Passage III

HUMANITIES: This passage is adapted from the article "A Fire Born of the Mexican Revolution" by Grace Glueck (©2002 by The New York Times Company).

The Epic of American Civilization, a mural by the Mexican painter José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) in the Baker Library at Dartmouth College, has a throbbing vitality that keeps viewers' eyes wide open. Punctuated by doors, windows and other architectural bits and pieces as it runs the 92-foot length of the basement reserve reading room, the 26-panel fresco is densely packed with symbolic figures and stagy events. A blend of myth, history and contemporary. comment, much affected by premonitions of the pending World War II, it aptly conveys Orozco's dour, apocalyptic vision of human fate.

The rhythmic orchestration of this montage excited the interest of Jackson Pollock, among other artists, and its thunderous presence has helped it serve, for better or for worse, as a role model for the development of public art in the United States. A narrative that pairs the legend of Mexico's founding by Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god represented by a feathered serpent, with images from the Eurocentric period that began in the New World with the 16th-century Spanish conquest of Mexico, the mural was Orozco's most ambitious venture in the United States. Aside from its grim world view, the Dartmouth fresco reveals Orozco's dual artistic involvement, with Mexico's heritage and with the modern-art movements of the 20th century.

At the time (1932), Dartmouth's commissioning of a mural by a "revolutionary" Mexican artist made waves. There were accusations of extravagance, considered inappropriate during Depression days. (Over two years, the artist received $10,000, including expenses.) There were chauvinistic protests against giving the commission to a foreigner, particularly one of leftist political views. And there were outcries over the strong social commentary in the planned work, as opposed to, say, an amiable depiction of New England scenery. To its credit, Dartmouth rose above these protests, with the help of an art faculty that saw the aesthetic and humanistic strengths of the Mexican mural movement and—not least—with the help of the Rockefeller family, some of whom were alive to the art world's interest in things Mexican.

After visiting California in 1917-19, Orozco came back to the United States in December 1927. By then recognized in Mexico as a leading mural painter, he sought new patrons for commissions. While in the United States, in addition to the three mural jobs he did win, he produced a good deal of work in other mediums and exhibited a number of earlier pieces done in Mexico: Goyaesque drawings of the Mexican Revolution (in which he served mostly as an observer), political cartoons, vignettes of Mexican life and preparatory drawings for several of his murals back home.

During his early months in New York, he immersed himself in the city's culture. He signed on with a dealer, Alma Reed, and through her began to frequent the Ashram, a salon steeped in the culture of early Greece. Impressed by New York's vivacity, he made his first lithograph in 1928, Vaudeville in Harlem. A cartoony scene, it is one of some 20 prints done from 1928 to 1930 that achieved commercial and critical success. Other subject matter in the lithographs is grimmer. And some are milder in tone, like Mexican Peasants Working (1929), a sharp sketch of men and women toiling past a giant cactus and rocks in an inhospitable landscape.

Orozco's take on New York is expressed in a number of oil paintings that deal with urban types, Depression subjects and architecture. They run from Elevated (1929-30), a powerful abstract impression of rising girders and structural supports, to Successful People (1931), a cartoonish study of a very snooty couple, perhaps at the opera. The latter demonstrates Orozco's considerable gift for caricature, which he often decried but was not above using in his murals.

The first of Orozco's work to draw real critical attention, however, was that dealing with the Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910 and lasted through 1917. The more than 40 ink-and-graphite war drawings, done from memory beginning in 1926, were attempts to integrate the large revolutionary themes of his murals with the informality of his political caricatures. Emphasizing the conflict among social classes, they depict bodies strewn on battlefields, soldiers marching, the victims of a dynamited train, a group solemnly participating in a requiem vigil.

After his return to Mexico in June 1934, Orozco is said to have done some of his finest work. Apparently his achievements in the United States served as a prelude to the culmination of his career on his homeground.