, 1957, pp. 322- would make 4; Theodore Draper, American Communism and Soviet Russia: The Formative Period (1960), him increasingly New York, Vintage Books, 1986, pp. 170, 178, compromized 234. According to Draper (whose account in their eyes. was partly based on interviews with Wolfe), Wolfe spen in Mé­xico than Schmitt implies This is not of - namely three and a half years. course to say 20This assumption, of course, underpins that the state as the argument of Leonard Folgarait's major study: patron did not Mural Painting and Social Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940: Art of the New Order, Cambridge, determine the Cambridge University press, 1998. See also 20 character and the critique by Warren Carter, in 'The public Hideo Noda, central, left and John Dos Passos– were not party and right panels of mural members but fellow travellers. Perhaps for Piedmont High School, partly as a result of 's California, 1937, fresco, presence among its Advisory Editors, in Kumamoto Prefectural Museum of Art, Kumamoto, the late 1920s New Masses gave quite Japan. Photograph courtesy of extensive coverage to Mexican culture. Kumamoto Prefectural Museum. In addition to the various illustrations of Mexican art it printed, it featured images by Guerrero, Tamayo and Tina munist view of art in this Modotti on its covers, and in May 1927 period, there was no real published a text by Guerrero defining space for more nuanced Revolutionary Art.22 interpretations of agen­ The first report on Mexican Mura­ cy or meaning for those lism to appear in the magazine came thinking within the frame­ in March 1927 in the form of Dos Pas­ work of party discourse. sos's essay 'Paint the Revolution!'.23 In relation to such thinking, The novelist stayed in Mexico from the very complexity and philosophical pretensions of Rivera's imaging of his­ (Mis)use of Art: Radical Artists, Reformist States, tory were likely to prompt and the politics of Mural painting in 1930s and critique. 1940s America and Mexico', Oxford Art Journal, In 1926, a group of vol. 23, no. 2, 2000, pp. 163-71. 21For New Masses, see Aaron, Writers on left-leaning American artists the Left; David Peck, '"The Tradition of American and writers established Revolutionary Literature": The Monthly New the magazine New Mas­ Masses, 1926-1933', Science and Society, vol. 42, No. 2, Winter 1978-9. ses, which quickly became 22Xavier Guerrero, 'A Mexican painter', the flagship publication of New Masses, vol. 3, no. 1, May 1927, p.18. For the Communist cultural cover images by Modotti, see vol. 4, no. 5, Octo­ movement in the United ber 1928; vol. 4, no. 7, December 1928; vol. 5, 21 no. 1, June 1929; vol. 5, no. 3, August 1929; vol. States. Having said this 5, no. 4, September 1929. For cover images by it is important to note that Guerrero, see vol. 4, no. 8, January 1929; and by Communists were initially Tamayo, see vol. 2, no. 3, January 1927; vol. 5, no. 3, August 1929. only a small minority on 23The only reports to precede this in the editorial board, and the art press (to the best of my knowled­ that many who wrote for ge) are: José­ Juan Tablada, 'Diego Rivera ­ Mexican Painter', The Arts, vol. 4, no. 4, October the magazine –including 1923, pp. 221-33; Anita Brenner, 'A Mexican some who concern us Renaissance', The Arts, vol. 8, no. 3, September here such as Anita Brenner 1925, pp. 127-50. 21 December 1926 through to mid March hieroglyphics of every phase of the rev­ of the following year, partly as a vaca­ olution". The sheer scale of the paint­ tion, but also because he wanted to see ings raised them to the dimensions of the art of the Revolution. In the course public works and also helped to make of his visit he became a good friend of them securely virile and heterosexual Guerrero, who travelled with him in the (by implication). Dos passos acknowl­ mountain villages behind Toluca.24 Dos edged the Communism of some of Passos's account focussed on Rivera, the Syndicate's members (although he Orozco, and Roberto Montenegro, but doesn't discriminate their politics), but did not mention Siqueiros, who was in he also stressed that both the revolu­ at the time of his visit, and had tion and its art are an "organic neces­ temporarily abandoned painting for sity" of Mexican circumstances, "no union organizing. The essay's characte­ more imported from Russia than the rization of the murals partly centres petate hats the soldiers wore".26 The around a contrast between the art of article was accompanied by a double- the New York galleries, full of "little pic­ page illustration of Rivera's Dividing tures", "stuff a man's afraid to be look­ the Land panel in the Administrative ing at", "a few private sensations and Building of the National Autonomous experiments framed and exhibited"; and University of Chapingo (1924) ­ an what the author describes as "a chal­ appropriately revolutionary motif, and lenge shouted in the face of the rest of one that would have corresponded to the world". the author's enthusiasm for Zapata.27 This contrast is premised not just on the difference between an essentia­ lly private and an essentially public art, 24 Townsend Ludington, John Dos Passos: A but also between the non-virile and Twentieth Century Odyssey, New York, E.P. Dutton, 25 1980, pp. 248-52. See also Carleton Beals, Glass the virile. Although "a work of real Houses: Ten Years of Free-Lancing, & talent" might occasionally get exhib­ New York, J.B. Lippincott, 1938, pp. 245-9. ited in New York: "what's the good 25 Comparably, Dr. Stacy May described of it? Who sees it? A lot of male and Orozco's Dartmouth cycle as "completely masculine. It is forthright and unmannered female old women chattering around and contemporary." ­ quoted in Alma Reed, an exhibition; and then, if the snob­ José­ Clemente Orozco (1932), New York, Hac­ market has been properly manipulated, ker Art Books, 1985, p. 11. 26 John Dos passos, 'Paint the Revolu­ some damn fool buys it and puts it tion!', New Masses, vol. 2, no. 5, March 1927, away in the attic". Rivera's murals in p. 15. This interpretation parallels that of Anita the Ministry of Education did contain Brenner in its emphasis on "Mexicanness" and some "pretty hasty" painting, and some nationalism - see 'A Mexican Renaissance'. 27 According to Dos Passos's friend Carle­ of them were "garlanded tropical bom­ ton Beals, "Diego has never surpassed this early 22 bast", but overall they were "passionate work in Chapingo." - Beals, Glass Houses, p. 181. Two years later the same magazi­ for which he made a sequence of mural ne printed a free verse tribute to Rive­ panels on American history to decorate ra by one of its regular poets, porter the New Workers School in New York Myron Chaffee, which claimed that in 1933.31 he painted "the living principle" of the In addition, he published state­ "mighty word ... REVOLUTION!": ments in the Modern Quarterly of the independent Marxist V.F. Calverton, a Baudelaire grew sick tulips from the figure who was repeatedly denounced socket of skulls But Diego Rivera by Communist theoreticians from paints life. He is life-sweet. There is 1929 on, and labelled a "fascist" by the about the man the wholesomeness Party's chairman, William Z. Foster. It of a bachantic wind, May-crazy, and was in the Modern Quarterly in 1932-3 dancing in the fields that grow grain that Rivera articulated an indepen­ for bread.28 dent theory of Revolutionary Art for a North American readership. But already But such views were soon to in March 1932, Rivera had argued in become untenable. Rivera's visit to Moscow in 1927-8 had revealed a fun­ damental divergence between his con­ 28Porter Myron Chaffee, 'Diego Rivera ception of Revolutionary Art and the (Mexican Revolutionary Artist)', New Masses, vol. 5, no. 3, August 1929, p. 16. dominant tendencies in Soviet painting, 29Schmitt, Communism in Mexico, pp. 14- and in 1929 he became Director of 15; William Richardson, 'The Dilemmas of a the and began Communist Artist: Diego Rivera in Moscow, 1927-1928', Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexica­ work on the stairway of the National nos, Vol. 3, No. 1, Winter 1987. Palace just as the pCM's relations with 30'The Charkov Conference of Revo­ the Gil government were reaching a lutionary Writers', New Masses, vol. 6, no. 9, crisis point, leading to the banning of February 1931, p. 6. By May 1930 the New 29 York was descending to racist the Party in May of that year. Rivera slang to characterize the artist, describing him was finally expelled from the pCM in as a "grease-ball". See 'A renegade on parade', September, and at the 1930 Conference Daily Worker, 17 May, 1930. 