What was the main reason Diego Riveras mural for the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center was so controversial quizlet?

Lead image: Diego Rivera mural for Rockefeller Center reproduced at the Whitney Museum

In 1933, an office mural caused an uprising in New York City. Man at the Crossroads, a large fresco by celebrated Mexican painter Diego Rivera, was meant for the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, but a rogue figure in the composition caused the entire mural to be censored and eventually destroyed.

Nearly 90 years after the event that rattled New York’s artistic circles, the Whitney Museum has brought back Man at the Crossroads in its new show, Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945. For art lovers, seeing the glorious life-size reproduction of Rivera’s vision is a near-religious experience.

“Man at the Crossroads Looking with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a New and Better Future”

“It still gives me goosebumps,” beams Barbara Haskell, the longtime Whitney curator who has been planning Vida Americana for over 10 years.

Study for “Man at the Crossroads,” 1932.

Haskell’s excitement is understandable. Flanking Rivera’s impressive 5 ft x 15 ft, three-panel painting are two original sketches which are being shown publicly in the US for the first time. The sketches show how Rivera, a member of the Communist party, almost imperceptibly yet radically altered his proposal, by slyly adding a portrait of Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin to the right of the central figure.

The offending figure.

The addition of the communist icon in the mural was Rivera’s response to criticism that he had sold out to American capitalists. Prior to the Rockefeller commission, which earned him $21,000 (or $412,000 in 2020, adjusted for inflation) Rivera also worked on a series of frescoes for Ford Motor Company in Detroit.

Protest flyer in the Whitney exhibition

Of course this was a problem for the industrialist Nelson Rockefeller, who commissioned Rivera and other muralists to decorate the lobbies of his midtown Manhattan office complex. The goal, like any lobby art, is to inject a good first impression, to greet tenants and inspire prospective ones to lease space in the building. Rockefeller’s objection was stoked by the conservative New York World-Telegram, which published a story titled “Rivera Perpetuates Scenes of Communist Activity for RCA Walls—and Rockefeller Jr. Foots the Bill,”

Included in Vida Americana is a curious typewritten note dated May 4, 1933, showing Rockefeller trying to reason with the artist:

Dear Mr. Rivera,

While I was in the No. 1 building at Rockefeller Center yesterday viewing the progress of your thrilling mural, I noticed that in most recent portion of the painting you had included a portrait of Lenin. The piece is beautifully painted but it seems to me that his portrait appearing in the mural might very easily seriously offend a great many people. If it were in a private house, it would be one thing, but this mural is in a public building and its situation is therefore quite different. As much as I dislike to do so, I am afraid we must ask you to substitute the face of some unknown man where Lenin’s face now appears.

You know how enthusiastic I am about the work which you have been doing and that to date, we have in no way restricted you in either subject or treatment. I am sure you will understand our feeling in this situation and we will greatly appreciate your making the suggested substitution.

With wishes I remain.

Sincerely,

Nelson A Rockefeller

“The interesting thing about the commission is that both the Rockefellers and Rivera came into the project with misconception,” explains Haskell. The Rockefellers relied on Rivera’s track record of producing murals for other capitalist enterprises with little controversy. Rivera, who was heralded as the “star of the Mexican school” and world-renowned at that point, thought his corporate patrons would cede to his artistic whim.

Rockefeller had the entire mural covered when Rivera refused to erase Lenin from the composition. New York artists and advocates, decrying artistic censorship, held strikes in proximity of Rockefeller Center in support of Rivera. But 10 months later, the mural was demolished and replaced with a benign allegorical scene by Spanish artist José Maria Sert.

Diego Rivera in Rockefeller Center

Rivera working on the Rockefeller Center mural, 1933.

Despite public embarrassment and canceled commissions, one might argue that Rivera eventually got the final word: In “Man, Controller of the Universe,” a modified version of the Rockefeller Center mural currently at Mexico’s Palacio de Bellas Artes, Rivera inserted a caricature of John D. Rockefeller Jr. cavorting with a woman, with syphilis cells above their heads.

