by admin » Mon Jun 15, 2015 1:35 am
THE BATTLE OF DETROIT
Working at the Arts Institute now absorbed me completely. Despite the fact that I was on a rigorous meat-free and debilitating thyroid-supplemented diet to lose weight, I averaged fifteen hours a day on the scaffold, seven days a week. When I started painting, I weighed a good deal more than three hundred pounds; when I was done, I had worked and dieted off more than one hundred pounds.
Frida was also working. She had developed her own style and was beginning to paint real masterpieces. When we had been in Detroit for about six months, however, her mother fell fatally ill, and Frida had to return to Coyoacin. I remained in Detroit, laboring harder than ever.
In my previous murals, I had tried to achieve a harmony in my painting with the architecture of the building. But to attempt such a harmony in the garden of the Institute would have defeated my purposes. For the walls here were of an intricate Italian baroque style, with little windows, heads of satyrs, doorways, and sculpturesque mouldings. It was within such a frame that I was to represent the life of an age which had nothing to do with baroque refinements -- a new life which was characterized by masses, machines, and naked mechanical power. So I set to work consciously to over-power the ornamentation of the room.
My subject matter lent itself, both historically and pictorially, to this conflict. And to strengthen and integrate it plastically I decided, throughout its whole, to establish a rhythm more elemental, more powerful than any other in the garden. I chose one of the dominant rhythms in the life process -- the wave. My Detroit Institute mural consists of twenty-seven panels divided roughly into three levels; at the base, inset scenes depict events in the workers' day; at the main level, from the base mouldings to the tops of the columns, the major area of the composition, are shown machines in motion; on the upper level, the painting represents the physiography of the region, its soil, its minerals and fossils, its lake and river transport, and finally, directly under the rafters, its civilian and military aviation and the races of man. In panel after panel, the undulating wave reappears -- in the giant steel conveyor belts, in the tubes and piping, and in the strata of the sub-soil.
Thoroughly immersed in my labors though I was, I became conscious after a time, that whispers were beginning to circulate through the city concerning certain subjects of my frescoes. On the upper level of one wall, I had painted hands breaking through the surface of the earth to bring up pieces of minerals and metals. Above this portrayal, I had painted two reclining female nudes: one black, representing coal; one red, representing iron. On the wall directly opposite, I had shown hands taking limestone, sand, sulphur, and other light-colored substances from the earth, and directly above, had again represented their human analogues in white and yellow female nudes.
The females, who also represented the races of man, were autochthonous types, hardly "pretty." The gossip spread that I was painting a poem to ugliness, that this was what the figures symbolized, standing above the roar and glint of steel machinery. I, who knew better, merely worked on. What I did not understand was that certain people in Detroit were looking for a pretext to attack me and my mural.
In a pharmacological panel, they found it at last. In front of three men at work in a modern biochemical plant, I had pictured a child, in the arms of a nurse, being vaccinated by a white-gowned physician. Directly before them stood a horse, a cow, and some sheep -- animals from whose tissues many vaccines are prepared. The panel was intended to celebrate the noble work of men of science fighting against disease. To some people, the panel seemed to be a portrayal of the Holy Family in modern dress, the three laboratory workers standing for the three kings, and the animals the animals of the manger. To my enemies, because it had sprung from my conception, the painting was sacrilegious.
One day, from my scaffold, I observed a peculiar-looking man studying my panels. He was introduced to me as a painter of stained-glass windows for churches. Completely bald on top, he had a round, rosy-cheeked face framed in long gray hair which fell to his shoulders in curls. On greeting me, his thin lips widened into a weak smile. His blue-gray eyes were cast down as if he had lost something essential and was looking for it.
His gray suit was unusually shabby and dirty for someone living in the United States. He was shod in black canvas slippers in the style of Saint Antoine, who became a church janitor.
As he spoke, he joined his fingers in a handclasp, like a schoolgirl. He was, this odd creature told me, of French descent, and he had devoted all his life to religious art. Taking one last, sweeping look around the room, he congratulated me on my work with obvious insincerity and hurriedly departed. I didn't understand his purpose until several days later.
The following day another visitor, presented to me as a columnist for one of the big Detroit newspapers, came to see me at work. This visitor was even more unpleasant-looking than the religious painter. He wore his hat pulled down over his eyes, which, when he lifted his head, were obscured by lenses as thick as bottle glass.
After watching me for a time, he shouted up, "Don't you think the perspective is wrong?"
I peered down, and suddenly I found the sight of this terribly myopic, hat-blinded man so amusing that I could not control myself and burst out laughing.
The columnist squinted back at me in an uncomprehending and embarrassed manner. Finally, he asked where the lavatory was. Between gasps for breath, I gave him directions. Needless to say, he did not return.
