OROZCO at DARTMOUTH the Epic of American Civilization

OROZCO AT DARTMOUTH The Epic of American Civilization HOOD MUSEUM OF ART, DARTMOUTH | DARTMOUTH COLLEGE LIBRARIES This brochure was made possible by the Manton Foundation, whose generosity provides perpetual support for the preservation of the Orozco murals. The original printing was sponsored by Monroe Denton, Class of 1968. © 2017 Trustees of Dartmouth College. All rights reserved. Edited by Nils Nadeau Designed by Joanna Bodenweber Printed by Puritan Capital All mural photography by Jeffrey Nintzel Mural images from José Clemente Orozco’s The Epic of American Civilization, 1932–34, fresco, Orozco Room, Baker Library, Dartmouth College. Commissioned by the Trustees of Dartmouth College. Photographs of the mural in progress courtesy of Dartmouth College Libraries. Continuous scan of mural used on front cover and center spreads by Hany Farid. Diagram on center spread by Barbara Krieger. For images of Orozco’s preparatory drawings for the mural, please see the web resource Dartmouth Digital Orozco at http://www.dartmouth.edu/digitalorozco/, which was produced in collaboration with the Neukom Institute for Computational Science and funded by the Class of 1960, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Neukom Institute. Back cover: The muralist’s tools; Orozco on scaffold with Man Released from the Mechanistic to the Creative Life, May 1932 3 Preface next year by José Clemente Orozco. Decades inspires artists, scholars, and curators to con- later, the artist-in-residence program, now tinue sharing his vision with the world. The very The Epic of American Civilization by José administered by the Studio Art Department, presence of Orozco’s Epic of American Civilization Clemente Orozco is one of Dartmouth’s great- has brought nearly 150 artists to teach and informs the day-to-day life of those who live on est treasures. Painted between 1932 and 1934, work at Dartmouth, including Paul Sample, campus and influences the scholarship of many the mural features provocative themes and Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Donald of those who work here. haunting imagery that continue to resonate Judd, and more recently William Christenberry, We can only hope that Professors Packard with audiences today. Terry Adkins, Amy Sillman, Alison Saar, Jane and Lathrop would be satisfied that their vision The early 1930s was a burgeoning era for Hammond, and Sana Musasama. All of these for art at Dartmouth has sparked the imagination art on the Dartmouth campus. In her essay, artists and their students have no doubt spent and creativity of generations to follow, and has art historian Jacquelynn Baas reminds us of the time, together and alone, contemplating the made Dartmouth a vibrant community for ambitions of art history professors Artemas S. narrative, iconography, and sheer mastery of artists, scholars, and art lovers. Packard and Churchill P. Lathrop, who orig- technique that Orozco demonstrated in his We are most grateful to the Manton Founda- inated the commission with the support of great murals. tion, whose generosity provides perpetual President Ernest Hopkins. This landmark com- In 1936, a couple of years after Orozco had support for the preservation and interpreta- mission would be, they surmised, the first in a departed the Hanover Plain for his native Mex- tion of the Orozco mural, which includes this series of regular engagements with “the most ico, another artist traveled three hundred miles important brochure. competent artists available.” Orozco, Hopkins, to stand before his Dartmouth masterpiece. Lathrop, and Packard could not have envisaged According to the 1989 Pulitzer Prize–winning John R. Stomberg how their advocacy for transformative art at biography by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director Dartmouth would eventually manifest itself. Smith, Jackson Pollock—with a group that Hood Museum of Art Seventy-five years later, The Epic of American included fellow artist Philip Goldstein (later Philip Civilization remains one of very few works com- Guston)—drove from New York to see Orozco’s Sue Mehrer missioned for Dartmouth, yet the influence it mural. Pollock subsequently painted an untitled Dean of Libraries has had on countless artists and scholars, stu- sketch now known as Bald Woman with Skeleton dents and faculty, and visitors from all parts of (right), which was recently acquired by the Hood the globe is nothing short of remarkable. Museum of Art. Pollock, like many artists then, Packard and Lathrop were equally concerned now, and surely still to come, was moved to that students wishing to learn about an artist’s create something new from his experience with studio activities had no resource for academic this powerful work of modern art. support, although Carpenter Hall, home of the In addition to inspiring new