The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-05-19
A Portrait of Diego
Rivera-The Story of a
Bird In a Gold Frame

mine-J b in which I was
painting"
This revolutionary hero suddenly
becomes too timid to disturb the
flow Of the gastric juices in the
bellies of the plutes mastiCating in
the clUb-room he decoraJes, % ~
minding them Of Tom Mooney. To
emphasize his concern for their
well-bsing he leaves California
with the added remark that.
What I painted for them was
designed to show them that what
they eat and what enriches them
are the products Of the toll Of
workers and not Of financial spec
ul2tiOl-the natural beauty Of
California, fertilizsd by the vigor Of
workers, farmers and scientists"
IT is quite evident that Rivera
FIRST perpetrates his opportunism
and depends afterward on his
ability to surround it with z verbal
screen Of rsd-sounding phrases to
hide it. One finds the same tactics
used by him to explain away all his
contacts with the aristocracy of
U. S. Imperialism. Starting with
the good will' mural ordered by
the late Dwight Morrow for Mexico
City, 1t is significant that all the
commissions he executed in this
country we're ordered by the arch
imperiaist5-the Fords and Rookie
fellers. In Detroit he painted the
Ford plant and symbols Of the
various industries necessary for the
manufacture Of the automobile. But
nothing to expose the vicious Ford
systematic flower of capitalism.
Just a picture Of men at work, in
a setting Of beautiful machinery.
No wonder Edsel Ford was well
pleased with the job, despite the
protestations of the local Rotarians
that there is not smile on any Of
the workers faces. In fact it
seems that that was all that was
missing to make the picture COM
pleta Bertram D. Wolfe, Rivera s
English interpreter of his American
paintings, in the best Rivera style
shrouds the whole with liberal &C.
static gurgles about mans mastery
over the forces of nature'-the
beauty Of machinery and so forth.
Regarding the Rockefeller Mural
in Radio City, one fact is quite OBJ
vious to any revolutionary who saw
the painting, that the Communist
Party was not shown as the leader
Of the workers. Instead, the Amer
lean leader painted by Rivera had
a curious resemblance to the rene
gade Lovestone VINO claims to be
the only existent legitimate heir to
Leninism in America.
FROM Radio City Rivera moved
/ his scafTolding over to the Love-
stone School where he painted
Lenin again. Evidently his usual
shrewdness told him that he could
not with very good grace present
Lenin to the Socialist Party, for his
negotiations with the Rand School,
as announced in the New York
Times, seemingly fell through.
Wolfe's contribution to the book is
not much more than that of a
museum guide who leads you from
picture to picture explaining why
Rivera paints Benjamin Franklin's
| portrait larger than that of Wash
ington, etc. Wolfe ends his history
on the curious note Of Communist
unity whereby he would have the
Communist Party merge with all the
counter revolutionary forces, from
Trotsky down or up, depending on
the progression.
None of Rivera's paintings in the
| U. S. have the power and pictorial
unity of his Mexican work which
he did when he was part Of the
class struggle. His post-revolution-
airy paintings are jig-saw puzzles
Of isolated scenes arbitrarily drawn
together by purely artistic tricks Of
composition, and in this sense as
compositions are not much more
than Sunday supplement rotogra-
vure layouts compared to his COM
polling paintings of the Mexican
Revolution. He will never relin-
quish his revolutionary subject
matter even though he has long
ceased being a revolutionary. and is
now back again at work for the
Mexican Government which was
the hangnan of many of his
/ former comrades. He realizes that
while the bourgeoisie can build for
him a luxurious ultra -modernistic
/ studio surrounded with a live cac-
tus fence, it cannot provide him
with the living material for great
works of art. Did not the revolu-
ton pick him out of the gutter of
Bohemia and make Of him painter
of first rank?