Executive Committee Meeting 10-15-24

President's Report

Page 40 of 95

EXPLORE DETROIT

DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS

The DIA Murals An integral part of the museum, the series of Detroit Industry Murals aaa (Rivera Court, Level 2) by Mexican artist Diego Rivera (1886–1957) was considered by the artist himself as one of his greatest achievements. Painting for Capitalism With a well-established reputation in his country, Rivera was one of the leaders of the Mexican mural movement. Together with his wife Frida Kahlo, they formed a couple of committed artists, members of the Communist Party. Arriving in San Francisco to paint in 1930, Rivera demonstrated his ability to integrate humanity’s industrial productions into indigenous iconography. The fresco painter’s political commitment did not prevent Edsel Ford from presenting him to William Valentiner , the director of the DIA, who commissioned from him a cycle for the museum. The painter arrived in Detroit in 1932, when the city was in economic turmoil and the Ford plants were just emerging from a period of labor unrest. For three months, Rivera and a photographer visited several industrial sites, including the Ford Rouge Factory ( T p. 73) . He sketched people and machines at work, while his assistants prepared the walls for the twenty-seven monumental frescoes. The mural painter designed and produced them in less than ten months: a real feat!

Progress and Tradition On the eastern wall , where the reading of the wall art begins, a baby in the fetal position, sheltered in a bulb planted in the earth, is threatened by the blades of a plow. Two women bearing fruit and vegetables symbolize fertility. The allegory illustrates agriculture , the first activity of humankind, and the birth of progress, ready to cut a swathe for better or for worse. The figures of the worker and the engineer, associated with steam and electricity respectively, frame the door of the western wall . Above, fighter aircraft (left) and civil aircraft (right) each convey their own connotation. The central panel of the northern wall combines several buildings of the Ford Rouge Factory, and evokes the movements of the workers involved in manufacturing an automobile and its engine. The two machines in the middle are reminiscent of the Toltec statues of the artist’s native Mexico, who depicted himself in the upper left corner, with a bowler hat, among the workers. The top panels illustrate the production of deadly gases (left) and vaccination (right), two other antagonistic aspects of progress—and two other specialties of local industry (chemicals). In the center of the top panel, a red figure (the American Indian) is next to a black figure, associated with iron ore and coal. They provide a counterpart to the figures of the southern wall , white

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S. Grant/Art Directors & Trips Photo/age fotostock/©2022 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./Adagp, Paris

Diego Rivera, Detroit Industry Murals , northern wall (detail).

Tastes and Colors Rivera’s efforts to join the line of visionary painters was not to

and yellow, associated with lime and sand, the four figures together symbolizing both the “races” and the raw materials needed for industry. Beneath the allegories, Rivera painted the assembly line of the Ford Rouge Factory, which was open to the public at the time. It depicts unsightly “bourgeois” onlookers, coming as if to the zoo to observe the workers. On the right, the huge stamping press evokes the divinity Coatlicue, goddess of earth, life and death, to which the Aztecs made human blood sacrifices. The machine-gods continue to feed on humans... Edsel Ford (front) and William Valentiner, the director of the museum, are represented in the tradition of the ancient commissioners of religious art.

everyone's taste. Criticized, accused of anti-Americanism, the frescoes triggered serious controversy. The museum responded by organizing a press conference that unexpectedly boosted the murals’ notoriety. In just one day, more than 10,000 curious visitors descended on the museum to see these works, which were—among other things—suspected by the clergy of concealing a parody of the Holy Family in the vaccination panel! In 2014, the Detroit Industry Murals were listed as National Historic Landmarks. Ford and Valentiner were proven right not to give in to the pressure.