Myth and Mystique

With an apropos title of “Art & Revolution,” the Diego Rivera exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will open Sunday. Though the seeds for Rivera’s revolutionary ideals were planted as a young man in his native land, his ideas as a mature artist blossomed from 1921-1930, a period of history coined by some as the Mexican Renaissance.

It was an era when art, culture and civic society were slowly blooming after a decade of war and destitution. Indeed, the country’s artists played a forceful role in its fruition. “It was a fascinating time for Mexico because basically it was the construction of a new country after the Revolution,” said Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska, who has extensively chronicled that era and its major figures. “And the muralist movement was what attracted a lot of people to Mexico.”

With the support of the Mexican government, muralists set about to change the concept of art from a bourgeois aesthetic ideal to an educational tool with a decidedly communist message for the masses to view in public buildings.

The movement centered around three men who came to be known as Los Tres Grandes: Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros and, at the center of it all, Diego Maria Rivera--the irrepressible force who spent his adult life moving in lofty artistic, political and social circles.

Born in 1886, Rivera was a child prodigy who began attending the national school of art at the age of 11. By the time he was 20, his talent had won him government stipends to study in Spain, which would turn into a 14-year European odyssey.

When he finally settled again in Mexico in 1921, Rivera became attached to the early mural movement. Though his European studies had initially been made possible by the regime of the dictator Porfirio Diaz, Rivera was committed to the ideals of the Revolution and he would spend much of his life as a communist, embracing the struggles of the common people.

But Rivera made his reputation in Mexico by looking out for himself, and he had a fractious relationship both with the Communist Party and his artist colleagues. So, perhaps the biggest conflict of Rivera’s life was not the external battle to marry art and social conscience, but the internal struggle between his egalitarian beliefs and the selfish, outsized ego that demanded attention--and often found it by courting celebrity and controversy.

This was, after all, a man whose first biographer could title his tome “The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera” and not be accused of hyperbole.

Rivera’s escapades would find him among a cross-section of the most powerful and celebrated political, artistic and intellectual personalities of the 20th century. He mingled with Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, the Fords and Rockefellers, Sergei Eisenstein and Leon Trotsky, Edward Weston and Tina Modotti, Leopold Stokowski, Aaron Copland, Georgia O’Keeffe, D.H. Lawrence, Helen Wills Moody, Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard, to name a few.

Celebrity status followed Rivera unlike any artist of that era. The opening for his 1931 retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art was attended by Edward G. Robinson, Greta Garbo, Hedy Lamarr, Paul Robeson, John Hay Whitney, the Henry Luces and the William Paleys.

Then there was the artist’s prolific love life--dalliances with movie stars on both sides of the border (Goddard and Dolores Del Rio), and five marriages, including two tumultuous unions with Frida Kahlo, the first of which ended after Rivera’s affair with her sister.

In short, Diego Rivera was the prototypical Art Star.

A Stature Matched by His Personality

Among the muralists, Rivera stood out as the most charismatic, passionate figure, successfully crafting his own mystique. A rotund man of “elephantine” size, possessing toad-like facial features with protruding brown eyes and small teeth, Rivera was not particularly handsome. But his vigor, wit, intelligence and passion for art and politics created an electrifying aura.

“Part of his charm was his sense of humor,” said his daughter, Guadalupe Rivera Marin, in a telephone interview from her home in Mexico City. “He had a very strong personality. Some of his friends told me that when he was angry, he became so ferocious, cackling like a hyena, that he truly terrified people.”

In addition to his strong presence, Rivera’s popularity also came from the impressive group of friends he and his second wife, Guadalupe Marin, came to know in Mexico City from 1923-29.

Alone, their individual stories are phenomenal. As a group, they became legends, forming part of what was called the “radical salon.” Experimenting with newly found freedom and a passion for socialist ideals, the group would eventually disband amid all the elements of a fantastic novel: treachery, deceit, murder, adoration and love.

