5 - Ingredients of a Relationship

Summary

In the autumn of 1932 the Rockefeller family invited Mexican painter Diego Rivera to create a mural for the new Rockefeller Center—a distinctive urban complex of shops, offices, theaters, restaurants, and public art on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Beginning work the following spring, Rivera offered a prescient depiction of the potential directions for modern life entitled Man at the Crossroads Looking with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a New and Better Future. With a robot-like worker controlling a giant turbine at the center, the mural displayed the wonders of science. In front of the man, discoveries of biology, chemistry, and physics were represented on a luminous globe. Behind him, two diagonal lenses crisscrossed, one revealing microscopic views of germs, cells, and a developing embryo, the other showing a telescopic panorama of far-flung galaxies, stars, and planets.

The artist also portrayed contrasting scenes of human society on the left and the right of both fresco and political spectrum. Man at the Crossroads’ right side yielded to the world of capitalism: bleak scenes of war; unemployed workers being beaten by the police; and fancy club-goers gambling, smoking, and drinking, oblivious to the world outside. To the left, conversely, were images of a socialist society: a colorful May Day Parade, a line of muscular female athletes, and a scene of African-American and white laborers joining hands with a familiar politician-philosopher. Rivera pointedly challenged the liberality of his sponsor by endowing this figure with a striking resemblance to Vladimir Lenin.

The press soon got wind of the theme of Rivera's mural, and in late April 1933 the New York World-Telegram headlined a story: “Rivera Paints Scenes of Communist Activity—and John D. [Rockefeller] Jr. Foots Bill.” The young Nelson Rockefeller—a member of the Rockefeller Center board, a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art and the second son of John D. Jr.—sought in vain to have Rivera replace Lenin's portrait with something less “offensive,” such as an image of Abraham Lincoln (according to an apocryphal version of the story), but the muralist demurred. Within a few weeks, Rivera was called down from his scaffold and made to cease work while the differences were resolved. Months of public demonstrations and private negotiations proved fruitless. With neither side willing to yield, Rivera was dismissed and the mural was demolished.