Rockefellers v. Rivera

Into the lobby of Rockefeller Center's towering RCA Building last week stalked Rental Manager Hugh Robertson, followed by twelve uniformed guards. The procession halted before a huge (63 ft. by 17 ft.) unfinished fresco on the wall facing the doors. Its bright colors and hard, compact figures filled the lobby like a parade. On scaffolding before it stood a big, drooping man with a gloomy face and sad Mexican eyes: Diego Rivera, the world's foremost living fresco painter. A guard called to Rivera to come down from his scaffold. He laid down his big brushes and the tin kitchen plate he uses for a palette, climbed nimbly down the ladder. Mr. Robertson handed him an envelop. It held a check for $14,000, last payment on the $21,000 due Rivera for his work. It held too a letter telling him he was fired. Artist Rivera woodenly went to his work shack on the lobby balcony to change from his overalls. At once more guards appeared, pushed away the movable scaffold. Others came with planking. Within half an hour, the unfinished fresco was covered with tarpaper and a wooden screen. Meanwhile one of Rivera's assistants rushed hysterically out to the restaurant where six other assistants were dining, to spread the news and detonate 1933's biggest art story.

The seven assistants rushed back, gibbering with indignation. Assistant Lucienne Bloch, daughter of Swiss Composer Ernest Bloch, scraped the white paint off two second-story windows to form the words: "Workers Unite," "Help! Protect Rivera M. . . ." Guards stopped her from finishing the word "Murals." By nightfall Communists began to swarm in Rockefeller Plaza, the new thoroughfare cutting through Rockefeller Center. They churned about, cheering for the man whom they had read out of their party four years ago, waving banners "Save Rivera's Painting," marching & countermarching around the RCA Building. Mounted police pranced on the outskirts, shooed them away before audiences issuing from the two Rockefeller Center cinema houses could jam the district.

Next day newspapers splashed across their front pages the ostensible reason for all the hubbub. On May 1 (May Day), near the centre of the Fresco had appeared a small head of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s son Nelson had asked Rivera ''to substitute the face of some unknown man where Lenin's face now appears." Rivera had countered by offering to balance Lenin with a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. The Rockefellers exploded, fired Rivera.

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, "Art is like ham--it nourishes people." The interpreter translated jambon as "food." The audience shouted "Ham!" and Rivera nodded. He concluded, "Because there is a logic of history, the RCA Building will assume its real function--the time depends upon the will of the workers."

While everybody went off halfcocked, the facts 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 the publicity was tremendous. Rivera knew that John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s wife and his son Nelson were trustees of Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art which gave Rivera a show a year ago. In that show was many a frankly Communistic picture by Rivera, notably a fresco Frozen Assets, showing starving men, idle mills. In early March, one of Rockefeller Center's architects, Raymond Hood, went to Detroit where Rivera was finishing his frescoes for the Detroit Institute of Arts. He approved Rivera's big, colored sketch for Rockefeller Center.

The sketch showed a central figure who looked like a blond Russian (eventually posed by Tammany Boss John Francis Curry's grandnephew Hugh Jr., 22) under a big television machine which projected on the rest of the design the worker's choices. These were: marching soldiers with gas-masked heads like wasps; Communists trooping in Moscow's Red 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 of the Leader, made it the head of Lenin.

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 up, part of the fresco. The scaffold was moved, the operation repeated until Rivera had photographs of the whole fresco. He was scarcely surprised that the Rockefellers objected to his work when they saw it as living art and realized what it meant.

Last week Rivera cashed his $14,000 check, went to see his lawyer. He was told he might sue to establish an artist's dubious right under an "implied covenant" to force exhibition of his work, but that he had no legal right to the fresco he had sold and been paid for. He fell back on "a moral question" of the artist's right "to express himself; and the right to receive the judgment of the world, of posterity." Said he: "They have no right, this little group of commercial minded people, to assassinate my work and that of my colleagues. They accepted my sketches." He offered to do the whole thing over gratis on any fit Manhattan wall offered him.

To this the Rockefellers said nothing. The RCA Building was on the newspapers' front pages again. They noted that Communistic Rivera who needs walls to work on has worked on the walls of "commercial minded" people exclusively for the past year. Rivera's next commission after the RCA Building was a "Forge and Foundry" mural for General Motors Corp. at its building in Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition (see p. 14). After the Rivera-Rockefeller ruckus, General Motors paused to consider what it had better do.

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