There was French muralist Jean Charlot; Italian photographer and artists’ muse Modotti and her American lover, Weston; the U.S. contingent also included anthropologist and writer Frances Toor, intellectual Carleton Beals and painter Pablo O’Higgins; Rivera’s compatriots included journalist Anita Brenner, composer Silvestre Revueltas, poets Jaime Torres Bodet and Salvador Novo and, of course, Kahlo, an unknown young painter when she joined the circle.

The group would hold dinner parties, eat and drink in vast quantities and argue about communism, about the function of art and about the politics of their time in an era still reeling from World War I and the Russian and Mexican revolutions.

“It was a romantic time in a way and it was a time of cutting loose and of making over the whole artistic world,” Brenner once explained to an interviewer. “The European breakthroughs, the world breakthroughs and Mexican breakthroughs were coming at the same time.”

The Rivera home in Mixcalco was the center of this social and artistic renewal. And Rivera himself was a force of nature who garnered press attention wherever he went.

“Diego was a Renaissance-like genius,” said Dolores Olmedo, a close friend of Rivera and Kahlo who owns the artists’ official museums in Mexico City. “He was a key part of Mexico’s grand era of great painters, poets and writers. It was a beautiful time in Mexico’s history.”

Post-Revolutionary Politics in Mexico

The Mexico that Rivera returned to in 1921 after his European sojourn was still convulsing from the throes of the Revolution. In 1910, Francisco I. Madero led a revolt against Porfirio Diaz, who had ruled the country for more than 30 years. The struggle continued for more than a decade, with one leader deposing another until finally the revolutionaries won power with Alvaro Obregon in 1920. Though stability was by no means secured--with continuing uprisings, attempted coups and assassinations--the revolution had emerged victorious.

For many Mexicans, the country’s “belle epoque” began in 1921, when there was an awakening of national pride--particularly in celebration of Mexico’s indigenous heritage.

Despite the revolution, Mexico remained an intensely divided country by social class. This created a perfect breeding ground for communists eager to expand their revolution. Among the “radical salon” members, some belonged to the Communist Party, and all were believers in leftist causes. During the ‘20s, Rivera played a leading role in the Mexican Communist Party.

Rivera had been heavily influenced by his father, who had been a liberal teacher in the colonial city of Guanajuato. Rivera’s father, Diego Rivera Acosta, was one of the city’s labor leaders who instilled in his son a sense of pride in the working class and a need to defend the poor, according to Guadalupe Rivera Marin.

“By the time he reached adolescence he knew exactly what he was going to do with his life as a painter and as a person who fought for social justice,” Rivera Marin said.

The revolutionary fervor was so strong in Mexico that communist leaders from all over the world came to visit. In fact, the Riveras housed many of these leaders, including Josep Broz “Tito,” who would later become president of Yugoslavia, according to Rivera Marin.

Along with Orozco and painter Xavier Guerrero, Rivera founded and published El Machete, a workers’ newspaper that included text and drawings from the artists. Modotti contributed photographs as well. Rivera and the rest of the salon members also contributed to Frances Toor’s bilingual magazine, Mexican Folkways.

Nearly every week, members of the group would rotate hosts for their dinner parties. Guadalupe Marin, who was by many accounts a fantastic cook, and her sisters would often hold the parties at their homes.

Troubled Relationships With Modotti and Kahlo

One of the more intriguing figures of the salon was Modotti. Born in Udine, Italy, she came to the U.S. in 1913 and appeared in several silent Hollywood movies. She met Weston in Los Angeles, became his apprentice and moved with him to Mexico City in 1923.

Described as a strikingly beautiful woman with a natural grace, Modotti modeled for Weston and other artists, including Rivera, who also asked her to photograph his murals. Like many of Rivera’s models, she would become his lover.

By 1927, Modotti and Weston had ended their affair and he returned to the U.S. But Modotti’s wild parties would follow her to each of the many apartments she rented during her stay in Mexico.

