Word: riverae
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Four nights later Rivera, his temper hidden by a lazy smile, told an audience in Manhattan's Town Hall that of course his art was Communistic propaganda. After the Communists had read him out of the party, "one thing was left for me: to prove that my theory would be accepted in an industrial nation where capitalists rule. ... I had to come as a spy, in disguise. Sometimes in times of war a man disguises himself as a tree. My paintings in this country have become increasingly and gradually clearer.'' Speaking in French he said...
...slowly emerged. Last November Todd, Robertson, Todd, building & renting managers of Rockefeller Center, planned the RCA Building's lobby as a liberal museum. They selected the social-technical theme, "New Frontiers." to be executed by three foreign muralists, Spanish Jose Maria Sert, British Frank Brangwyn and Mexican Diego Rivera. To Rivera was assigned the subject, "Man at the cross-roads looking with uncertainty but hope for a new solution." Last November, at the depression's low, the U. S. was pessimistic; capitalists pondered Communists, wondered whether Revolution was a possibility. To Rivera's hiring by the Rockefellers...
...Square; a group of unemployed rioting under hard-jawed mounted police; socialite bridge-players and fox-trotters; women exercising; students; a worker, a student and an unemployed worker listening to a Leader. Through the composition criss-crossed two spurs, showing enormously magnified disease bacteria and a galaxy of constellations. Rivera produced another preliminary sketch in black and white and a third, larger one in full color. Both of these were approved by Todd, Robertson, Todd. In none was the head of the Leader that of Lenin...
Late in March Rivera squared off at his bare white wall in the RCA lobby. Tickets were issued to watch him do his daily stint. Art students, businessmen and Communists bought tickets as Rivera slowly spread paint down over the wall in a characteristic composition made up of huge, chunky units. Rockefeller Center workmen came free. Painting directly on wet plaster as in all true fresco, Rivera put on the wall the essentials of his submitted and approved sketches. Nelson Rockefeller came too to watch, told Rivera he liked the fresco. On May Day Rivera came to the head...
Soon afterwards Rivera and his assistants became aware of a changed attitude in Rockefeller Center. The number of guards was increased. When Rivera brought men to photograph his fresco, they were sent away. Personal feuds sprang up between the Rockefeller Center guards and Rivera's assistants. A guard threatened to brain an assistant if he tried to take a snapshot. Rivera's heavy scaffolding was replaced by a movable scaffold. Rivera draped tracing paper over the outside railing, screening the platform from the guards, and a woman assistant took a camera from under her skirt to photograph, close...