31On Lovestone's passage through of the International Union of Revolutio­ the Communist party, see Draper, American nary Writers at Kharkov in the Communism and Soviet Russia. On the New he was condemned for "advocating a Workers School murals, see Diego Rivera, 30 Portrai of America (text by Bertram Wolfe), right-wing program". The artist's sins New York, Covici, Friede, 1934); Laurence were compounded by his willingness P. Hurlburt, The Mexican Muralist in the to work for American capitalist patrons, United States, Alburquerque: University of and his association with both Trotskyism New Mé­xico press, 1989, pp. 175-93. For a contemporary response, see E.M. Benson, and the Lovestoneite Communist Party 'Fied Notes', Magazine of Art, vol. 27, no. 2, Majority Opposition in the United States, February 1934, pp. 97-8. 23 the pages of Arts Weekly that in the , worked as an assistant USSR the remnants of "petit-bourgeois on Rivera's National Palace murals and culture", "easel-painting and pedestal was for a while the artist's mistress.35 sculpture", were retarding the deve­ Freeman's article was not dismis­ lopment of a truly Revolutionary Art, sive, but it argued that the qualities in that is "the typically collective forms of Rivera's better work derived from the architectonic, mural, and monumental energies of the Mexican Revolution painting and sculpture". And this was rather than from any special personal the one effect of the "transitory degen­ capacity: "The stupendous frescoes in eration" of the "Russian bureaucratized the Secretariat live with the power communist party, against which the of the Mexican masses" ­ yet at the sane revolutionary forces of the entire same time they are "vast caricatures" world are struggling".32 that are "intellectual, remote, and To begin with, however, Rivera devoid of feeling". However, as Rivera seems to have sought friendly relations aligned himself with "the bankruptcy with American Communist artists, and of petit bourgeois agrarianism" and he agreed to address a public meeting began to sell his talents to "Chicago under the auspices of the John Reed st Club on 1 January 1932. If the club's 32 leadership had expected him to make Diego Rivera: 'The Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Art', Modern Quarterly, vol. 6, a mea culpa on this occasion as they no. 3, Autumn 1932, pp. 51-7 (I suspect this is later implied,33 they were disappoint­ the text of Rivera's lecture to the John Reed ed. His speech, translated from the Club); 'What is Art For?', Modern Monthly, vol. 7, no. 5, June 1933, pp. 275-8; 'The Position of French by the painter Louis Lozowick, the Artist in Russia Today', Arts Weekly, vol. 1, who also chaired the meeting, was vio­ no. 1, 11 March 1932, pp. 6-7. Rivera became lently heckled by Daily Worker editors Art Director of the Modern Monthly in 1934. For Calverton and the Modern Quarterly, see William Dunne and Harrison George Leonard Wilcox, V.F. Calverton: Radical in the among others. According to one re­ American Grain, Philadelphia, Temple University port, –the artist's "petite Press, 1992. 33 but peppery little wife"– almost got John Reed Club, 'Diego Rivera and the John Reed Club', New Masses, vol. 7, no. into a fist fight with the hecklers before 12, February 1932, p. 31. Lozowick could restore order.34 The 34Walter Gutman, 'News and Gossip', following month, a four-page appraisal Creative Art, vol. 10, no. 2, February 1932, p. 159. There is evidence that the John Reed Club of Rivera's work by "Robert Evans" members objected to this heavy-handed inter­ appeared in New Masses. In actuality vention by Party figures - see 'memo' on the this was written by the Communist 'NM-JRC situation' (Freeman Pa­pers, Hoover poet and critic Joseph Freeman, who Institution, 177:1). 35Patrick Marnham, Dreaming With His had been Tass correspondent in Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera, London, 24 Mexico in 1929, and whose first wife, Bloomsbury, 1998, p. 230. and California millionaires" his work In Detroit he painted the Ford plant had gone into decline. "Cut off from and symbols of the various industries the revolutionary workers and peas­ necessary for the manufacture of the ants", he could only "regain the motive automobile. But nothing to expose power of his art" by returning to the the vicious Ford system - the flower Communist fold.36 of capitalism. Just a picture of men at Perhaps as a result of some genuine work in a setting of beautiful machin­ confusion, Freeman accused Rivera of ery. No wonder Edsel Ford was well making changes to his National palace pleased with the job...38 mural to accommodate his govern­ mental patrons –changes he had not Predictably, in the latter half of the in fact made. It was thus easy for Rivera decade Rivera's work was to be inter­ to discredit the charge by reprodu­ preted most sympathetically by inde­ cing the relevant portion of the mural pendent leftists such as together with the preliminary sketch and the Lovestoneite Bertram Wolfe.39 in the Lovestoneite Workers Age.37 But The Party's phobia of Trotskyism, which Freeman's article also represented the larger failings of a current Communist aesthetic, according to which healthy 36Robert Evans [Joseph Freeman], 'Painting art only arose from contact with the and politics: The Case of Diego Rivera', New Masses, vol. 7, no. 9, February 1932, pp. 22-5. masses, and the sole route to that nece­ Cf. the article Freeman published contempora­ ssary source was through the Party. The neously in Literatura mirovoi revoliutsii, quoted upshot of this was that Rivera's Detroit in Richardson, 'The Dilemmas of a Communist Artist', p. 66. Industry murals of 1932-3, arguably the 37'A Shameless Fraud', Workers Age, vol. greatest socialist art of the period in the 2, no. 15, 15 June 1933 - Rivera Supplement, Western hemisphere outside Mexico, np. See also Bertram D. Wolfe, Diego Rivera: His Life and Times, New York & London, Knopf, were virtually passed over in silence 1939, pp. 302-06. For Freeman's notes and in the Communist press. In the most correspondence on this episode, see Freeman sustained critique of them I have found, Papers, Hoover Institution, 69:8, 69:34, 180:3, the artist Jacob Burck repeated the 180:4. Freeman reportedly presided at the meeting that expelled Rivera and his belief familiar refrain that Rivera's American that changes in the conception of the mural murals were formally and expressively reflected Rivera's betrayal of the Revolution inferior to his Mexican works –"[h]is went back to 1929. Ione Robinson gave her own account of the relationship between post-revolutionary paintings are jig-saw Freeman and Rivera in her autobiographical puzzles of isolated scenes arbitrarily narrative: A Wall to Paint On, New York, drawn together by purely artistic tricks Dutton, 1946, pp.110-16, 197-201. 