Rivera was fond of painting scenes and personalities from the real-life drama of his circle. In the “Insurrection” mural at the Ministry of Education, Rivera depicted Modotti gazing lovingly into the eyes of Julio Antonio Mella--a young Cuban communist who had fled to Mexico in hopes of organizing a revolution against Cuban dictator Gerardo Machado.

But their love affair was not to last. As Mella and Modotti walked home from dinner one night in 1929, the young charismatic Cuban was shot dead. It is unknown who killed Mella, though theories abound that he was murdered by Modotti’s future lover and ruthless Stalinist commissar, Vittorio Vidali.

Initially, Modotti was accused by Mexican authorities of murdering Mella and, even here, Rivera managed to become the center of attention. He was put in charge of an independent inquiry launched by the Communist Party. Grilling police detectives and keeping his comrade’s plight on the front pages of newspapers, Rivera can be seen in photographs accompanying a distraught Modotti during her questioning, holding her hand at hearings and even reenacting the crime.

The charges against Modotti were dropped, but, despite his support, Rivera and Modotti would soon have a falling out as he began to distance himself from the Communist Party. He was formally expelled and, according to Patrick Marnham in his recent Rivera biography, “Dreaming With His Eyes Open,” Modotti exclaimed her pleasure in a letter to Weston: “He will be treated as what he is . . . a traitor. Needless to say I too will regard him as one.”

In the “Insurrection” mural, Rivera also painted Kahlo front and center. Her prominent display prompted Rivera’s friend and first biographer Bertram Wolfe to comment, “Diego has a new girl.”

Kahlo once said that she suffered two great tragedies in her life: the first, a horrendous trolley accident that shattered her pelvis and left her in grueling physical pain forever; the second was meeting Diego Rivera.

Theirs was a tormented relationship, which, despite a mutual love, was torn apart by their insatiable search for adventure and infidelity.

Rivera was instrumental in encouraging Kahlo as a young painter. He played the role of mentor and she his muse. As their relationship evolved, however, so did her talent and seriousness about art. Still, she was always in the shadow of her famous partner.

Rivera and Kahlo helped to bring a new image of Mexicans to a world that previously had little knowledge about Mexico or its culture. Kahlo was eyed in fascination as she walked the streets of New York and San Francisco in Tehuana clothing. The couple’s daring affairs and the mixture of art and politics created an aura of glamour never before associated with Mexico.

“They were two totally individual and free people during a time when everybody was holed up living quietly in their rooms. It was a time when, in Latin America, everything was done with discretion,” said Mexican cultural historian and critic Carlos Monsivais. “They were ahead of their time and lived out of the closet in a very repressive era.”

America Warms to This Inspirational Muralist

With the wild 1920s ending, the new decade ushered in many changes in Rivera’s personal, artistic and political life. The ‘30s turned out to be an important era for Rivera’s work to receive international recognition--most notably from Americans.

From 1927 to about 1935, Mexican and U.S. cultural relations turned a corner after years of antagonism. Inspired by the Mexican muralist movement, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal funded artists to create public art in the U.S.

Private interest in Mexican art also reached new heights with America’s richest art patrons establishing foundations to fund muralist paintings. Rivera and Kahlo took full advantage of this detente in relations between the two countries, with visits to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Detroit and New York beginning in 1930.

Rivera’s work had been brought to the attention of San Francisco Art Assn. President William Gerstle, who hired Rivera to paint a small mural at the city’s School of Fine Arts and later helped arrange a larger commission at the Pacific Stock Exchange.

Another key figure in Rivera’s exposure to important Americans was U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Dwight W. Morrow, a lover of Mexican art and history who played a crucial role in smoothing relations between Mexico and the U.S.

Morrow and his wife, Elizabeth, had constructed a country home in Cuernavaca, a town about 40 miles south of the Mexican capital. It was there, in 1929, that they commissioned Rivera to paint two murals in the Palacio de Cortes, the palace of the Spanish conquistador.