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Diego Rivera, Man at the Crossroads, Fresco, 1933

Rivera’s principal assistant Clifford Wight kept a copy of his plan for the mural. It was a detailed description in two and a half pages of closely typed English, couched firmly in communist terms. The Rockefellers knew this was going to be a communist mural from the beginning. Wight reported to his friend Ralph Stackpole in a letter dated December 2, 1932: “I was afraid that (Rivera’s) sketches would not be approved by the Rockefellers, but Mrs. J. D. Jr. said that he didn't give Communism enough importance and asked him to include a portrait of Lenin.”

The Rockefellers were not simply ruthless capitalist exploiters of the workers. In fact, Nelson and his mother Abby had been friendly supporters of Rivera for several years. Time magazine (operating from offices in the RCA) reported that Nelson wanted to have the mural removed and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, where its political implications would neither impact the rental value of Rockefeller Center, nor irritate their tenants. But this plan wasn’t carried out because of hitherto unknown reasons. As it turns out, however, the transfer was simply impossible because the building managers had fussily insisted on enforcing a ¾-inch design requirement.

Rivera had said America was “a country where buildings didn’t last long,” so while creating his previous murals he and Wight had come up with an ingenious way of making it easy to preserve them even if the buildings they decorated had to be demolished. Wight’s thoroughly detailed description of their methods has been preserved in the archives of the Detroit Institute of Arts.  Once the original plaster of the site’s wall had been removed, a metal framework was built upon it to support a galvanized metal mesh, creating a one-inch space between the fresco itself and the wall, which meant the murals were suspended upon the wall by a metal frame but not physically bonded to it (this meant that the plaster could later, if necessary, be cut into sections and fairly easily removed). Next, three layers of brown plaster were laid down onto the mesh, the first layer mixed with coconut fiber and left to dry with a roughly textured surface, the second layer of plaster mixed with hair, and finished a little smoother, and a third layer of brown plaster alone. The fourth coat of white plaster was smoother and finer, with a slightly textured surface, made ready to hold the crucial, extremely smooth fifth coat, the intonaco, which was prepared with so fine a surface that it resembled marble. It was onto this fifth layer of damp plaster that the master would paint, using only very finely ground pigments mixed with distilled water to create his imagery. As the plaster dried, a chemical reaction between the lime in it and the pigments upon it transformed the surface, so that the colors were incorporated into the now rock-like surface of the wall — one of the most durable of all painted surfaces. By the time Rivera’s plaster crew got to Detroit, their preparation of his walls had become a well-choreographed routine.

But at the Rockefeller Center this clever method of making Rivera’s murals stand alone was not followed. There, the crucial metal framework, specifically designed to leave space between the original wall so that the mural could be removed if required, was omitted. In Wight’s correspondence with Mr. A. W. Butt at the Rockefeller Center, he had clearly described the method that Rivera expected to be used for his mural in New York, but the specifications given to him by the architects at the Rockefeller Center only allowed for a depth of ¾ of an inch for all five layers of plaster, meaning that the first layer had to be applied directly onto the wall of the building without any space between them.

Fresco by Diego Rivera

The recreated version of the painting, known as Man, Controller of the Universe

Man at the Crossroads (1934) was a fresco by Diego Rivera in New York City's Rockefeller Center. It was originally slated to be installed in the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the main building of the center. Man at the Crossroads showed the aspects of contemporary social and scientific culture. As originally installed, it was a three-paneled artwork. A central panel depicted a worker controlling machinery. The central panel was flanked by two other panels, The Frontier of Ethical Evolution and The Frontier of Material Development, which respectively represented socialism and capitalism.

The Rockefeller family approved of the mural's idea: showing the contrast of capitalism as opposed to communism. However, after the New York World-Telegram complained about the piece, calling it "anti-capitalist propaganda", Rivera added images of Vladimir Lenin and a Soviet Russian May Day parade in response. When these were discovered, Nelson Rockefeller – at the time a director of the Rockefeller Center – wanted Rivera to remove the portrait of Lenin,[2] but Rivera was unwilling to do so. In May 1933, Rockefeller ordered the mural to be plastered-over and thereby destroyed before it was finished, resulting in protests and boycotts from other artists.[3] Man at the Crossroads was peeled off in 1934 and replaced by a mural from Josep Maria Sert three years later. Only black-and-white photographs exist of the original incomplete mural, taken when Rivera suspected it might be destroyed. Using the photographs, Rivera repainted the composition in Mexico under the variant title Man, Controller of the Universe.