38 of composition"– and claimed that Jacob Burck, 'A portrait of Diego Rivera - The Story of a Bird in a Gold Frame' Detroit Industry looked like a tribute (review of Diego Rivera, Portrait of America), to Ford: Daily Worker, 19 May 1934. Cf. Charmion 25 was essentially an insensible reflex of and foretold its artistic results a year struggles in the USSR, meant that it was before it occurred". unable to offer any measured appraisal of the most controversial political artist von Wiegand: "During his American visits, he of the time, and the confusions the situ­ began the production of marketable com­ modities and murals of compromise, such ation caused are illustrated by the fact as those in Detroit." ­ 'Portrait of an Artist', that at the same time as it ostracized New Masses, vol. 23, no. 6, 27 April 1937, the artist, the John Reed Club orga­ p.26. The denunciation of Rivera by Mary nized meetings and picketing to protest Randolph published in Art Front (magazine of the Communist dominated New York Artists against the destruction of his Rocke­ Union) in 1935 confuses Rivera's mural in the feller Center Mural.40 National Preparatory School with the cycle in If artistic role models were to the Ministry of Education, describes the fresco of Man at the Crossroads in the Palace of Fine be gauged in terms of ostensive com­ Arts as "hung" (sic) in the National Theatre, mitment to the Communist par ty, and refers to the Cardenas government as the then the Mexican artist most wor­ Calles government. See 'Rivera's Monopoly', thy of emulation was Siqueiros. Yet parts 1 and 2, Art Front, Vol. 1, no. 7, November 1935, and Vol. 1, no. 8, December 1935. although Siqueiros had cer tainly 39 Bertram D. Wolfe, 'Diego Rivera on made an impact on some West Coast Trial', Modern Monthly, vol. 8, no. 6, July 1934, artists through the three murals he pp. 337-40; Meyer Schapiro, 'The patrons of Revolutionary Art', Marxist Quarterly, vol. organized and his two solo exhi­ 1, no. 3, October/December 1937, pp. 462- bitions in in 1932, no 6. See also: 'The Diego Rivera Rockefeller major article was devoted to him in Center and Detroit Museum of Art Murals', the American art press until 1934, Modern Monthly, vol. 7, no. 5, June 1933; and Elie Faure, 'Diego Rivera', Modern Monthly, vol. when the artist visited New York at 8, no. 9, October 1934. the time of his exhibition at Alma 40 'Support for Rivera Protest is Urged Reed's Delphic Studios.41 This fact by John Reed Club', Daily Worker, 16 May 1933; 'Workers, Artists Protest Ban on Lenin is doubtless partly a register of the Mural Today', Daily Worker, 17 May 1933. centrality of New York within the U.S. 41 Elsa Rogo, '', artistic field. particularly since in Idols Parnassus, 6, no. 4, April 1934, pp. 5-7. For Rogo, see Museo Nacional de Arte, Instituto Behind Altars (1929) Brenner gave a Nacional de Bellas Artes, Portrait of a Decade, significantly different account of the 1930-1940: David Alfaro Siqueiros (English "Mexican Renaissance" from that she version), Mexico City, 1997, p. 163. This had lain out in her pathbreaking 1925 publication contains a full bibliography. On Siqueiros in the United States, see Hurlburt: article in The Arts. Then she had been Mexican Muralists in the United States, chapter emphatic that Rivera was the lead­ 3, and 'The Siqueiros Experimental Work­ er of the new art, although Orozco shop: New York, 1936', Art JournaI, vol. 35, no. 3, Spring 1976, pp.237-46; Shifra M. Goldman, was in some ways more "Mexican". 'Siqueiros and Three Early Murals in Los But by 1929, Siqueiros was said to Angeles', Art Journal, vol. 33, no. 4, Summer 26 have "plotted the painters' revolution 1974, pp. 321-27. Moreover, although his surviving ged that his "gift of speech and men­ works amounted to only "[t]hree scar­ tal agility make him a political figure of red walls, an almost hidden ceiling arch, consequence" (even if "his position is by a trunkful of sketches and paintings conviction not political"), and this quality, largely unfinished, drawings and wood­ too, would inevitably affect his recep­ cuts lost in old numbers of El Machete", tion by American Communists.44 For "his achievement is much greater, for the in contrast to Rivera's hostile reception, entire mood of modern artistic Mexico in the course of his 1934 visit Siqueiros is shot through with the national wish­ spoke at at least three John Reed Club es and abilities crystallized by him".42 events, and also lectured to the Film Brenner's eloquent book –illustrated and Photo League.45 with wonderful photographs by Edward Siqueiros's 1934 exhibition was the Weston and –43 was not occasion of a lengthy and well-informed only the most authoritative and com­ essay on the artist in New Masses by prehensive account of modern Mexican Joseph Freeman's second wife, Char­ artistic culture available in English in mion von Wiegand, who stressed that the period, it also offered a compelling myth of the "essence of Mexican life", in which Mexican art, culture, and history 42Anita Brenner, Idols Behind Altars, New were welded into an organic and his­ York, Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1929, pp. 240, 266. torically transcendent whole that was 43Sarah M. Lowe, Tina Modotti Photo­ aesthetic through and through: graphs, New York, Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1995, pp. 30-1. 44Brenner, Idols Behind Altars, pp. 32-3, nowhere as in Mexico has art been so 265. Cf. p. 240. Brenner's position was that organically a part of life, at one with of a fellow-traveller at this time. For Brenner, the national ends and the national see Susan platt, Art and Politics in the 1930s: Modernism, , Americanism, New York, longings, fully the possession of each Midmarch Arts press, 1999, chapter 8; Susa­ human unit, always the prime channel nnah Joel Glusker, Anita Brenner: A Mind of Her for the nation and for the unit. Own, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1998. 45'Siqueiros Will Speak on Future of the Film at Symposium Tonite', Daily Worker, Brenner characterized Siqueiros as 24 February 1934. 'Siqueiros to Lecture on a kind of demiurge of Mexican culture, Art this Sunday Afternoon', Daily Worker, 27 as a national figure, rather than as an April 1934. (This latter was a John Reed Club event at the Irving plaze at which Siqueiros international Revolutionary Artist. For was to speak on 'The Artist and the Class Communists he would have to be both. Struggle' according to the Daily Worker, and In keeping with his messianic status, 'The Technique of Revolutionary Art' accor­ Brenner's Siqueiros was also a figure of ding to New Masses, vol. 11, no. 4, 24 April 1934, p. 2.) 'Siqueiros to Speak at the Opening immense personal charm and beauty. of JRC Exhibit May 11', Daily Worker, 10 May But at the same time she acknowled­ 1934. (The exhibition was of sketches for 27 for Siqueiros art was only "one form of an image of a woman martyr of the revolutionary agitation" among others, Chinese Revolution painted in Duco and that his commitment to the revo­ lutionary movement was constant.46 murals to decorate the walls of working-class That May, New Masses published a long organizations.) 'Farewell Meeting for Siqueiros to be Held at JRC on Thursday', Daily Worker, attack on Rivera by Siqueiros, which Wednesday 30 May. (Siqueiros was to speak charged him with being a "Saboteur on 'The Road the American Artist Should of... Collective Work", "An Agent of Follow'). the Government", and an "Aesthete of Philip Reisman later recalled Siqueiros speaking at the John Reed Club before "an Imperialism" among other things. The overflow audience". See Martin H. Bush, Philip Detroit Industry murals were "ideologi­ Reisman: People Are His Passion, Edwin A. cally obscure" works in an "opportunis­ Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State Univer­ sity, 1986, p. 35. tic technique", effectively determined 46 47 Charmion von Wiegand, 'David Alfaro by their patron. Siqueiros's own tech­ Siqueiros', New Masses, vol. 11, no. 5, 1 May nical experiments were described in 1934, pp. 16-21. For von Wiegand, see Susan some detail and with considerable sym­ C. Larsen, 'Charmion von Wiegand: Walking on a Road with Milestones', Arts Magazine, vo. pathy by von Wiegand, who argued that 60, no. 3, November 1985, pp. 29-31; Platt, Art "[m]ore than any of the Mexican pain­ and Politics in the 1930s, chapter 7. ters, perhaps Siqueiros has managed to 47David Alfaro Siqueiros, 'Rivera's Counter- Revolutionary Road', New Masses, vol. 11, no. fuse the revolutionary content and form 9, 29 May 1934, pp. 16-19. The essay was occa­ in his art", and contrasting his work with sioned by the publication of Rivera's Portrait of the "painfully academic" technique of America, but has the character of a generalized "many Soviet painters". (Elsewhere, she denunciation. Wolfe