Rivera and Kahlo stayed in the Morrows’ home and became close friends, which sparked criticism among Rivera’s communist comrades. Indeed, the Morrows were part of America’s upper classes, the crust of the world’s capitalist society. It was through the Morrows that Rivera met the Rockefellers, the Astors and the Morgans, according to Guadalupe Rivera Marin.

But the cozy relationship between Rivera and his rich supporters would come to a fiery end with the 1933 Rockefeller Center mural fiasco.

Nowhere was the clash between Rivera’s communist ideology and his patron’s capitalist beliefs more apparent. Rivera turned the American Dream ideal upside down with his themes of working-class oppression and racism in America in his mural for the RCA building. Unable to stomach Rivera’s dramatic interpretations of the evils of capitalism, or his inclusion of Lenin as the world’s savior, the Rockefellers wanted out. Rivera was paid in full but the mural was destroyed before it was completed, causing a firestorm of controversy.

But the vogue of all things Mexican continued despite the Rockefeller incident. Writers like Anita Brenner, Frances Toor, William Sprattling and Carleton Beals detailed their Mexican experience in journals and books. Through their work, Americans were exposed to the muralist movement and cultural Renaissance occurring south of the border.

Another major factor was the unprecedented 1940 exhibition “Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Originally prepared for a museum in France, the show--featuring 5,000 pieces of ancient, colonial, popular and modern Mexican art--was canceled due to the war.

Rivera told a MoMA curator about the predicament, which led to the show being mounted in New York after negotiations between Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas and museum President Nelson Rockefeller.

Rivera was even asked to direct the show, but he declined, saying that he was supporting Cardenas’ opponent in an upcoming election. But speculators surmised that he was still smarting from his prior experience with the Rockefellers. Nevertheless, the show was a huge success, immersing New York’s cultural and commercial sectors into Mexico-mania.

The Mexican mystique that so intrigued Americans more than 50 years ago continues today with the mythology created around Rivera and Kahlo.

Not only has their popularity created a cottage industry of painting reproductions, calendars, notebooks and address books, but they’ve also inspired dozens of biographies and films about them and their circle. Last year, a new Rivera biography was published, two others are forthcoming, and this year two tomes about Modotti have arrived. Capitalizing on Kahlo’s popularity, Guadalupe Rivera Marin has published a cookbook titled “Frida’s Fiestas,” featuring many of the recipes Marin’s mother taught Kahlo.

In recent years, Kahlo has somewhat eclipsed Rivera’s orbit--at least in the United States--largely because of feminists’ embrace of both Kahlo and the femme fatale Modotti. Kahlo even holds the record for the highest price ever paid for a Latin American painting at auction--$3.2 million for her “Self-Portrait With Monkey and Parrot.”

The near-mythical status was raised even higher when the queen of pop trendiness herself, Madonna, became a high-profile patron of Latin American art and pursued film projects about both Kahlo and Modotti. Kahlo’s story will finally be told in the U.S. in a film starring Salma Hayek, which is in the early planning stages.

In addition, this December will see the release of Tim Robbins’ “Cradle Will Rock,” a tapestry of stories from the 1930s New York arts scene that includes the RCA mural fracas, with John Cusack as Nelson Rockefeller and Ruben Blades as Rivera.

The same month as the film opening, “Diego Rivera: Art & Revolution” will arrive at its final destination, the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City, likely renewing debate about Rivera’s legacy in his homeland.

As he did throughout his storied life, Rivera will once again be enmeshed in art, politics and celebrity on both sides of the border.

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“Diego Rivera: Art & Revolution,” May 30-Aug. 16, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd.; (323) 857-6000; Mon., Tue., Thur., noon-8 p.m.; Fri., noon-9 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 11 a.m.-8 p.m. (Closed Wednesdays.)