The controversy over the mural was significant because Rivera's communist ideals contrasted with the theme of Rockefeller Center, even though the Rockefeller family themselves admired Rivera's work. The creation and destruction of the mural is dramatized in the films Cradle Will Rock (1999) and Frida (2002). The reactions to the mural's controversy have been dramatized in Archibald MacLeish's 1933 collection Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller's City as well as in E. B. White's 1933 poem "I paint what I see: A ballad of artistic integrity".

Commission

John D. Rockefeller Jr., a businessman and member of the Rockefeller family, was heavily involved in the 1930s construction of Rockefeller Center. He wanted to have a 63 by 17 feet (19.2 by 5.2 m) mural placed on the lobby wall of the RCA Building (now 30 Rockefeller Plaza), the largest structure in Rockefeller Center.[4] Meanwhile, his wife, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, was a patron of the socialist Mexican artist Diego Rivera.[5][6][7] This had been the case since winter 1931–1932, when Abby purchased many of Rivera's pieces at a Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) show.[8] At the time, Rivera was painting a controversial fresco in Detroit titled Detroit Industry, commissioned by the Rockefellers' friend, Edsel Ford, who later became a MoMA trustee.[9][7] Rivera had recently been kicked out of Communist Party USA for accepting commissions from wealthy patrons, and his commission for Detroit Industry did not help improve the Communist Party's views of him.[10]

The writer Daniel Okrent states that a key event in the mural's conception occurred during a luncheon that Abby Rockefeller hosted in January 1932, at which Rivera was a guest.[11] Abby suggested that a mural by Rivera would be a positive addition to Rockefeller Center. The entire Rockefeller family became close friends with Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo over the next few months, which led to the decision to commission Rivera for the RCA Building's mural.[8] Rivera was given the theme "Man at the Crossroads Looking with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a New and Better Future",[5][12][7] since John wanted the painting to make people pause and think.[3] The historian Alan Balfour writes that the Rockefellers had full knowledge of Rivera's communist activities, but hired him anyway.[12]

Rivera was officially commissioned by Todd, Robertson & Todd, the development agents for the complex.[13] The full commission had planned for Man at the Crossroads to be a three-paneled mural. The two panels to either side, The Frontier of Ethical Evolution and The Frontier of Material Development, would respectively contrast capitalism and socialism.[14][13] According to Rivera's verbal description of the planned mural, the center panel would depict a person at the literal intersection of these two ideals (namely, the "man at the crossroads").[15]

The RCA Building lobby's wall had such a prominent position within Rockefeller Center that John and Abby Rockefeller's son Nelson had originally wanted Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso to create the paintings on either side of Man at the Crossroads. Nelson Rockefeller had chosen these artists because he favored their modern style.[6][5][7] Rivera's artistic renown made his commission all the more fitting, since it was so prominently located.[16] However, neither of the other two artists were available: Matisse was already completing commissions for Philadelphia's Barnes Foundation at the time, while Picasso never responded to the wire that requested a meeting with "Pierre Picasso".[16] Josep Maria Sert and Frank Brangwyn were later hired to paint other murals in their place.[6][17] Sert would paint murals on the northern corridor,[18] while Brangwyn would paint murals on the southern corridor.[19]

Rivera did not agree with principal Rockefeller Center architect Raymond Hood's suggestion that the mural be commissioned exclusively in grayscale colors. Rivera also declined to take part in an artistic competition prior to the announcement of his commission, and he wanted to withdraw from the project when it was announced that neither Matisse nor Picasso would be painting at the RCA Building.[6][17] He eventually acquiesced after Nelson convinced Hood to remove his grayscale requirement and allowed Rivera to paint Man at the Crossroads in a fresco format.[17] However, Rivera withdrew again after Sert and Brangwyn were announced as the new artists, calling them "two inferior painters".[6] He eventually rejoined the project by fall 1932.[6]