responded to both this and Burck's 'A portrait of Diego Rivera' in 'Diego described the Revolutionary Syndicate Rivera on Trial', asserting, by contrast, that "Diego of Technical Workers, painters, and Rivera is, by fairly common consent, the greatest Sculptors as having "initiated the great­ mural artist of our times. He is also the greatest, perhaps so far the only truly great revolutionary est movement of revolutionary paint­ artist" (p. 337). ing in the contemporary world").48 48Von Wiegand, 'David Alfaro Siqueiros', Siqueiros, however, insisted upon being 16. In an article published in the following judged on his outdoor murals, and the month, von Wiegand argued that Mexican influence in American art was there to stay: three he had executed in the United "[t]hey are at present a more creative influen­ States in 1932 were all in California ce in American painting than the modernist and were represented at the Delphic French masters." "The supreme achievement of the Mexican group as a whole is their re- Studios show only by photographs. For uniting of technique and idea in a new and von Wiegand, one picture alone in the splendid synthesis. They have brought painting exhibition "gave some indication of the back to its vital function in society." –Charmion von Wiegand, 'Mural Painting in America', Yale artist's powers in this direction", and Review, vol. 23, no. 4, June 1934, pp. 788-99. that was the Proletarian Victim (Museum 49Museo Nacional de Arte, Portrait of a 49 28 of Modern Art, New York), in fact Decade, pp.156-7. (Illustrated in New Masses, vol. enamel on burlap. Further, although his Walter Quirt, Give Us This Day Our Daily theories were "highly suggestive" and Bread, 1935, oil on masonite, might "possibly mark a turning point in 31.8 x 52.6 cm. Wadsworth Atheneum art", she complained of a "roma­ticism" Museumof Art, Hartford. Gift of Mr. And Mrs. Leopold Godowsky. and "a certain lack of discipline" in his approach that needed to be restrained. What the Soviet Union has done in It was this "romanticism" and the the moving pictures, the revolutio­ artist's direct participation in the rev­ nary artists of Mexico have done in olutionary movement that helps to painting. explain Siqueiros's appeal to the veter­ an Communist critic Michael Gold.50 11, no. 4, 24 April 1934, p. 17.) The suggestion here that the wound on the woman's head is Gold rarely addressed the visual arts, from a gunshot and that she has already been but under the impact of the Delphic executed is entirely plausible. However, the pose Studios exhibition he devoted his with bowed head is also likely to have brought to mind to contemporaries the public beheadings Daily Worker column to an assessment inflicted on Chinese prisoners by the Japanese, of Mexican art. Although he was an which served in the Communist press to illus­ ardent Russophile, Gold implies here trate fascist barbarism. For the catalogue to the Delphic Studios exhibition, see ibid., pp. 219-20. that it was the Mexicans rather than 50 Gold had been in Mexico in 1918-19 the Soviet artists who had revolution­ to escape the draft. See Beals, Glass Houses, ized painting: pp. 35-7. 29 Gold notoriously belonged to that Here is a painter, I believe, who is category of Communist critic that tend­ destined to be the leader of pro­ ed to see a relatively direct correla­ letarian painting ­ a new field still tion between the aesthetic quality of undiscovered and unexplored.51 works and the political stance of their Siqueiros talks like a Biblical prophet makers, so that artists who embraced interpreting some divine message, Trotskyism, for instance, almost invari­ wrote Ione Robinson, describing a ably produced bad art. This makes visit from the artist in November exceptional his readiness to acknowl­ 1935. After seeing the Siqueiros edge the "gigantic importance to revo­ Workshop in 1936 she observed that lutionary art of Diego Rivera's murals", he had "organized his own WPA". despite the fact the artist was politically His ideas are forceful, and he is clever "unreliable", and his equally favourable in projecting them into the imagina­ judgement on Orozco. tion of other artists, making them feel However, at the same time as that they conceived them.52 asserting that "[i]t is always futile to compare artists" because each "has his It was doubtless Siqueiros's pow­ own chemistry and his very faults are ers of persuasion and his organizing often indispensable ingredients of his drive that impressed Gold, as well genius", the article in the end elevates as his art. However, these were also Siqueiros above the other two. In his qualities that could sit uneasily with literary criticism, Gold was notably Communist Party discipline when they unsympathetic to modernist formal were linked with an overpowering indi­ experiments for the most part, tending vidual vision, and it is notable that the to associate them with an over-intel­ account of the public debate between lectual approach to art that distanced Rivera and Siqueiros in August 1935 works from a proletarian readership published in New Masses implies that and almost inavariably led to bourgeois aestheticism. Yet he showed himself sur­ 51Michael Gold, 'Change the World!', prisingly open to Siqueiros's attempts to Daily Worker, 7 April 1934. For Gold, see Michael Folsom (ed.), Mike Gold: A Literary revitalize the "backward and medieval Anthology, New York, , world of painting" through the applica­ 1972; and Michael Folsom, 'The Education tion of industrial techniques, attempts of Michael Gold', in David Madden (ed.), Proletarian Writers of the Thirties, Carbondale & he saw as a result of the artist's immer­ Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press, sion in proletarian life, which "forced 1968, pp. 222-51. him to find new forms for a new world 52Robinson, A Wall to Paint On, pp.247, content". These qualities made Siqueiros 250. Cf. the account of Siqueiros in New York in Steven Naifeh & Gregory White Smith, into something like a Lenin or Stalin of Jackson Pollock: An American Saga, London, 30 painting: Barrie & Jenkins, 1989, chapter 19. both had contributed equally to the Research (1930-1) and Dartmouth pantomime, and that one is as bad College (1932-4), the solo exhibitions as the other in their publicity-seeking in New York, and the publications of antics, concluding: his prints. Further, Orozco was under­ stood as a "modern", because –as a Finally, Siqueiros has reminded writer in the magazine Parnassus put it people with fresh intensity that he in 1930– "direct technique, high color, represents the peak of caudillaje of primary forms best express his intense the petty-bourgeois revolution, that emotion".57 his unquestionably brilliant talent has From the beginning, the image of been wasted to é­pater le bourgeois Orozco in the American art press was for too many years now, that he has that of an artist of profound originality. indulged in his own brand of oppor­ In Anita Brenner's early essay on the tunism (...) and is almost completely artist for The Arts he appears as one incapable of joining in any solidly col­ who "has served no apprenticeship in lective work with any continuity.53 Italy or in . He never has painted with one eye on the connoisseur, the The terms of this criticism almost art-critic, the dealer, or the museum." certainly refer to Siqueiros's call for a Rather, his art was an organic product "red caudillo" at the 1929 meeting of of the nationalism of the Revolution, Latin American Communists in Buenos and had an essentially intuitive charac­ Aires, a call that had been rejected as out of line with Comintern policy.54 53Emanuel Eisenberg: 'Battle of the While these doctrinal deviations did Century', New Masses, vol. 17, no. 11, 10 not prevent Siqueiros establishing a fol­ December 1935, pp. 18-20; Museo Nacional lowing when he returned to New York de Arte, Portrait of a Decade, pp. 50-53. 54See Folgarait, Mural Painting and Social in 1936, an artist with such an intran­ Revolution in Mexico, pp. 186-7. sigent view of easel painting and such 55"Siqueiros laughs at the WPA Art a challenging and doctrinaire mural Projects", Robinson recorded - A Wall to Paint aesthetic was a difficult model.55 On, p. 251. 