Man at the Crossroads

Man at the Crossroads (1933) was a fresco by Mexican painter Diego Rivera. Originally slated to be installed in the lobby of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center in New York City, the fresco showed aspects of contemporary social and scientific culture. As originally installed, it was a three-paneled artwork. A central panel, depicting a worker controlling machinery, 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 fresco'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", Rivera added images of Vladimir Lenin and a Soviet May Day parade in response. 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 Man at the Crossroads to be plastered over and thereby destroyed before it was finished, resulting in protests and boycotts from other artists. The historian Alan Balfour writes that the Rockefellers had full knowledge of Rivera's communist activities, but hired him anyway.

Rivera was officially commissioned by Todd, Robertson & Todd, the development agents for Rockefeller Center. According to Rivera's verbal description of the planned mural, the center panel would depict a person at the literal intersection of these two ideals (namely, the "man at the crossroads").

The RCA Building lobby's wall had such a prominent position within Rockefeller Center that John and Abby Rockefeller's son Nelson had originally wanted Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso to create the paintings on either side of Man at the Crossroads. Nelson had chosen these artists because he favored their modern style. Rivera's artistic renown made his commission all the more fitting, since it was so prominently located. However, neither of the other two artists were available: Matisse was already completing commissions for Philadelphia's Barnes Foundation at the time, while Picasso never responded to the wire that requested a meeting with "Pierre Picasso". Josep Maria Sert and Frank Brangwyn were later hired to paint other murals in their place. Sert would paint murals on the northern corridor, while Brangwyn would paint murals on the southern corridor.

Rivera did not agree with principal Rockefeller Center architect Raymond Hood's suggestion that the mural be commissioned exclusively in grayscale colors. He also declined to take part in an artistic competition prior to the announcement of his commission, and wanted to withdraw from the project when it was announced that neither Matisse nor Picasso would be painting at the RCA Building. He eventually acquiesced after Nelson convinced Hood to remove his grayscale requirement and allowed Rivera to paint Man at the Crossroads in a fresco format. However, Rivera withdrew again after Sert and Brangwyn were announced as the new artists, calling them "two inferior painters". He eventually rejoined the project by fall 1932.

As part of the contract, Rivera would be paid $21,000 for the work. This was considerably more than the $10,000 he had been paid for Detroit Industry, which he continued painting even as he was negotiating for Man at the Crossroads. According to Daniel Okrent, Rivera did not read the fine print of the contract that he signed, which stipulated that in exchange for the $21,000, Rockefeller Center Inc. would hold full ownership of Man at the Crossroads; this would lead to a controversy when the work was later removed from the RCA Building.

Rivera showed Abby the sketch of his proposed work in November 1932. Nelson and John also looked at the sketch, and Nelson concluded that there was nothing controversial about the planned mural. Rivera and the Rockefellers signed a contract in which they agreed that the sketch was the final plan for the mural, and that the completed work could not be different from what was on that sketch. In March 1933, Rivera traveled from Detroit to New York so he could work on the RCA Building mural. He employed artists from around the world in his six-person crew, which also included the artists Ben Shahn and Lucienne Bloch. Rivera's assistants converted his small sketch to full-size pieces of tracing paper, which would then be painted onto the wall. Also in March 1933, Webster B. Todd, one of the contractors working on the construction of Rockefeller Center, requested sketches of Man at the Crossroads because he was concerned about the mural's potential controversial effect. Even so, Rivera did not express worry about any potential issues, even expressing pride over his work when The New York Times wrote a lengthy profile on him on April 2, 1933. The Rockefellers did not show concern either, and the complex's publicist Merle Crowell took credit for the New York Times article.

Work

thumb|The Fresco in its entirety

thumb|upright=1.3|alt=The central scene. A workman is depicted controlling machinery. Before him, a giant fist emerges holding an orb depicting the recombination of atoms and dividing cells in acts of chemical and biological generation.|The central scene

Rivera's composition depicted many aspects of contemporary social and scientific culture, and as with his other paintings, contained influences from Communism. In the center, a workman was depicted controlling machinery. Before him, a giant fist emerged holding an orb depicting the recombination of atoms and dividing cells in acts of chemical and biological generation. From the central figure four propeller-like shapes stretched to the corner of the composition, depicting arcs of light created by giant lenses anchoring the left and right edges of the space. Rivera described these as "elongated ellipses". Within these, cosmological and biological forces such as exploding suns and cell-forms were depicted. These represented the discoveries made possible by the telescope and the microscope. Rivera also said that he would be amenable to adding portraits of other American icons such as the abolitionists Nat Turner, John Brown, or Harriet Beecher Stowe, but he refused to remove the portrait of Lenin: <blockquote>"Rather than mutilate the conception [of the mural], I shall prefer the physical destruction of the conception in its entirety, but preserving, at least, its integrity."</blockquote> Daniel Okrent states that Rivera did not write the letter himself, instead leaving the task to Ben Shahn, the assistant most strongly opposed to Nelson's request to remove the Lenin portrait.

Nelson then left the decision about the future of the mural to Todd, Robertson & Todd. Rivera was paid in full, but the mural was covered in stretched canvas and left incomplete. Rivera's net profit from Man at the Crossroads only amounted to US$7,000 (), a third of his total payment, after accounting for all expenses. He promised to reproduce the mural at any building that asked him to do so. On May 12, two days after the stop-work order was announced, Rivera was also dismissed from a commission at Chicago's Century of Progress exhibition, where he had been hired to paint a mural for General Motors' pavilion. An architect for GM cited the controversy surrounding Man at the Crossroads as the grounds for Rivera's dismissal. In May 1933, Rockefeller Center Inc. announced that the mural would "remain hidden for an indefinite time". Within days of the stop-work order, artists' groups had drawn up manifestos to demand that Rivera be able to complete his mural.