As part of the contract, Rivera would be paid $21,000 for the work.[20][21] This was considerably more than the $10,000 he had been paid for Detroit Industry,[22] which he continued painting even as he was negotiating for Man at the Crossroads.[17] According to Daniel Okrent, Rivera did not read the fine print of the contract that he signed, which stipulated that in exchange for the $21,000, Rockefeller Center Inc. would hold full ownership of Man at the Crossroads; this would lead to a controversy when the work was later removed from the RCA Building.[23]

Rivera showed Abby the sketch of his proposed work in November 1932.[12][23] Nelson and John also looked at the sketch, and Nelson concluded that there was nothing controversial about the planned mural.[20][24] Rivera and the Rockefellers signed a contract in which they agreed that the sketch was the final plan for the mural, and that the completed work could not be different from what was on that sketch.[25] In March 1933, Rivera traveled from Detroit to New York so he could work on the RCA Building mural.[26][27] He employed artists from around the world in his six-person crew, which also included the artists Ben Shahn and Lucienne Bloch.[20][27] Rivera's assistants converted his small sketch to full-size 1-square-foot (0.093 m2) pieces of tracing paper, which would then be painted onto the wall.[27] Also in March 1933, Webster B. Todd, one of the contractors working on the construction of Rockefeller Center, requested sketches of Man at the Crossroads because he was concerned about the mural's potential controversial effect.[28] Even so, Rivera did not express worry about any potential issues, even expressing pride over his work when The New York Times wrote a lengthy profile on him on April 2, 1933.[28] [29] The Rockefellers did not show concern either, and the complex's publicist Merle Crowell took credit for the New York Times article.[28]

Work

Rivera's composition depicted many aspects of contemporary social and scientific culture, and as with his other paintings, contained influences from Communism.[17] In the center, a workman was depicted controlling machinery. Before him, a giant fist emerged holding an orb depicting the recombination of atoms and dividing cells in acts of chemical and biological generation.[12] From the central figure four propeller-like shapes stretched to the corner of the composition, depicting arcs of light created by giant lenses anchoring the left and right edges of the space. Rivera described these as "elongated ellipses".[30][31] Within these, cosmological and biological forces such as exploding suns and cell-forms were depicted. These represented the discoveries made possible by the telescope and the microscope.[14][31][21]

Between and beyond the arcs were scenes of modern social life. Wealthy society women were seen playing cards and smoking at the left. Opposite, on the right, Lenin was seen holding hands with a multi-racial group of workers.[15] Soldiers and war machinery occupied the top left above the society women, and a Russian May Day rally with red flags was seen at the right, above Lenin.[32][24] For Rivera, this represented contrasting social visions: the "debauched rich" watched by the unemployed while war raged, and a socialist utopia ushered in by Lenin.[21] Beyond the giant lenses to left and right were depicted figures contemplating the central scene, behind which were gigantic classical statues.[12] The one on the left depicted an angry Jupiter, whose raised hand holding a thunderbolt had been severed by a lightning strike. This comprised The Frontier of Ethical Evolution.[14][12] The one on the right was a headless seated Caesar. This comprised The Frontier of Material Development.[14][12] For Rivera these represented the replacement of superstition by scientific mastery of nature, and the overthrow of authoritarian rule by liberated workers.[13]

The bottom part of the painting was to depict the controlled growth of natural resources, in the form of a variety of plants emerging from their roots, visible in a cut-away view under the soil. This portion of the original mural was never completed, and it exists only in the later recreation of the composition in Mexico.[32]

Destruction

On April 24, 1933, the New York World-Telegram published an article attacking the mural as anti-capitalist propaganda.[33][34] As a defiant response to the article,[25] Rivera or one of his assistants added a portrait of Lenin to the mural, which had not been apparent in initial sketches.[35][24] The Rockefellers did not express any visible concern about the mural. On April 28, to ensure that the late addition of Lenin would be undetected, Rivera sent his assistants to make sure that there was no trace of the Lenin portrait in the blueprints and outlines for Man at the Crossroads. Rivera thought that if anyone were to check the blueprints, they would not be able to discern the hidden portrait of Lenin unless they looked closely.[36] He believed that his close relationship with the Rockefellers would permit the surreptitious addition of the portrait.[33] The Lenin portrait would still have gone unnoticed if not for a mistake made by workmen applying a final coat of paint to the wall above Rivera's mural. Some of the paint dripped onto the mural, and when Raymond Hood went to examine the drip, he found the portrait of Lenin.[36]

