BRAVE NEW WORLD 2

Diego Rivera's Man at the Crossroads
1934

By 1930, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera has gained international favor for his lush and passionate murals. Inspired by Socialist ideals and an intense devotion to his cultural heritage, Rivera creates boldly hued masterpieces of public art that adorn the municipal buildings of Mexico City. His outgoing personality puts him at the center of a circle of left-wing painters and poets, and his talent attracts wealthy patrons, including Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. In 1932, she convinces her husband, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to commission a Rivera mural for the lobby of the Radio Corporation Arts Building of the soon-to-be-completed Rockefeller Center in New York City. The Rockefellers wanted to have a mural put on the wall in Rockefeller Center.

Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commerce buildings covering between 48th and 51st streets in New York City. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning between Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue ....

Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was the 49th governor of New York, a philanthropist, and a businessperson wanted Henri Matisse or Pablo Picasso to do it because he favored their modern style, but neither was available Rivera himself initially rejected the invitation. But Rockefeller finally persuaded Rivera to accept. Diego Rivera was one of Nelson Rockefeller's mother's favorite artists and therefore was commissioned to create the huge mural.

The painting was supposed to depict in Rockefeller's own words "Man at the Crossroads Looking with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a New and Better Future." Rockefeller wanted the painting to make people pause and think.

Flush from successes in San Francisco and Detroit, Rivera proposes a 63-foot-long portrait of workers facing symbolic crossroads of industry, science, socialism, and capitalism in the twentieth century.

Titled " Man at the Crossroads Looking with Uncertainty but with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a Course Leading to a New and Better Future," proved out to be one of the most groundbreaking works of Diego Rivera.

Man at the crossroads between past and present, capitalism and communism in the modern machine-age. A scene that juxtaposed workers and capitalism and industry. Some of the people portrayed included Charlie Chaplin, Edsel Ford, Vladimir Lenin and Jean Harlow.

A mural that tries to bridge "primitive" myths of nature with modern advances in technology Plants grow up from the soil at bottom; a machine looms up overhead.

The center of the painting portrayed a commanding industrial worker with his hands on the controls of heavy machinery. The crossroads were formed by two long narrow slides intersecting at the centre, right below the worker. One slide displayed a microscopic view of body cells, reflecting sexually transmitted diseases (STD) and another presented a telescopic view of the universe. The painting was roughly divided into two sections.

The left panel is dominated by exploiters and wall street high society, showed the elitist society enjoying life to the maximum while drinking, partying, enjoying and playing cards. Beside them is a group protesting and carrying banners stating "We Want Work, Not Charity" while mounted police club them. Faceless figures wearing gas masks and marching in military formation carry rifles in the upper left corner;

The right side of "Man at the Crossroads" showed Rivera's vision of peace - no hunger, no disorder, no violence or war,all of which have been eradicated by socialism. And a May Day parade with workers joining together as a collective, raising their voices in song. and people living in harmony.

At the center of the left side, there was an image of Vladimir Lenin, as if joining hands in multi-racial working class potraying a proletarian unity.

While the right side contrasts sharply with figures clustered in solidarity around Lenin, the father of the Communist Revolution.A contrast was reflected on the same side with a group of people protesting and being clubbed by the police In a way, the mural is a secular Last Judgment: the left represents the damned in Rivera's opinion; the right shows the blessed, those who uphold the Communist party's heroic ideals of social justice and a classless society. The man at center must determine how to steer a course into the future between these two poles.

The painter believes that his friendship with the Rockefeller family will allow him to insert an unapproved representation of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin into a section portraying a May Day parade.

Rockefeller showed his concern over Rivera including a portrait of the Russian revolutionary leader in his mural. Nelson Rockefeller told Rivera that while the portrait was beautifully painted, it might easily offend a great many people. He asked the painter to remove Lenin’s face and substitute it with some unknown man. Rivera’s assistants told him that if he removed the head of Lenin, they would go on strike. Rivera agreed with his assistants and told Rockefeller that Lenin’s head would stay but that he would be glad to add the head of some great American leader, such as Lincoln, to another section of the mural. Rivera refuses.

Sensing that something terrible was about to happen, Diego Rivera summoned a photographer to take pictures of the almost finished mural, but the guards, who had been ordered to admit no photographers, barred him. At last, one of Diego's assistants, Lucienne Bloch, smuggled in a Leica, consealed in her bosom. Mounting the scaffold, she surreptiously snapped as many pictures as she could without getting cought.

As both sides could not reach an agreement, Rivera was ordered to stop And the work was paid for on May 22, 1933, and immediately draped.

People protested but it remained covered until the early weeks of 1934

Despite negotiations to transfer the work to the Museum of Modern Art and demonstrations by Rivera supporters, near midnight, on February 10th, 1934, Rockefeller Center workmen, carrying axes, demolish the mural and hauled away in wheelbarrows.

Rivera responded by saying that it was "cultural vandalism."

Determined to complete a version of his Rockefeller mural, but in a different place, Rivera repainted the mural in 1934, though at a smaller scale, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, where it can be found today, renamed as Man, Controller of the Universe and adding a portrait of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in a nightclub.


Rivera never works in the United States again, but continues to be active, both politically and artistically, until his death in 1957.