A Call for Revolution and Universal Brotherhood:

The New School Frescoes of José Clemente Orozco

By Eric Rosenfield

9/30/2002

Course: Of Fire and Blood: Art and Mythology of Mexico

Instructor: Jaime Arredondo

A Call for Revolution and Universal Brotherhood:

The New School Frescoes of José Clemente Orozco

By Eric Rosenfield

Overview

The New School Frescoes, painted between November 1931 and January 1932, at 65 W. 12th Street in Manhattan, are anomalistic in the oeuvre of José Clemente Orozco. Of all of Orozco's work, A Call for Revolution and Universal Brotherhood are the most positive, the most hopeful and the least pessimistic, especially when considering the fierce darkness and borderline Nihilism that characterized his later art, such as Man of Fire, Catharsis, and Carnival of the Ideologies. The murals at the New School are also the most formally constructed of anything he did, utilizing the mathematical principles of the Dynamic Symmetry movement spearheaded by geometer Jay Hambidge, which had a faddish popularity in the 1920s. Briefly, Dynamic Symmetry involves the use of rectangular and square shapes that have, as a quality, the "Divine" or "Golden Section" used in Greek and Egyptian art: a ratio of 1 to 0.618 between sides¹

A Call for Revolution and Universal Brotherhood (hereafter referred to as ACRUB) is often considered to be an artistic failure. Orozco biographer Mackinly Helm characterized it as "generally disappointing"², and journalist Lloyd Goodrich once described it as "lacking emotional intensity" and "conviction"³. Also, Orozco's unwillingness to return to either the "message" of the murals (Orozco hardly titled anything as a "Call for" something after ACRUB) or to the formal structure of Dynamic Symmetry are both indicative of his ultimate dissatisfaction with the work. Of Hambidge and Dynamic Symmetry, Orozco later wrote "Hambidge himself carried his conclusions too far... After doing the pictures at the New School, I abandoned the overrigorous and scientific methods of Dynamic Symmetry, but I kept the fundamental and inevitable in it and with this I shaped new ways of working"⁴. And so, even if the New School murals represent a failure, there is a lot to be learned from failure, and the murals represent both the first time that Orozco tried to tackle ideas of politics, history and ideologies in a significant way - something that would become very important in his later work and fundamentally bind him with the other two of "las trés grande" (Siqueiros and Rivera), and, in Orozco's own words, the murals helped "shape new ways of working".

The Allegory of Science, Labor, and Art

Outside the former dining room and current conference room that contains the other ACRUB murals is the fresco "The Allegory of Science, Labor and Art". This work begins the hopeful themes that characterize the New School Murals in broad, general terms. Orozco seems to indicate here that through work in science, labor and art we can build for ourselves a better future.

The scientist belabors with furrowed brow over his compass, looking outward at the audience as if there, within us all, he might find the answer to the problems he is contemplating. The laborer works steadily against his anvil between the figures of Science and Art, to put "into actual use the theoretical programs of the scientist and artist"⁵. Above him are the three central symbols of labor that are a motif throughout the murals: the shovel, the pick-axe and the hammer. And the artist, most significantly, wields a rainbow, capturing the very ineffable forces, indeed the very palette, of nature to use in the creation of his art.

The Fraternity of All Men at the Table of Brotherhood and Ultimate Universality

The Fraternity of All Men is the centerpiece of the New School murals and the first thing one sees when entering the conference room. Around the table sits individuals of all races and creeds, headed up at the top by what biographer Alma Reed referred to as the "despised races"⁶ - a Mexican peasant, a black man and a Jew. The message here is obvious - it's difficult to misunderstand a "Table of Brotherhood and Ultimate Universality" - and there is hardly anything controversial in this image, aside from, perhaps, the noticeable exclusion of women. Orozco offers this table, with it's solitary book and calming blue background, as the solution to the strife and political turmoil that characterize the two side panels of the mural. The table is portrayed cubistically as a perfect square, which, Dynamic Symmetry aside, appears to be actually asking to viewer to sit down at it.

Struggle in the Occident: Carrillo Puerto and Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution

On the right wall, as you enter the room, is the fresco Struggle in the Occident. This has always been the most controversial of the New School murals, due primarily to it's depiction of Vladmir Lenin. Lenin, with an intense and moody expression painted in grays and ochers, stands above the bayonets of the red army against a red backdrop. On one side of him is a sun that is either rising, or, less likely, setting, and on the other are the ranks of the Red Guard fronted by Joseph Stalin, and with him members of many races united under the umbrella of Communism. In the mural they are marching towards the symbols of labor - the shovel, the hammer, the pick-axe - situated beneath a dark brown factory, and beyond that, on the next wall, is the promise of the Homecoming mural. On the other half of the mural, Orozco lovingly portrays martyred Mexican governor Carrillo Puerto, who proudly overlooks a Mayan pyramid. Carrillo Puerto was an agricultural socialist, and was known for redistributing land from the wealthy to impoverished until he was assassinated in 1924. Below him sit the adoring masses, who all look up at him hopefully, with the exception of one lone man in the lower right hand corner, who looks down at the ground and forebodingly holds a rifle.

