Art: Orozco v. Biddle

On the second floor of Mexico City’s Supreme Court building, the harsh hand of José Clemente Orozco, famed Mexican muralist, could be seen all over the walls. Artists liked what they saw, but several Supreme Court Justices did not: they were angered by an Orozco panel showing blindfolded Justice in a compromising position (see cut). They demanded that the murals be removed.

In Mexico, where art is taken almost as seriously as politics, removing Orozco’s frescoes was out of the question. The Government arrived at a curious compromise. It commissioned U.S. Painter George Biddle (brother of ex-Attorney General Francis) to do another set of murals downstairs. Never before had a foreigner been invited to decorate a Mexican federal building.

Minister of Education Torres Bodet, hoping to avoid a second controversy, gave Biddle just one fervent instruction: “For God’s sake, do something constructive!” Glowed Biddle: “This is the most beautiful wall space I ever hope to have.”

Last week, after a year’s work, Biddle’s frescoes were finished. They showed, according to Biddle, the fertility of peace (a farmer with oxen, a mother with child) v. the horror of war (symbolized by skeletons and Franklin Roosevelt’s quotation, “I hate war”). Although the murals were now open for inspection by his Mexican peers, Orozco had “no time” to see them, and Fellow Muralist Diego Rivera was “too busy” painting some of his own in the National Palace (just across the street) to take a look. Biddle felt sure that an attack on his murals which appeared in the newspaper Excelsior, under the nom de plume “jurinto,” was really written by Rivera. But Biddle, who felt that he had done something constructive, hoped that the Justices would be pleased.