56"He would never explain what political Ironically, it was Orozco, the most or social doctrine he meant to expound by all politically equivocal and pessimistic of this [his murals in the National preparatory the muralists,56 who offered the least School], and he titles his pictures if pressed, 'Whatever You Like.'" Brenner, Idols Behind problematic exemplar. The strength Altars, p.270. of his appeal may have been part­ 57'Current Art Activities', Parnassus, vol. ly to do with the sheer impact and 2, no. 2, February 1930, p. 6. Sheldon Cheney accessibility of his work relative to the insistently contrasts Orozco's modernism with Thomas Hart Benton's non-modernist United States's cultural metropolis: the approach to the mural in Expressionism in Art, murals at the New School of Social New York, Liveright, 1934, pp. 186-9, 296-8. 31 ter: "[h]is work is very uneven, since it planned by the Moscow-based Interna­ is a wholly emotional thing." His striking tional Bureau of Revolutionary Artists contrasts of black and white, his "quive­ in 1935 was to have included him. The ring lines and sudden splashes" came names of Jacob Burck, Sergei Eisens­ out of an "instinctive wisdom". These tein, and Lewis Mumford were initially judgements were not directed only at proposed as possible authors, although its "plastic" aspects but also at its mean­ eventually Meyer Schapiro agreed to ing, which was equally individualistic: take it on, apparently with the artist's "[h]e will not attach himself, to a class, 58 a movement, or a school". Not only 58Anita Brenner, 'A Mexican Rebel', The was Orozco's art attributed a quality of Arts, vol. 12, no. 4, October 1927, pp. 207-9. overwhelming authenticity, its simplic­ (Alma Reed gives a similar characterization of ity and direc­ness were said to guaran­ the artist in 'Orozco and Mexican painting', Creative Art, vol. 9, no. 3, September 1931, tee its truth as record. Responding to pp.190-207.) Despite this, Orozco was con­ his exhibit of 'Mexico in Revolution' at vinced that Idols Behind Altars would only add the Art Sudents' League in 1929, The to the Rivera cult, and made acid comments on Brenner in his letters to Charlot. See José­ Arts' reviewer asserted: "his pictures Clemente Orozco, The Artist in New York: Let­ are entirely without bravura or surface ters to and Unpublished Writings charm. But everything that he paints (1925-1929) (tr. Ruth L.C. Simms), Austin and exists; it carries conviction".59 London, University of Texas Press, 1974, pp.35, 38, 40, 53, 55. Part of Orozco's appeal to the 59D[orothy] L[efferts] M[oore], 'Exhibi­ Communist left may have lain in the tions in New York', The Arts, vol. 15, no. 5, May fact that he was a first-hand witness 1929, p. 328. The contrast between Rivera's "Machiavellian shrewdeness and ruthless intri­ ever ready to confirm the moral and gue" and Orozco's authenticity and personal aesthetic backslidings of his great rival kindliness is also made by Beals, who none- Rivera. Moreover, despite the nightma­ the-less gives an acute assessment of the relative merits of their art in the period. See rish and seemingly apocalyptic sym­ Beals, Glass Houses, pp. 180-4. bolism of some of his work, he was 60In 1936 Orozco wrote to Freeman also an ally, showing at John Reed from Guadalajara: "You know that I like black Club exhibitions in 1933-4 and mak­ and white as much as big walls, and you may be sure that I will send you something for ing occasional contributions to New the 'New Masses' especially because the Masses.60 In February 1936 he read magnificent printing of perfect black on dull the report of the delegation from the paper." (sic) José­ Clemente Orozco to Joseph Freeman, 22 March 1936, Joseph Freeman League of Revolutionary Artists and Collection, Box 32-16, Hoover Institution Writers of mexico at the First Ameri­ Archives, copyright Stanford University. can Artists Congress in New York.61 61Matthew Baigell & Julia Williams (ed.), Indeed, Orozco's reputation among Artists Against War and Fascism: Papers of the First American Artists Congress, New Brunswick, Communists was such that a series of New Jersey, Rutgers University press, 1986, 32 monographs on revolutionary artists pp. 203-7. consent. Given the shift to the Popular ronment, and as a result his frescoes Front it is not surprizing perhaps that were "iconoclastic rather than revo­ the series was unrealized, and in 1936 lutionary". None-the-less, it was "no the IBRA was dissolved.62 exaggeration to say that ... in regard Anita Brenner's 1933 article on to color, composition, organic relation Orozco for New Masses described to architecture, and grandeur of con­ him as "wholly a revolutionary" in that cept", they "surpass by far any other he did not "espouse any liberal or reformist cause", and "all the forces 62This account is based on the corres­ of his nature set him squarely against pondence from Alfred Durus of the IBRA to the status quo". At the same time, she Louis Lozowick (Corresponding Secretary for acknowledged that the artist saw him­ the New York John Reed Club). See Alfred Durus to Louis Lozowick, 13 October 1935, self as a free agent who was not com­ 5 November 1935, 4 March 1936, 28 June mitted to either side of the struggle. 1936, 16 January 1937, 14 February 1937, 1 However, by contrast with her 1925 August 1937 (Archives of American Art, 1333: 738, 741, 755, 811, 885-6, 895-6, 920-1); and essay for The Ar ts, Brenner now Meyer Schapiro to Lozowick, 19 June 1936 depicted Rivera as an opportunist, and (1333: 805). See also Durus to Lozowick, implied that his work glossed over 26 July 1936, and 5 August 1936 (Lozowick the unfinished business of the Mexican Papers, AAA, unfilmed). The Hugo Gellert Papers (AAA, unfilmed, Box 1) contain three Revolution: letters from Durus to Gellert relating to this project, dated 3 October 1935, 23 November While Rivera depicts a republic in 1935, and 9 December 1936. The last of these includes a list of the proposed series, the hands of workers and peas­ for which von Wiegand was to have written ants as a fait accompli, Orozco cuts on Siqueiros. For Meyer Schapiro's political sharply into immediate realities ...63 trajectory, see Andrew Hemingway, 'Meyer Schapiro and Marxism in the 1930s', Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 17, No. 1, 1994, pp. 13-29. When von Wiegand reviewed the 63Anita Brenner, 'Orozco', New Masses, Dartmouth cycle for New Masses two vol. 8, no. 7, February 1933, pp. 22-3. Although years later, she conceded that the art­ in Idols Behind Altars (p.278) Brenner, attribu­ ted to Rivera "[a]ll the poise, the social agility, ist's viewpoint appeared to be "huma­ the plausible facade lacking which Orozco nitarian" and "semi-anarchist": the murals suffers", she did not fundamentally question were critical of "bourgeois civilization" his integrity. Another American fellow traveller without showing any way for the prole­ recorded that Rivera himself acknowledged tariat to move beyond it, and their sym­ "no Mexican government can be really revo­ bols were "literary, legendary, oblique, lutionary; the Americans are too strong." static". But this, she reasoned, was an Mexico's leaders "make even my pictures a cover for compromises." - Anna Louise Strong, effect of the "frozen ivory tower" where I Change Worlds: The Remarking of an American, they were located. Orozco had been New York, Garden City publishing Co., 1937, pp. 244- . Strong was in Mexico in 1927. "unconsciously" influenced by the envi­ π 33 frescoes in this country".64 In a review declined when he "separated himself of Orozco's lithographs of November from the mainstream of revolution­ 1935, Stephen Alexander described him ary labor". However, she also argued as "the greatest artist of our time in the that the limitations of his work were Western hemisphere", contrasting him were an effect of the conjunction with that "cheaply opportunistic busi­ between his innate gifts of "decora­ ness man" Rivera: tive lyricism" and his