page_title: Man at the Crossroads
hierarchical_section_title: Man at the Crossroads
caption_attribution_description: Español: El Anahuac Mural
context_page_description: Man at the Crossroads was a fresco by Diego Rivera in New York City's Rockefeller Center. It was originally slated to be installed in the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the main building of the center. Man at the Crossroads showed the aspects of contemporary social and scientific culture. As originally installed, it was a three-paneled artwork. A central panel depicted a worker controlling machinery. The central panel was flanked by two other panels, The Frontier of Ethical Evolution and The Frontier of Material Development, which respectively represented socialism and capitalism.
  The Rockefeller family approved of the mural's idea: showing the contrast of capitalism as opposed to communism. However, after the New York World-Telegram complained about the piece, calling it "anti-capitalist propaganda", an image of Vladimir Lenin and a Soviet Russian May Day parade were secretly added in protest. When these were discovered, Nelson Rockefeller – at the time a director of the Rockefeller Center – wanted Rivera to remove the portrait of Lenin, but Rivera was unwilling to do so.
context_section_description: Man at the Crossroads (1934) was a fresco by Diego Rivera in New York City's Rockefeller Center. It was originally slated to be installed in the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the main building of the center. Man at the Crossroads showed the aspects of contemporary social and scientific culture. As originally installed, it was a three-paneled artwork. A central panel depicted a worker controlling machinery. The central panel was flanked by two other panels, The Frontier of Ethical Evolution and The Frontier of Material Development, which respectively represented socialism and capitalism.
  The Rockefeller family approved of the mural's idea: showing the contrast of capitalism as opposed to communism. However, after the New York World-Telegram complained about the piece, calling it "anti-capitalist propaganda", an image of Vladimir Lenin and a Soviet Russian May Day parade were secretly added in protest. When these were discovered, Nelson Rockefeller – at the time a director of the Rockefeller Center – wanted Rivera to remove the portrait of Lenin, but Rivera was unwilling to do so. In May 1933, Rockefeller ordered the mural to be plastered-over and thereby destroyed before it was finished, resulting in protests and boycotts from other artists. Man at the Crossroads was peeled off in 1934 and replaced by a mural from Josep Maria Sert three years later. Only black-and-white photographs exist of the original incomplete mural, taken when Rivera suspected it might be destroyed. Using the photographs, Rivera repainted the composition in Mexico under the variant title Man, Controller of the Universe.
  The controversy over the mural was significant because Rivera's communist ideals contrasted with the theme of Rockefeller Center, even though the Rockefeller family themselves admired Rivera's work. The creation and destruction of the mural is dramatized in the films Cradle Will Rock (1999) and Frida (2002). The reactions to the mural's controversy have been dramatized in Archibald MacLeish's 1933 collection Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller's City as well as in E. B. White's 1933 poem "I paint what I see: A ballad of artistic integrity".
caption: The recreated version of the painting, known as Man, Controller of the Universe
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