Following the discovery of Lenin's portrait, Nelson Rockefeller delayed the mural's planned May 1 unveiling. He wrote to Rivera to request that the painter remove the picture of Lenin.[34][37] The portrait was the only thing about Man at the Crossroads that offended the Rockefeller family, despite the presence of other overtly Communist icons such as the hammer and sickle.[38] A letter of reply from Rivera, written on May 6, politely declined the offer to remove Lenin's portrait, but by way of a compromise, offered to add Abraham Lincoln to the work.[33][38] Rivera also said that he would be amenable to adding portraits of other American icons such as the abolitionists Nat Turner, John Brown, or Harriet Beecher Stowe, but he refused to remove the portrait of Lenin:

"Rather than mutilate the conception [of the mural], I shall prefer the physical destruction of the conception in its entirety, but preserving, at least, its integrity."[38]

Daniel Okrent states that Rivera did not write the letter himself, instead leaving the task to Ben Shahn, the assistant most strongly opposed to Nelson's request to remove the Lenin portrait.[39]

Nelson then left the decision about the future of the mural to Todd, Robertson & Todd.[33] Hugh Robertson, one of the firm's principals,[39] had written a reply to Rivera by May 9. In the letter, Robertson wrote that Rivera had deceived Rockefeller Center Inc. in the contract he made with them, and thus, Rivera was compelled to remove the Lenin portrait immediately.[40][39] However, it was unclear whether Rivera understood that the painting belonged to Rockefeller Center Inc.[39] After reading the letter, Rivera went back to his painting.[41]

On May 10, 1933, as Rivera and his assistants worked on the mural, they were scrutinized throughout the day[42] during what Rivera called "the battle of Rockefeller Center".[41] By the evening, Robertson had ordered that Rivera stop all work on the mural.[43] Rivera was paid in full, but the mural was covered in stretched canvas and left incomplete.[43][33][39] He was unsatisfied with the monetary payment, saying that he intended to complete the mural: "I will not change my mural even if I lose in the courts."[44] Rivera's net profit from Man at the Crossroads only amounted to US$7,000 (equivalent to $146,532 in 2021), a third of his total payment, after accounting for all expenses.[45][46] He promised to reproduce the mural at any building that asked him to do so.[46] On May 12, two days after the stop-work order was announced, Rivera was also dismissed from a commission at Chicago's Century of Progress exhibition, where he had been hired to paint a mural for General Motors' pavilion. An architect for GM cited the controversy surrounding Man at the Crossroads as the grounds for Rivera's dismissal.[47][48]

The concealment of Man at the Crossroads was itself controversial. The artist John Sloan, the writer Lewis Mumford, and the photographer Alfred Stieglitz all showed support toward Rivera's position, while the Communist Party was stuck between endorsing a former member or his wealthy patron.[41] The painter Edwin Blashfield supported Rivera's dismissal because the premise of Man at the Crossroads was contrary to the American government.[49] In May 1933, Rockefeller Center Inc. announced that the mural would "remain hidden for an indefinite time".[46] Within days of the stop-work order, artists' groups had drawn up manifestos to demand that Rivera be able to complete his mural.[50]

In December 1933, Rockefeller Center developer John R. Todd proposed that Man at the Crossroads be moved to MoMA,[46][51] and suggested that Rivera could be re-hired to finish the mural.[51] Rockefeller Center Inc. agreed to this proposal,[46] but it was never carried out because the Rockefeller Center's management had not permitted Rivera's team to lay the plaster onto a specially built metal substructure which had been developed by Rivera and his principal assistant Clifford Wight so that Rivera's frescoes could be removed from the buildings they decorated if necessary.[52] The mural remained covered until February 1934, when workmen peeled the mural off the wall.[53][54][55][56] Rivera said that the mural's destruction "will advance the cause of the labor revolution", while Rockefeller Center Inc. simply issued a two-sentence press release saying that the walls had been replastered, resulting in the mural's demolition.[51]