embrace of the principle of "modernistic simplification", Terrifying in their explosive violence, learnt during his period in the "Paris these drawings are full of the hatred ateliers". This aesthetic outlook, while born of despair... With a heightened it could express the "age-old, voiceless, intensity and bitterness, he gives us non-resistant struggle of the Indian", his feelings about the degradation of could not articulate "the progressive women into prostitution; the sham movement towards freedom through picturesqueness which is commonly modern methods of struggle" repre­ presented as Mexico to smug, wealthy sented by the Communist Party, to the tourists; the murder, starvation and principles of which Rivera had never chaos which are continuing facts in the really given plastic expression: lives of the Mexican working class. Rivera's form, never infused with Orozco, it seemed, appealled the directive energy of struggle as because his works looked so angry and is Orozco's, deals with the surface uncompromising. Alexander dwelt at pageantry of revolution –the lac­ some length on the ambiguities of mea­ quer red of clustered workers' flags ning in the prints, but found the violen­ bright as poinsettias in the sun; the ce of their style in itself revolutionary. depersonalized egg-shaped heads This was an interesting perception – of workers under white sombreros; something like a valorization of Orozco the ornamental rhythm of cartridge in terms of an ostronanie effect.65 belts beautiful as Roman garlands. The contrast between Orozco and Rivera was developed most fully By contrast, despite Orozco's lack in von Wiegand's review of the lat­ of political commitment, he had pro­ ter's Portrait of Mexico of 1937, which duced a: had a text by the Lovestoneite Wolfe. While she could not gainsay the qua­ 64Charmion von Wiegand, 'Our lity of Rivera's murals in the Ministry Greatest Mural Art', New Masses, vol. 15, no. of Education and Chapingo, von 1, 2 April 1935, p. 34. 65 Wiegand asserted –as her husband Stephen Alexander, 'Orozco's Lithographs', New Masses, vol. 17, no. 8, 19 34 had five years before– that his talent November 1935, p. 29. Mexican revolutionary art, totally dif­ press in which Orozco's modernity and ferent from European art, condens­ essential Mexicanness were, as we have ing the violence and struggle of civil seen, recurrent themes. Interestingly, war, the faith and tenderness of a this second characteristic of his work people, into calligraphs of such naked was accorded a positive value even simplicity that the most illiterate before the shift in Communist thinking peon can read them, yet expressed on nationalism and national cultures in terms of pure plastic.66 that accompanied the popular Front. Having said this, at the end of the While the larger political claims of decade Orozco's work was judged to this critique are implausible, it should be in decline in the Communist press, not be interpreted simply as an aes­ whereas Siqueiros's 1940 exhibition thetic reflex of Stalinism. For what is at the pierre Matisse Gallery in New striking about criticisms of Rivera from York effectively revealed him as the within the Communist movement in only one of the big three whose work the 1930s is that they focus on what remained vital.68 were perceived as the retardataire fea­ tures and expressive limitations of his style. Orzoco and Siqueiros were hailed 66Charmion von Wiegand, 'Portrait of an Artist', New Masses, vol. 23 no. 6, 27 April as his superiors not just for political 1937, pp. 24-26. Cf. Charmion von Wiegand reasons, but because they were more to Joseph Freeman, 14 September 1933, fully moderns, and in Orozco's case Joseph Freeman Collection, Box 39-23, Hoo­ also more fully Mexican. Indeed, von ver Institution Archives, copyright Stanford University. In this letter she reports Orozco Wiegand's affirmation of the qualities saying of Rivera: "He gains no knowledge, he of Orozco's work matches up precisely doesn't know the real principles of painting. with the endorsement of Expressionist He hides it by controversery [sic] ­Believe me, when I say, no painter is a communist tendencies in U.S. art that appears or any other kind of politician. He has other elsewhere in her writings for the left- problems. Politics is not his business." wing press.67 The idea that the art­ 67Charmion von Wiegand: 'Fine Arts', ists of the left would have to draw on New Masses, vol. 23, no. 9, 18 May 1937, pp. 32-3; 'Expressionism and Social Change', the formal resources of modernism to Art Front, vol. 2, no. 10, November 1936, pp. build a truly revolutionary art was a 10-13. 68 commonplace of Communist criticism "He [Orozco] is still the greatest artist of the Western Hemisphere although he has in the 1930s, and although how exactly become a hater of humanity of late and his this was to be done remained unclear, art is beginning to turn sick". Ray King, 'Fine the model of Expressionism was gen­ Exhibit of Siqueiros Paintings', Daily Worker, 24 January 1940. Cf. Walt Anderson, 'The Vital erally seen as key. It should also be Art of Mexico', Daily Worker, 23 May 1940. noted that these judgements were in For the catalogue to the exhibition, see Museo line with those in the mainstream art Nacional de Arte, Portrait of a Decade, p. 220. 35 Charles White, The Contribution of the Negro to Democracy in America, 1943, egg tempera, 352.5 x 517.5 cm, Hampton University’s Archival and Museum Collection, Hampton University, Hampton, VA.

Artistic responses taken, it certainly seems that the con­ tinuous disparagement of Rivera's Finally, the question remains: what did North American murals represented the artists make of all this? That is, a consensus that extended to key art­ did the status of Los Tres Grandes in ists. We have already discussed Jacob Communist art criticism have a sig­ Burck's critique of Rivera, which rep­ nificant bearing on the ways in which resented the viewpoint of one of the Communist and fellow-travelling art­ model proletarian artists of the Third ists responded to their work? At the Period, a powerful voice in the John 36 level of opinions adopted/positions Reed Club, and a painter whose own murals were shipped to Moscow for (San Francisco Art Institute, 1931) on exhibition.69 Noda's piedmont High School fresco The Midwestern artist, Joe Jones, in California of 1937 is clearcut, both in another exemplar of proletarianism, terms of the motiv of a painting within also proclaimed his disdain for the a painting, and formally in terms of the Detroit Industry murals, rubbing them stacking of the figures.72 Reisman, one with a wet finger to test if they were of the leading players in the New York true fresco (!), and sneering at what he John Reed Club, was still on sufficiently perceived to be their glorification of amicable terms with Rivera in 1933 to "mechanized men". He also made the solicit a recommendation from him rather odd comment that the clean- for a Guggenheim Fellowship, despite shaven Rivera was "babbling through the fiasco of the artist's presentation his beard".70 Even so, it is important to to the club in January of the previous remember that Rivera's early murals did year (figs. pp. 20-21).73 remain in high esteem, and indeed one might find formal affinities between the 69For Burck, see Andrew Hemingway, simple statuesque figure groupings and "The Social Viewpoint in Art": American Artists shallow space of some of his Ministry and the Communist Movement, 1926-56, Yale of Education panels and Jones's lost oil University press, forthcoming, chapter 2. For his murals, see 'Five American Murals on the mural Roustabouts of 1935, in so far as Soviet Union ­ by Jacob Burck', International we can know this from the sketch in Literature, no. 3, 1935, pp. 84-8. the Worcester Art Museum, Massachu­ 70'Provincetown Makes Ar tist a setts, and contemporary reproductions Communist', undated clipping from Saint 71 Louis Post-Dispatch, September 1933, Dr. John (fig. p. 13). Green Papers, Missouri Historical Society. Moreover, whatever the abuse 71'American Murals by Joe Jones', heaped on him, Rivera seems to have International Literature, no. 2, 1934, p. 97. 