Art: Manifesto in a Minor Key

After years of fitful quarreling, Mexican art’s Big Three were on speaking terms once again. Far into the night, in Mexico City, Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros sat gesticulating across their coffee in the California Bar. They strolled down Avenida Juarez together in broad daylight, waving their arms in amiable disagreement. They met for long confabs at Orozco’s midtown house.

Just 25 years ago the three revolutionaries had joined in a manifesto whose shot was heard round the art world. The signers declared joint war on easel painting, which they regarded as essentially aristocratic because it ended up on rich people’s walls. Their own murals, on the other hand, would have “beauty for all, beauty that enlightens and stirs to struggle.” But for all their puffing, and for all their sometimes great murals, the School of Paris and its effete paintings were not wiped off the earth. In fact, Mexico’s new generation is being lured away by the commercial attractions of easel art. So it seemed time for another manifesto.

But when they sat down to talk it over, the Big Three found themselves no longer close allies. Siqueiros, a red-hot Communist, wanted to declare war on “sterile” elements in the Mexican as well as the Paris School. The “folklorism” in Mexican painting is sissy stuff, he indicated, and that was a direct slap at Rivera, who had become deeply interested in Indian dances and folk art. Rivera plugged a plan to turn Mexico City into a great capital of art. To Orozco this meant turning Mexico City into a tourist trap. The three rewrote Manifesto II more than 15 times before publishing it last week. Then Diego Rivera read it to Mexico’s arty intellectuals, solemnly gathered at the home of Siqueiros’ mother-in-law, after which sympathetic younger painters added a few words of their own. Excerpts: “Once America reflected movements in European art 25 years afterwards; now it is Europe that reflects us 25 years later. . . . Modern Paris art has entered a vicious circle, walking around & around like a mule at a well. . . . Mexican mural painting . . . has reached much nearer the masses.”

Old admirers of Mexico’s Big Three shook their heads sadly. The words were still defiant, but the fire had gone out of them.