acquisitions for Jackson Pollock, untitled Art History Department since 1929, was out- the Hood’s permanent collection, the murals (Bald Woman with Skeleton), fitted with drawing, painting, sculpting, and have set a lasting tone for the exhibition pro- about 1938–41, oil on the printmaking studios in addition to seven art gram as well. In any given year, there are smooth side of Masonite attached to the stretcher. exhibition galleries. They proposed to President several projects on campus dedicated to socially Purchased through the Hopkins that an artist be brought to Dartmouth engaged art. Dartmouth has long been an Miriam and Sidney to add academic richness to students’ “extra- institution that welcomes diverse opinions and Stoneman Acquisitions Fund. curricular” interest in art making. Carlos the free and open exchange of ideas. It was this © 2017 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Sanchez ’23 thus became the first artist-in- vibrant intellectual environment that originally Society (ARS), New York. residence at Dartmouth College, followed the led to the creation of Orozco’s murals, and that Photo by Jeffrey Nintzel. Dartmouth College and The Epic of American Civilization JACQUELYNN BAAS In 1768 the founder of Dartmouth College, Commissioning Orozco the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, sent “a small The idea of bringing Orozco to Dartmouth to specimen of the produce and manufacture of execute a mural seems to have occurred to the American wilderness”—a pipe, tobacco members of the art faculty around the time pouch, knife case, and several other articles— their new building, Carpenter Hall, was com- to the College’s benefactor, the Second Earl pleted in 1929. The following year, the of Dartmouth.1 From its very beginnings, Dart- department’s chairman, Artemas S. Packard, mouth’s remote location in the New England supported by a young member of the art fac- wilderness fostered an active commitment to ulty, Churchill P. Lathrop, began a campaign providing examples of the “natural and moral to realize their vision of obtaining for the world,” as museum and library collections College the services of one of the two import- were thought of in the eighteenth century. ant Mexican muralists then working in the One of the most notable manifestations of this United States: Diego Rivera and José Clemente ongoing commitment is The Epic of American Orozco. According to Lathrop, Orozco was Civilization, the mural that, in the spring of their preferred choice from the beginning.2 1932, the Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco But they were quite aware that the gregarious was commissioned to paint in the lower-level Rivera had better name recognition, so Packard reserve reading room of Dartmouth’s Baker and Lathrop organized several exhibitions of Library. Orozco’s prints and drawings in the galleries The Epic of American Civilization proved to be of Carpenter Hall in order to make his work a pivotal work in the career of one of the most better known in northern New England. significant artists of the twentieth century. The persistence of Orozco’s New York dealer, Many of the students who witnessed its creation Alma Reed, was an important factor that may never forgot the experience, and its impact is have helped offset a tendency to favor Rivera still palpable seventy-five years later. To under- among potential supporters of bringing a stand how this inflammatory work by a Mexican Mexican muralist to Dartmouth. Chief among artist came to be created at Dartmouth College these was the Rockefeller family, with their during the depths of the Great Depression is to Mexican oil interests. Nelson Rockefeller, understand something both about Dartmouth Dartmouth Class of 1930, had been a student and about Wheelock’s successors as stewards of of Lathrop’s, and a tutorial fund for special student cultural life. educational initiatives set up by Nelson’s mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, would ulti- mately make the commission possible. Orozco on scaffold with Departure of Quetzalcoatl, From 1930 to 1931, Orozco was working on June 1932 (detail) murals for the New School for Social Research 5 in Manhattan. Alma Reed informed Packard “I am wondering if there is any development on that the fresco “represents man emerging from that Orozco was eager to return to a classical the matter of the murals for Dartmouth,” she a heap of destructive machinery symbolizing theme, like that of the Prometheus mural he wrote. “Do you not think it would be advisable slavery, automatism, and the converting of recently had created for Pomona College. On for Sr. Orozco to submit his drawings for the a human being into a robot, without brain, February 20, 1931, Reed wrote Packard that project, based, of course, on the architectural

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