72For Noda's secret work, see Allen maintained friendly relations with Weinstein, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, individual communists such as Hideo Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1978, pp. 128-30, Noda and Philip Reisman. The Japane­ 309. Kumamoto prefectural Museum, Hideo se-American Noda, who had studied Benjamin Noda and Chuzo Tamotzu, 1992, pp.12, 17-20. My thanks to Makiko Yamanashi at the California School of Fine Art and for her translations from the Japanese and assisted Rivera at Rockefeller Center, other assistence. 73 later became active in the Communist See Diego Rivera to philip Reisman, 25 October 1933 (Philip Reisman papers, underground and seems to have been a Syracuse University Library). Although some committed Stalinist –to the extent that of Reisman's paintings and prints of the early he reportedly denounced Whittaker thirties (such as tempera panel The Negro in Chambers as a Trotskyite to his Party American History and the etching South) tes­ tify to the artist's interest in the mural form, superior in late 1935. None the less, the and he contributed a study on The Post-War influence of Rivera's Making of a Fresco World to MoMA's 1932 mural exhibition, his 37 There is, in any case, a kind of sketches Quirt made for the club's absurdity to the exponents of Ameri­ 1933 mural competition –although to can proletarianism bombastically dam­ judge from photographs these had ning a muralist of Rivera's achievement more diffuse and less hieratic com­ at a time when their own efforts at positions than either the Dartmouth monumental painting were not true or New School for Social Research murals but for the most part large oil murals. Closer in this latter regard are paintings painted on canvas or pressed some of Quirt's contemporary panel wood board. This was one cost of paintings such as Give Us This Day producing murals for truly proletarian Our Daily Bread (1935, Wadsworth environments such as the Communist Athenauem, Hartford, Connecticut) Party Workers Center in New York, –which were connected with Orozco or an independent labour college in by the Daily Worker's art critic, the Arkansas –although arguably Rivera painter Jacob Kainen, in a review of himself had demonstrated how such Quirt's solo show at the constraints could be surmounted in his gallery in early 1936.76 But by the much criticized portable fresco pan­ els for the New Workers School of 1933.74 In the event, the main oppor­ only actual mural seems to have been the tunities for Communist artists to paint tempera panels on industrial themes he pain­ ted for the Occupational Therapy Ward of murals in public spaces came not Bellevue Hospital, New York, in 1936-7 under through working-class and Communist the auspices of the WPA. (See Bush, Philip organizations, but through the vari­ Reisman, pp.21-3, 45.) These do not suggest any significant engagement with the Mexican ous patronage initiatives of the New example. Deal administration,75 and most such 74Jones's main mural sequence of the murals were again not in fresco –let Third period were painted for Common­ wealth College at Mena, Arkansas, and are alone buon fresco– they were painted presumed destroyed. See Al Lehman, 'Brilliant in oil or tempera on canvas or panel. Murals by Joe Jones Decorate Labor College Despite all the lip service paid to Walls', Daily Worker, 31 August 1935. The Orozco's example, it was not that easy Workers Center murals were by Phil Bard - see Walt Carmon, 'Phil Bard: American Artist', to follow. Two of the John Reed Club International Literature, no. 5, 1934, pp. 80-83. artists known to have been interested 75For a significant attempt by Commu­ in his work, the Social Surrealists James nists and fellow travellers to use the WPA Federal Art Project to serve labour organiza­ Guy and Walter Quirt, drove up to tions, see Helen A. Harrison, 'Subway Art and Dartmouth to watch the murals in the Public Use of Art Committee', Archives of progress, and were greatly impressed, American Art Journal, vol. 21, no. 2. 1981, pp. according to Guy's re­collection. 3-11. 76University Galler y, University of Perhaps something of the violence of Minnesota, Walter Quirt: A Retrospective, 38 Orozco's images got into the tempera Minneapolis, 1980, pp.12, 19, 35. For repro­ time Quirt found the opportunity to naturalistic space and modelling of fig­ paint a major mural on The Growth of ures, and correspondingly depend less Medicine from Primitive Times for the on expressionistic colour and caricatu­ Bellevue Hospital psychiatric pavilion ral types than his. under WPA in 1937, his interest in While one explanation for these the Mexican example seems to have differences may lie in the constraints waned, and in a lecture of 1939 he of working for the Treasury Section of would reco­mend his contemporary Fine Arts –and certainly Siporin's con­ muralists to found their style on the temporary prints and tempera paint­ example of modernist easel painters ings for the Federal Art project are such as Marsden Hartley, John Marin, less naturalistic– it may be that the and Max Weber (fig. p. 29).77 expressionist elements in Orozco's The Coit Tower decorations in San mural style were too associated with Francisco apart,78 the main corpus of pessimism and notions of the artist's frescoes produced by artists of the inner torment for them to be adapt­ U.S. thirties left were the work of the able to the progressive vision of the Chicago-based muralists Edgar Britton, Democratic Front. In any case, given Edward Millman, and Mitchell Siporin, what was perceived as the emphatic which I have discussed elsewhere. To 'Mexicanness' of his work, any more judge from their recorded statements, direct pastiche would have been inap­ Orozco was certainly the key figure propriate to artists of the Democratic for Millman and Siporin, and Millman's frescoes in the Post Office at Decatur, Illinois, clearly suggest the influence of ductions of three of Quirt's mural sketches, the Dartmouth murals in their mon­ see 'American Revolutionary paintings by tage of sequential motivs, their shal­ Walter Quirt', International Literature, no. 4, 1934, pp. 66-8. For Social Surrealism, see low space, and sombre expressions. Ilene Susan Fort, 'American Social Surrealism', By contrast, the panels by Britton and Archives of American Art Journal, vol. 22, no. 3, Siporin at Decatur resemble more 1982, pp. 8-20. 77 'On Mural Painting' (typescript), Wal­ the clear hieratic groupings of Rivera's ter Quirt papers, AAA571:371-7. Cf. Walter Ministry of Education or Chapingo Quirt, 'On Mural painting', in O'Connor murals than they do Orozco's work. (ed.), Art for the Millions, pp.78-81. By the The later murals by Millman and Siporin early 1940s, Quirt's commitment to Marxism seems to have eroded, and he had also beco­ in the Saint Louis Post Office –the most me a committed modernist. For his later important fresco cycle commissioned largely negative view of Orozco, see the two under the New Deal– probably come letters he wrote from Guadalajara to Leila Purcell (20 December 1962) and Eleanor closest to Orozco of any monumental Quirt (23 December 1962), AAA570:35-8, painting produced in the United States 227-9. 78 in this period, but they have a more See Lee, Painting on the Left, chapter. 39 Front seeking to produce an ar t example of Mexican muralism would geared to the "native tradition" of thus have been relevant to White North American culture.79 not just as a stylistic exemplar of Millman and Siporin had a revolutionary art, but as a modern formative influence on the young 'national style' produced by a non- African American painter Charles white people. The distinctive stylized White, who studied in their studios physiognomies that he developed while working on the Federal Art for representing African Americans Project in Chicago, under which in the 1940s should probably be he painted his first murals, such as understood as an attempt to pro­ Five Great American Negroes (1939, duce something equivalent.82 Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, DC). presumably they 79Andrew Hemingway, '"An Unbroken reinforced his already established Lugubrious Quality": Mexican Muralism and interest in Mexican ar t. In 1946, the Style of the Democratic Front in the White and his then wife, the sculp­ Midwest', Crónicas, forthcoming. 