The destruction caused widespread controversy, with many artists vowing to boycott any future exhibitions or commissions at Rockefeller Center.[53][51] Ralph Stackpole and Bernard Zakheim created paintings in which figures held up newspapers with headlines alluding to the Man at the Crossroads controversy.[57]

The communist New Workers School in Manhattan was one of the entities who protested the destruction of Man at the Crossroads.[46] Its leader Bertram Wolfe was one of Rivera's associates and would later become his biographer.[58] Rivera painted 21 frescoes and gave them to the school as a gift for their protests.[46][59]

The protests largely stopped when Robertson released Rivera's previous correspondence about preferring the mural's destruction.[51]

Aftermath

Despite the disagreement over Man at the Crossroads, Nelson Rockefeller still admired Rivera's work, and the two had an amicable relationship. Years afterward, he would collect paintings and loan them to Rivera's art shows.[60] However, according to Daniel Okrent, his mother felt "betrayed" by Rivera, and they were not known to see each other again after the dispute had subsided.[60] As a result of the controversy, John Rockefeller saw to it that no artwork would be commissioned for Rockefeller Center without his explicit approval.[61] As for Rivera, Bertram Wolfe wrote that the artist commissioned paintings for movements that opposed the Rockefellers' "continued rule".[62]

After Man at the Crossroads was demolished, Brangwyn was asked to exclude Jesus Christ from his own mural in the RCA Building's lobby, which depicted the Sermon on the Mount.[63][64] Todd reportedly made the request because Christ could have been depicted in many different ways, but unlike with Man at the Crossroads, there was very little controversy.[64] Brangwyn wrote to John Rockefeller to ask for reconsideration of this request.[63] Brangwyn's mural, completed in December 1933, ultimately featured a depiction of Christ with his back turned. At the mural's unveiling, Todd said that Rockefeller Center management had not cajoled Brangwyn in any way.[47]

Meanwhile, replacements for Man at the Crossroads were being considered, and Rockefeller Center Inc. approached many artists for possible offers. Initially, Picasso showed interest in the commission, but Todd declined the offer because Picasso refused to show a preview of what he was going to paint, and because Picasso would not negotiate from his stated price of $32,000.[65][66] In 1937, Sert agreed to paint the replacement mural for $27,000.[66] The mural, titled American Progress, depicts a vast allegorical scene of men constructing modern America, and contains figures of Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.[67][68] American Progress wraps around the west wall of 30 Rockefeller Plaza's Grand Lobby.[65][68]

According to American Heritage magazine, the controversy influenced Franklin D. Roosevelt’s reaction to the idea of a Federal Art Project and similar New Deal-funded public art initiatives: “Commenting on the suggestion that the federal government should undertake a relief program for unemployed artists, Roosevelt expressed some misgiving: he didn't want, he told a friend in 1933, ‘a lot of young enthusiasts painting Lenin's head on the Justice Building.’“ The New Deal art programs were ultimately funded and persisted until the height of World War II, and in the end, “The New Deal administration did its best to give American artists easy rein, recognizing that freedom and originality are inseparable. There were exceptional cases, especially in connection with over a thousand murals executed under Treasury Department auspices for United States post offices across the country; but in general the absence of censorship was remarkable.”[69]

Man, Controller of the Universe

Concerned that Nelson Rockefeller would destroy the work, Rivera had asked Lucienne Bloch to take photographs of the mural before it could be destroyed.[3][70] In late 1933, Rivera went to Mexico City and persuaded the Mexican government to let him repaint the mural on a blank wall at the Palacio de Bellas Artes.[46] In his biography of Rivera, Bertram Wolfe stated that the artist did not care for the location of the mural this time around. Rather, Wolfe wrote, Rivera had been "looking for a public place where he could let men see what kind of painting it was that these 'patrons of the arts' had chosen to destroy".[71]