In December 1933, Rockefeller Center developer John R. Todd proposed that Man at the Crossroads be moved to MoMA, and suggested that Rivera could be re-hired to finish the mural. Rockefeller Center Inc. agreed to this proposal, but it was never carried out because the Rockefeller Center's management had not permitted Rivera's team to lay the plaster onto a specially built metal substructure which had been developed by Rivera and his principal assistant Clifford Wight so that Rivera's frescoes could be removed from the buildings they decorated if necessary. The mural remained covered until February 1934, when workmen peeled the mural off the wall. Rivera said that the mural's destruction "will advance the cause of the labor revolution", while Rockefeller Center Inc. simply issued a two-sentence press release saying that the walls had been replastered, resulting in the mural's demolition.

Reactions

The destruction caused widespread controversy, with many artists vowing to boycott any future exhibitions or commissions at Rockefeller Center. The communist New Workers School in Manhattan was one of the entities who protested the destruction of Man at the Crossroads. Its leader Bertram Wolfe was one of Rivera's associates and would later become his biographer. Rivera painted 21 frescoes and gave them to the school as a gift for their protests. The protests largely stopped when Robertson released Rivera's previous correspondence about preferring the mural's destruction.

Aftermath

thumb|upright=1.1|alt=Part of "American Progress", the mural that replaced "Man at the Crossroads"|Information desk panel, American Progress, the Triumph of Man's Accomplishments Through Physical and Mental Labor, by [[Josep Maria Sert, the mural that replaced Man at the Crossroads]]

Despite the disagreement over Man at the Crossroads, Nelson Rockefeller still admired Rivera's work, and the two had an amicable relationship. Years afterward, he would collect paintings and loan them to Rivera's art shows. However, according to Daniel Okrent, his mother felt "betrayed" by Rivera, and they were not known to see each other again after the dispute had subsided. As a result of the controversy, John Rockefeller saw to it that no artwork would be commissioned for Rockefeller Center without his explicit approval. As for Rivera, Bertram Wolfe wrote that the artist commissioned paintings for movements that opposed the Rockefellers' "continued rule".

After Man at the Crossroads was demolished, Brangwyn was asked to exclude Jesus Christ from his own mural in the RCA Building's lobby, which depicted the Sermon on the Mount. John R. Todd reportedly made the request because Christ could have been depicted in many different ways, but unlike with Man at the Crossroads, there was very little controversy.

Meanwhile, replacements for Man at the Crossroads were being considered, and Rockefeller Center Inc. approached many artists for possible offers. Initially, Picasso showed interest in the commission, but Todd declined the offer because Picasso refused to show a preview of what he was going to paint, and because Picasso would not negotiate from his stated price of $32,000. In 1937, Sert agreed to paint the replacement mural for $27,000. The mural, titled American Progress, depicts a vast allegorical scene of men constructing modern America, and contains figures of Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. American Progress wraps around the west wall of 30 Rockefeller Plaza's Grand Lobby.

According to American Heritage magazine, the controversy influenced Franklin D. Roosevelt’s reaction to the idea of a Federal Art Project and similar New Deal-funded public art initiatives: “Commenting on the suggestion that the federal government should undertake a relief program for unemployed artists, Roosevelt expressed some misgiving: he didn't want, he told a friend in 1933, ‘a lot of young enthusiasts painting Lenin's head on the Justice Building.’“ The New Deal art programs were ultimately funded and persisted until the height of World War II, and in the end, “The New Deal administration did its best to give American artists easy rein, recognizing that freedom and originality are inseparable. There were exceptional cases, especially in connection with over a thousand murals executed under Treasury Department auspices for United States post offices across the country; but in general the absence of censorship was remarkable.”

Man, Controller of the Universe

thumb|alt=Detail of Man, Controller of the Universe, showing Leon Trotski, Friedrich Engels, and Karl Marx|Detail of Man, Controller of the Universe, fresco at [[Palacio de Bellas Artes showing Leon Trotsky, Friedrich Engels, and Karl Marx]]

Concerned that Nelson Rockefeller would destroy the work, Rivera had asked Lucienne Bloch to take photographs of the mural before it could be destroyed. The composition was almost identical, but the central figure was moved slightly to be aligned with the supporting mast of the cylindrical telescope above him. The New Yorker published E. B. White's poem "I paint what I see: A ballad of artistic integrity", an imaginary debate between Nelson Rockefeller and Rivera, on May 20, 1933. The incident has also been dramatized in the American films Cradle Will Rock (1999) and Frida (2002), both set in the 1930s.

Other works focused specifically on Nelson Rockefeller's and Diego Rivera's conduct during the dispute over Man at the Crossroads. In her 1983 biography Frida, Hayden Herrera mentions that Kahlo wrote, "one could fight against [the Rockefellers] without being stabbed in the back". This referred to Rockefeller and Rivera's continued relationship even after the controversy had passed. Cary Reich writes in The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller that the controversy was an instance of Nelson's "princely tendency [...] to have surrogates handle his dirty work".

References

Sources

External links

Photograph of the original mural.
Diego Rivera, Man Controller of the Universe, 7:08, Smarthistory