It is arguably significant that Orozco portrays Puerto higher up in the mural than Lenin, and that beneath Puerto are loving masses, whereas beneath Lenin are uniform and faceless soldiers. Orozco was never considered a Communist, and it is obvious that Orozco couldn't have been endorsing all of the ideologies present in ACRUB, since Gandhi, portrayed in the next mural, never, and could never have, approved of the violent revolution that brought Lenin to power. In discussions with Orozco, Dr. Alvin Johnson, founder of the New School, characterized the portrayal of Lenin as part of a "realistic appraisal of political trends"⁷. This did not, however, keep the New School from putting a yellow curtain over the entirety of the Struggle in the Occident mural during the McCarthy era of the 1950s.

Struggle in the Orient: Slavery, Imperialism and Gandhi

Gandhi sits crosslegged, contemplating the event occurring in the rest of the mural, his expression sad and troubled. To his right sits the poet Sarojinmi Naidu. Before him is a British soldier, and with the soldier are turbaned Royal Guardsmen, and above them a row of frightening, gas-masked soldiers. These figures represent the forces of British imperialism, which Gandhi spent the bulk of his life fighting against. Beyond them, are the figures of enslaved masses: upper class above, in suit and tie, lower class below, all nude except one, both classes equally shackled by the neck by the forces of imperialism. To the far left are three figures who are totally white, including one old man who is clearly an unfinished painting. Orozco once revealed that he intended the white figures to be "living in the past"⁸. Seen chronologically then, from left to right, the "slaves" portion of the mural tells a story, free men (the men in white) rebelling against the forces of imperialism, who tower over them with sword in hand, enslaving them, upper class and lower class alike. The old man, who raises his hand up in anger, freed from it's shackles, is left unfinished because his rebellion itself was unfinished. The last of the line of enslaved men, and the only one unshackled and wearing clothes, looks out hopefully toward a man kneeling in an almost prayer-like position and reaching up with one hand toward a dawning light. The clothed man is the enslaved masses gradually gaining more independence and freedom, and the kneeling man is gazing, one can safely assume, at Gandhi and the deliverance he brings.

The Homecoming of the Worker of the New Day

In Orozco in Gringoland, author Alejandro Anreus describes Homecoming as revealing "a tenderness rarely seen in [Orozco's] art. ... The overall work is warm without being sentimental"⁹. Indeed, there is something rather touching about the woman's Giotto-esque face as she reaches for her husband after his long day of work, their child peeking curiously from behind the wife's dress. The two workers here bear the symbolic pick-axes, as they return to a home of their loving wives and children to partake of a great bounty of food. When looking at the food, the yellow space left in the upper left hand corner of the table draws the eye straight to the child whose face is illuminated in white. The child is looking out at the viewer, and here the outward gaze of Science, Labor and Art and the square table of Fraternity combine to doubly invite the audience to find the brotherhood within themselves, to climb into the painting and sit at the table, and share of the bounteous rewards of Revolution and Brotherhood. This is the antecedent to the Fraternity mural, which portrays the world at large, the political world, joined together in harmony. Here, the common world, the world of the home and hearth, of matrimony and childrearing, is in happiness and at peace and rewarded for it's hard work on behalf of the Art and Science of the first mural. Outside the window, a rectangular structure, the same tone and shape as the table itself, sits against a calm blue sky and blue/green grass, an echo of the peace and love here in the home, extending onto the outside world.

Conclusions

ACRUB represents a significant turning point in the catalog of José Clemente Orozco. Here he begins to seriously wrestle with ideas of politics, history and ideology that will continue to haunt the rest of his work. And because these murals are more formal (by way of Dynamic Symmetry) than anything he ever did, Orozco (who had extensive formal training) can be seen as making one last rigidly formal experiment, to push a formal structure far as he can in order to see where it can take him, and in doing so discover it's limitations so that he may proceed to grow into his own as an artist. After this extreme experiment in form, Orozco can comfortably proceed to the radical experiments in content that mark his later work.

The murals may also represent the beginning of Orozco's coming disillusionment. They appear to tell us that Orozco legitimately believed that through "Revolution and Brotherhood" humanity could cast off it's shackles and be united in peace and harmony, in home and hearth, and be free to pursue Science, Labor and Art. Orozco's later work, in extreme contrast, tells us that such a future is not possible through any ideology: credos war against one another, technology grinds away at our humanity and we can have hope only in the idea that by chopping down our crosses we might migrate the spirit.

Bibliography

• José Clemente Orozco, An Autobiography, University of Texas Press, Austin, TX, 1962

• Alejandro Anreus, Orozco in Gringoland: The Years in New York, Bell and Howell Company, Ann Arbor, MI, 1997

• Alma Reed, Orozco, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 1956

• Desmond Rochfort, Mexican Muralists: Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros, Chronicle Books LLC, San Francisco, CA, 1993

• Lesley Doyel, Fresco: Then and Now, New School University, http://www.newschool.edu/infotech/fresco.del

• José Clemente Orozco in New York: Murals at the New School for Social Research, Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, http://www.lavitrina.com/html/unknown/murals.html

The images displayed in this paper were taken from the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York web site listed above. A complete mosaic of the New School murals, along with mosaics of Orozco's murals at Dartmouth College and Pomona College, can be found on the Dartmouth web site at: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~farid/orozco. Being a long mosaic, the image is irreproducible on paper, however, a visit to this site is recommended for proper appreciation of this essay, unless you happen to read it in room 712 of the New School building at 65 W. 13th street.