But the following day he officially opened the campaign against me in his column. The basis of his condemnation was the alleged immorality of my frescoes. How, in such a beautiful museum, he asked, could I be permitted to paint such filth! He had been informed, he said, by trustworthy authorities, that I was dishonoring the walls of the Institute with pornographic paintings. If I was not stopped now …
But he was only the first of the crackpots who now set upon me.
An even more deranged -- and dangerous -- foe of my mural was a priest who lived in a suburb of Detroit. His name was Father Charles Coughlin. This clergyman had built a handsome church with the liberal contributions of his poor and ignorant followers. The building was lavishly decorated with stained-glass windows done, as it happened, by my queer visitor, the religious painter. In addition to his pulpit, Father Coughlin had at his disposal, for the dissemination of his lunacies, his own radio station. He used it to broadcast the most vicious reactionary propaganda imaginable, without any interference at all. The day after the appearance of the column denouncing my work, Father Coughlin began to honor me daily with long diatribes condemning the Institute frescoes as immoral, blasphemous, antireligious, obscene, materialistic, and communistic. As a result, the whole city of Detroit began to argue about what I was doing. A city councilman assailed my murals as "a travesty on the spirit of Detroit" and urged his fellow councilmen to order that they be washed from the walls. Soon the whole region entered into the melee. As for myself, I calmly continued to paint.
In the midst of the storm, Frida returned to Detroit. She had been watching her mother die, and was spent with grief. Added to this, she was horrified by my appearance. At first she could not recognize me. In her absence, I had dieted and worked so hard that I had lost a great deal of weight. I was also wearing an unfamiliar-looking suit belonging to Clifford Wight, because none of my own clothes now fitted me.
The moment I saw her, I called out, "It's me." Finally acknowledging my identity, she embraced me and began to cry. I looked hideous, my pale flesh hung loosely in elephantine folds. I tried to console her by telling her that, in compensation for my loss of weight, I had gained a new quickness of movement which enabled me to work with remarkable agility. As a result of my diet and thyroid treatment, I would be able to finish my work sooner than I had expected. But Frida refused to be pacified, and remained apprehensive until the last dab of paint on the last panel was dry.
Three days before the reopening of the museum to the general public, there was a private showing of my frescoes for the art patrons of Detroit, of whom there seemed to be very many.
Their condemnation was unanimous. Beautiful, well-dressed ladies complained about the loss of their peaceful, lovely garden, which had been like an oasis in the industrial desert of Detroit. Thanks to me, their charming sanctum was now an epitome of everything that made noise and smoke and dust. It seemed true enough to me that my paintings distracted attention from their gorgeous gowns.
Into the ears of the French architect of the garden, they whispered their dismay.
I stood apart, observing their reactions. Then I was approached by a group of society women with whom I had previously become acquainted. They asked me how I felt about the prevailing attitude toward my frescoes. I asked these ladies to report back to their friends that the growth and wealth of the city of Detroit which they enjoyed came from the subjects and substances to which they were objecting. Furthermore, I said, many of them owed their personal riches to steel, which I had been so assiduous in representing and which I happened to love, though it was certainly a hard and cold metal. What I had represented on their garden walls was reality.
Why had I not chosen something pleasanter to paint instead, such as concerts, sports, open-air festivals, or art expositions? I explained, as politely as I could, that I found any factory more significant and beautiful than any of the subjects they suggested.
They took offense at my reply and told me that they could not possibly believe I had made this statement in good faith. How, they wondered, coming from Mexico, a land of romance, and then trained in sophisticated Paris, could I voice such an opinion, if not to mock and belittle them? My attitude was unfair. They were not responsible for the merciless expansion of Detroit's industry. They were not guilty of imposing the mechanical ugliness of its factories upon the city's original stately elegance.
The morning after this sombre reception, a group of men whose bearing made it clear that they had no connection whatsoever with the previous night's visitors, arrived at the museum. More than sixty in number, they walked into the garden in almost military formation behind a man who acted as their spokesman. His card, presented to Clifford Wight, identified him as the chief engineer of the Chrysler automobile factory. All the others in his party, he told Cliff, were also engineers. Cliff could speak French as well as English, of which I knew little, and when he had made the introductions, I asked him to be our interpreter.
Cliff immediately began to explain to the group that my frescoes were the work of painters, not engineers. The spokesman interrupted him, almost rudely, with a motion of his hand. "I should like to talk to Diego Rivera."
Cliff looked at me questioningly, and I in turn conveyed to the speaker that he had my full attention.
"Each of these men," he began, "is an engineer in one of the important steel or automobile factories in Detroit. They wanted me to talk to you, first because I am their leader, and secondly, because you, my good fellow with your damned frescoes, have caused me to fail to report to my job on nineteen separate occasions. Never before you came here had I so much as set a foot inside this place. I am not interested in the usual cultural stuff. I pass this building every day to and from work. I stopped in the first time merely to see what the asses in the newspapers were braying at.