Using the photographs as a reference, Rivera repainted the mural, though at a smaller scale, where it was renamed Man, Controller of the Universe.[3][70] The composition was almost identical, but the central figure was moved slightly to be aligned with the supporting mast of the cylindrical telescope above him.[46][72][70] The new version includes a portrait of Leon Trotsky alongside Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels at the right. Others appear at the left, including Charles Darwin. Beside Darwin is John Rockefeller, Jr, a lifelong teetotaler, drinking in a nightclub with a woman. Above their heads is a dish of syphilis bacteria.[72]

Cultural significance

The Rockefeller–Rivera dispute has become an emblem of the relationship of politics, aesthetics, creative freedom and economic power.[73] Some works dramatized the incident, and a few went so far as to lampoon it. The American poet Archibald MacLeish's 1933 collection Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller's City was inspired by the incident. It included six poems about the mural in which both Nelson Rockefeller and Rivera were criticized.[74] The New Yorker published E. B. White's poem "I paint what I see: A ballad of artistic integrity", an imaginary debate between Nelson Rockefeller and Rivera, on May 20, 1933.[75] The incident has also been dramatized in the American films Cradle Will Rock (1999) and Frida (2002), both set in the 1930s.[73]

Other works focused specifically on Nelson Rockefeller's and Diego Rivera's conduct during the dispute over Man at the Crossroads. In her 1983 biography Frida, Hayden Herrera mentions that Kahlo wrote, "one could fight against [the Rockefellers] without being stabbed in the back". This referred to Rockefeller and Rivera's continued relationship even after the controversy had passed.[76][73] Cary Reich writes in The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller that the controversy was an instance of Nelson's "princely tendency [...] to have surrogates handle his dirty work".[77][73]

The controversy surrounding the commissioning and destruction was loosely re-told as part of The Simpsons TV episode "Now Museum, Now You Don't" [78]

See also

• 
  New York City portal
• 
  Visual arts portal

• Life of Washington, mural by Viktor Arnautoff
• Freedom for Humanity, mural by Mear One