80Benjamin Horowitz, Images of tor and printmaker Elizabeth Catlett, Dignity: The Drawings of Charles White, Los travelled to Mexico with a letter of Angeles, Ward Ritchie press, 1967, pp. 14- introduction to Siqueiros, spending 15. Cf. White's biographical statement in his a year in the country, and studying application to the John Simon Guggenheim 80 Memorial Foundation, Charles White papers, at the Taller de Grafica Po­pular. AAA3191:1177-1240; his statement on In its focus on 'Negro History', that Mexican art quoted in Walter Christmas, is on the active struggles of African 'Artist Seeks Life of Man on Street', Daily Compass, 10 February 1950 (AAA3194:320); Americans, White's worked served and Charles White, 'Path of a Negro Artist', as a corrective to that of Millman Masses & Mainstream, Vol. 8, No. 4, April 1955, and Siporin, which only went as p. 40. See also Lizetta LeFalle-Collins & Shifra M. Goldman, In the Spirit of Resistance: African- far as depicting struggles on their American Modernists and the Mexican Muralist behalf. White was a longterm com­ School, New York, American Federation of munist, and although he was clear Arts, 1996, pp. 55-6. 81 that "all working class people have Robert A. Davis, 'The Art Notebook', Chicago Sunday Bee, 6 October 1940. a common interest and that there 82 Interest in Siqueiros's influence on is a common solution for their American artists has inevitably focussed on problems",.81 his conception of Pollock, although the function he plays in this regard seems confined to that of a catalyst African Americans –in line with the for pollock's technical experiments, rather Communist party's– was of a sub­ than as a formal or iconographic model. ject nationality engaged in a struggle (See especially Düsseldorf Kunsthalle, Siquei­ for national liberation that was one ros/Pollock, Pollock/Siqueiros, 1995). Among the Abstract Expressionists to be, some of component within the larger class Guston's work of the 1930s is closer in spirit, 40 and anti-imperialist struggle. The most notably Bombardment (1937-8, private White's debts to Mexican art of White's exhibition at the ACA were evident to reviewers at least Gallery in New York of 1950, the Daily as early as 1940, when a critic in the Worker's Charles Corwin described Chicago Daily News compared the the artist as "a disciple of the Mexican figures in his mural History of the school of social art", but criticized his Negro Press and another work at the stylized forms for failing to achieve the American Negro Exposition of that "coordinated" overall effects that made year with Rivera's.83 And in reviews Siqueiros's works such as proletarian of the postwar period, rather general­ Victim, The Sob, and Echo of a Scream ized comparisons between White's signify so powerfully. His monumental, style and that of Orozco and Rivera richly modeled heads" were, in them­ are commonplace.84 However, it may selves, usually the most satisfactory be that Siqueiros was just as impor­ part of his work.85 tant a source. Thus while White's In 1935 the Communist party's major tempera mural The Contribution General Secretar y, Earl Browder, of the Negro to Democracy in America observed that while the party aimed (1943, Hampton University Museum, "to give political guidance directly to its Ham­ton Virginia) can not match members in all fields of work, including the dynamism of Siqueiros's Portrait the arts", there was "no fixed 'Party line' of the Bourgeoisie in its use of stairwell by which works of art can automatically space and the style does not refer­ be separated into sheeps and goats".86 ence documentary photography, the This was certainly true, and while the melé­e of overlapping motivs and the Party press was the forum for fierce central image of the machine press are distinctly reminiscent of it. Although he had not yet been to Mexico, White Collection), which suggests the influence of Siqueiros's New York paintings of 1936-7 in its may well have seen photographs of the careening perspective effect and apoclayptic Electricians' Union mural (fig. p. 36). imagery of fascist violence - as Patricia Hills has Moreover, the heavily modelled noted in Boston University & Bread and Roses, stylized heads that feature in White's Social Concern and Urban Realism, p. 55. 83'Around the Galleries', Chicago Daily drawings, lithographs and paintings News, 13 July 1940. throughout the 1940s have a signifi­ 84E.g., 'Charles White', Art News, vol. 49, cant resemblance to the stark chiara­ no. 1, March 1950, p. 52. 85Charles Corwin, 'Charles White's oscuro modelling and arbitrary lighting Exhibit an Important Event in the Art World', of Siqueiros's portraits of the early Daily Worker, 20 February 1950. 1930s, which White may have known 86Earl Browder, 'Communism in through lithographs, if not the paint­ Literature' (address to opening session of the American Writers' Congress, 26 April 1935), ings, before his Mexican sojourn. It is in his Communism in the United States, New perhaps symptomatic that in a review York, International Publishers, 1935, p. 313. 41 and sometimes vitriolic exchanges on Herner de Larrea, Irene, Diego Rivera's culture, it did not enunciate any single Mural at the Rockefeller Center, Mexico coercive consensus on Mexican mural­ City, Edicupes, 1990. ism, or any other significant matter. As Homberger, Eric, American Writers and we have seen, there does seem to have Radical Politics, 1900-39: Equivocal been a broad measure of agreement as Commitments, Basingstoke & London, to the relative merits and demerits of Macmillan, 1986, chapter 5. Los Tres Grandes, but even so, how their Hurlburt, Laurance P., The Mexican Muralists different examples could be adapted to in the United States, Alburquerque, U.S. circumstances was far from clearcut. University of New Mexico Press, 1989. This was a problem individual artists LeFalle-Collins, Lizetta, & Goldman, Shifra were left to struggle with for themselves. M., In the Spirit of Resistance: African- In the end, Mexican muralism stood for American Modernists and the Mexican a somewhat ill –defined grouping of Muralist School, New York, American features that made up a generic idiom Federation of Arts, 1996. rather than a clearly defined set of Lee, Anthony, Painting on the Left: Diego alternatives– and this despite the heavy Rivera, Radical Politics, and San Francisco's moral and ideological connotations that Public Murals, Berkeley, University of Communist critical discourse sought to California Press, 1999. attach to the work of each of its main Museo Nacional de Ar te, Instituto exponents. Nacional de Bellas Artes, Portrait of a Decade, 1930-1940: David Alfaro Siqueiros (English version), Mexico Bibliography City, 1997. O'Connor, Francis V., (ed.), Art for the Aaron, Daniel, Writers on the Left: Episodes Millions: Essays from the 1930s by in American Literary Communism (1961), Artists and Administrators of the WPA New York, press, Federal Art Project, Boston, New York 1992. Graphic Society, 1973. Azuela, Alicia, Diego Rivera en Detroit, Oles, James, et. al., South of the Border: Instituto de Investigaciones Esté­ticas, Mexico in the American Imagination, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de 1914 -1947, Washington & London, Mé­xico, 1985. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993. Brenner, Anita, Idols Behind Altars, New York, Richardson, William, 'The Dilemmas of a Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1929. Communist Artist: Diego Rivera in Folgarait, Leonard, Mural Painting and Social Moscow, 1927-1928', Mexican Studies/ Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940: Art of Estudios Mexicanos, vol. 3, No.1, the New Order, Cambridge, Cambridge Winter 1987 Robinson, Ione, A Wall 42 University Press, 1998. to Paint On, New York, Dutton, 1946.