"Since that first visit, I have had the urge to return here again and again. I have already spent more than fifty hours in this place. I've brought these other men with me today to share my enjoyment. I waited until today, because I wanted to be sure that all those fashionable women, those salon parrots, were out of the way. But that is not the point. What I wish to say for myself and these men with me, is that had we been commissioned to do the job you were asked to do, we would, technically speaking, have done exactly what you did."
Then turning to Cliff Wight, "You may wish to correct me by reminding me that Rivera is not an engineer by profession, All right. But this fellow has fused together, in a few feet, sequences of operations which are actually performed in a distance of at least two miles, and every inch of his work is technically correct. That's what is so amazing!"
With that, and with all of his fellows following suit, he shook hands with Cliff and me in a deeply sincere congratulatory manner. Bidding us good-bye, the delegation of engineers then walked out as they had entered.
For the first time in my life, I felt not only content but elated and proud on account of this unique demonstration of approval of my work.
In the afternoon of the same day, I received an even more gratifying ovation. It was of a kind which made me feel that none of my efforts -- even those I had believed wasted -- had been in vain.
Again it began with a mass of men marching in to see me, but now there were not sixty but more than two hundred. This group also had a spokesman. However, he showed no credentials. As soon as he appeared, he shouted in a deep resonant voice, striding into the center of the garden, "We want Diego Rivera to come here!"
I stopped what I was doing and glanced around at the crowd below. At once, I descended from the scaffold and walked right up to the big, muscular speaker.
Waiving all ordinary social preliminaries, he acknowledged my presence with a nod of his head. "We are Detroit workers from different factories and belonging to different political parties. Some of us are Communists, some are Trotskyites, others are plain Democrats and Republicans, and still others belong to no party at all.
"You're said to be a man of the left opposition, though not a Trotskyite. In any case, you're reported to have said that, as long as the working class does not hold power, a proletarian art is impossible. You have further qualified this by saying that a proletarian art is feasible only so long as the class in power imposes such an art upon the general population. So you have implied that only in a revolutionary society can a true revolutionary art exist. All right! But can you show me, in all these paintings of yours, a square inch of surface which does not contain a proletarian character, subject, or feeling? If you can do this, I will immediately join the left opposition myself. If you cannot, you must admit before all these men, that here stands a classic example of proletarian art created exclusively by you for the pleasure of the workers of this city."
I looked around at the work I had done, and I conceded that the speaker was entirely right.
As soon as I had made my reply, a crippled man advanced toward me from the throng.
He said, "We discussed what might happen today. And we decided that a man such as you would certainly admit your error, being faced with indisputable proof of it. For our part, we must declare formally and in public, that in his art Maestro Diego Rivera is a man of great integrity and honesty."
I was deeply touched by this tribute from a representative of the working class of the industrial city I wanted so much to impress.
Pleased by my evident delight, he went on, smiling warmly, "While I have the floor, I'll take the opportunity to tell you what we think about your frescoes. We've discovered one thing only lacking from your excellent portrayal of our life, and that is the factory whistle. I say this in jest, but you know the whistle does mark the beginning and the end of our working day.
"Seriously, and most important of all, we wish to inform you of what we have done to express a fraction of our appreciation for the paintings you have given us.
"The Constitution of the State of Michigan permits its citizens to band together in the event that a group of individuals intends to destroy a part of the state's common wealth. In such a case, the citizens have the right to use any weapons at their disposal. As you well know, there has been much talk against your frescoes, and there have been rumors that hoodlums may come here to destroy them.
We have therefore organized a guard to protect your work. Eight thousand men have already volunteered. To legalize our action, in accordance with the Constitution, we have already sent a document describing our purposes to the Governor of Michigan."
The following Sunday, my frescoes were put on view for the general public. The men guarding the entrance to the Institute asked identification of every visitor by having him write his name and address in a register. Despite this unusual precautionary step, the museum authorities were obliged to keep the doors open until half past one on Monday morning. At closing time, the register bulged with the names and addresses of eighty-six thousand citizens of Detroit. For the next several months, there was a continuous stream of people coming to the Institute to view my work.
The battle of Detroit, however, continued a long time afterward. Father Coughlin, many Jesuits, and quite a few politicians -- some as far away from the frescoes as New York -- continued to rant against what I had done. Yet, among writers, men of science, university professors, and ordinary working people, I found defenders. I was gratified that Edsel Ford stood by me loyally. And until all the sound and fury had passed, my army of eight thousand, working in shifts, guarded my work from destruction.
My satisfaction was indeed complete. Years before, in Paris, I had abandoned a profitable career in cubism because I had envisioned the mural as the art form of the industrial society of the future. The overwhelming approval of my paintings by the workers of Detroit not only endorsed my belief but seemed to be the beginning of the realization of my life's dream. For, already, two other important commissions awaited me: one, to paint a mural for the Rockefellers in their R.C.A. Building in Rockefeller Center; the other, to do a mural on the theme of American industry in the General Motors Building for the forthcoming Chicago World's Fair.