References

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36. ^ a b Okrent 2003, p. 310.
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40. ^ Aguilar-Moreno & Cabrera 2011, pp. 60–61.
41. ^ a b c Balfour 1978, p. 186.
42. ^ Aguilar-Moreno & Cabrera 2011, p. 61.
43. ^ a b "Rockefellers Ban Lenin in the RCA Mural and Dismiss Rivera" (PDF). The New York Times. May 10, 1933. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on October 1, 2022. Retrieved December 4, 2017.
44. ^ "Row on Rivera Art Still in Deadlock" (PDF). The New York Times. May 11, 1933. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on October 1, 2022. Retrieved December 4, 2017.
45. ^ Wolfe 1943, p. 371.
46. ^ a b c d e f g h i Balfour 1978, p. 187.
47. ^ a b "Mural of Christ Hung in Radio City; Figure With Back Turned Is Said to Be Brangwyn's Original Conception. PRESSURE ON HIM DENIED Head of Center Sees in Work 'the Universal Truth That Is Found in All Faiths.'" (PDF). The New York Times. December 5, 1933. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on October 1, 2022. Retrieved December 6, 2017.
48. ^ Aguilar-Moreno & Cabrera 2011, p. 62.
49. ^ "Blashfield Upholds Dismissal of Rivera; If Mexican's Art Opposed Our Government It Should Not Be Tolerated, He Says". The New York Times. May 22, 1933. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on June 12, 2018. Retrieved December 6, 2017.
50. ^ "Rivera Defended by Artists' Group; Writers and Scientists to Be Asked to Join in Protest to Rockefeller" (PDF). The New York Times. May 16, 1933. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on October 1, 2022. Retrieved December 6, 2017.
51. ^ a b c d e Okrent 2003, p. 315.
52. ^ Pearce, Michael. "The Real Reason Diego Rivera's Epic Rockefeller Mural Was Destroyed". Mutual Art Magazine. MutualArt. Archived from the original on February 18, 2021. Retrieved February 18, 2021.
53. ^ a b "Rivera RCA Mural is Cut From Wall; Rockefeller Center Destroys Lenin Painting at Night and Replasters Space. VANDALISM,' SAYS ARTIST Sloan, Urging Boycott, Says He Will Never Exhibit There – Protest Meetings Called" (PDF). The New York Times. February 13, 1934. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on December 5, 2021. Retrieved November 11, 2017.
54. ^ Smith 2014, p. 98.
55. ^ Kert, Bernice (October 12, 1993). Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family. New York: Random House. pp. 352–365. ISBN 978-0-3945-6975-8. Archived from the original on October 1, 2022. Retrieved March 11, 2021.
56. ^ Reich 1996, pp. 105–111.
57. ^ Lee, Anthony W. (1999). Painting on the Left: Diego Rivera, Radical Politics, and San Francisco's Public Murals. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-21977-5. Archived from the original on June 17, 2016. Retrieved October 12, 2016.
58. ^ Pitt, David E. (August 28, 1988). "Television; Retracing Diego Rivera's American Odyssey". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on January 17, 2018. Retrieved January 16, 2018.
59. ^ "Rivera Frescoes Moved; Twenty-one Panels Transported to New Workers School" (PDF). The New York Times. December 18, 1936. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on October 1, 2022. Retrieved December 4, 2017.
60. ^ a b Okrent 2003, p. 317.
61. ^ Okrent 2003, p. 318.
62. ^ Wolfe 1943, p. 374.
63. ^ a b Balfour 1978, pp. 189–190.
64. ^ a b "RCA Building Bars Jesus From Mural; Brangwyn, British Artist, Now Finds Difficulty in Finishing Sermon on Mount Work. OFFICIALS SUGGEST A LIGHT John R. Todd Explains a Figure Would Not Meet All Persons' Conceptions of Christ" (PDF). The New York Times. September 15, 1933. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on October 1, 2022. Retrieved December 6, 2017.
65. ^ a b Okrent 2003, p. 319.
66. ^ a b Balfour 1978, p. 190.
67. ^ Okrent 2003, pp. 319–320.
68. ^ a b Roussel 2006, p. 58.
69. ^ Laning, Edward (October 1, 1970). "When Uncle Sam Played Patron of the Arts: Memoirs of a WPA Painter". American Heritage. 21 (6). Retrieved October 1, 2022.
70. ^ a b c Keyes, Allison (March 9, 2014). "Destroyed By Rockefellers, Mural Trespassed On Political Vision". NPR. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved November 30, 2017.
71. ^ Wolfe 1943, p. 375.
72. ^ a b Aguilar-Moreno & Cabrera 2011, p. 68.
73. ^ a b c d Okrent 2003, p. 314.
74. ^ MacLeish, Archibald (1933). Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller's city. John Day pamphlets. The John Day Company.
75. ^ White, E. B. (May 13, 1933). "I Paint What I See". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Archived from the original on December 5, 2017. Retrieved December 4, 2017.
76. ^ Herrera, Hayden (1983). Frida, a Biography of Frida Kahlo. Harper colophon books. Harper & Row. p. 171. ISBN 978-0-06-011843-3.
77. ^ Reich 1996, p. 166.
78. ^ "Now Museum, Now You Don't". Wikisimpsons. Archived from the original on January 14, 2022. Retrieved January 14, 2022.

Sources

1. Aguilar-Moreno, Manuel; Cabrera, Erika (2011). Diego Rivera: A Biography: A Biography. Greenwood Biographies. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0-313-35407-6.
2. Balfour, Alan (1978). Rockefeller Center: Architecture as Theater. McGraw-Hill, Inc. ISBN 978-0-070-03480-8.
3. Reich, Cary (1996). The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer, 1908–1958. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-24696-5.
4. Okrent, Daniel (2003). Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0142001776.
5. Roussel, Christine (May 17, 2006). The Art of Rockefeller Center. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-3930-6082-9.
6. Smith, Richard Norton (2014). On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller. Random House. ISBN 978-0-375-50580-5. Archived from the original on August 19, 2020. Retrieved December 3, 2017.
7. Wolfe, Bertram David (1943). Diego Rivera, his life and times. Alfred A. Knopf. ASIN B000RY5E6Y.

External links

• Photograph of the original mural.
• Diego Rivera, Man Controller of the Universe, 7:08, Smarthistory

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