Murals Never Die

When a fellow artist predicted that Diego Rivera's underwater murals at Mexico City's new waterworks were bound to wash away (TIME, June 18, 1951), Diego snapped: "Tell him to go to hell." Rivera mixed polystyrene with his pigments and coated the whole thing with transparent rubber. But last week, less than a year after the water began to flow over his murals, Diego had to acknowledge that the submerged parts were indeed beginning to fade. As usual, he had an explanation: "It is because of the bad quality of the water. It contains mud, crude oil and tar ... I wash my hands of the whole affair."

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