Once Porfirio Diaz was removed from power in Mexico in 1920, Alvaro Obregon became president. In this new position, he appointed José Vasconselos as Minister of Education. As such, Vasconselos was able to use his power within the political arrangement to fully support the country's burgeoning mural movement with institutional funding.
Because of this support, muralists like David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, and José Clemente Orozco were able to work and flourish. Vasconselos was exceptionally openminded concerning their work, and gave each artist free reign over their choice of style and material. This made it possible for each artist to develop distinct individual methods in the expression of public art and political statement.
Mexican Mural Movement – Background
José Clemente Orozco studied under Dr. Atl at the San Carlos Academy. He saw the work of muralists like Rivera as shameless propaganda, which he did not believe served the proper artistic purposes. He wanted public art to serve a specific moral purpose. In his Christ Destroying His Cross (1943) he expresses this in a controversial and disturbing image.
Orozco saw Catholicism as one of many powers working to oppress the people of Mexico. As Jacquelynn Baas has stated in “The Epic of American Civilization: The Mural at Dartmouth College,” in José Clemente Orozco in the United States, 1927-1934, Christ destroys his cross, so too he denies the sacrificial destiny meant for him. In doing so, he embodies the hopeful spirit of the Mexican people.
Dartmouth College
Among Orozco’s greatest achievements was a cycle of murals done at Dartmouth College from 1932-34. Dartmouth College is one of the oldest educational institutions in the United States. Orozco, in José Clemente Orozco: An Autobiography, says he was drawn to the project by the history of the college itself.
Dartmouth was founded in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, a Catholic missionary who sought to establish a school for the education of the indigenous people living in New England. Orozco’s autobiography also tells that he envisioned Wheelock luring the Indians with drums and the promise of whiskey, and then using the Bible as the sole tool of their education.
Orozco’s murals for Dartmouth College originally began as a simple demonstrational lecture. MacKinley Helm’s Man of Fire lists a May of 1932 invitation to Orozco to Dartmouth to give a demonstration of fresco technique. He began with a small section of wall near the library, where he undertook an obscure mural painting in order to detail the process of fresco painting. The final piece, Man Released from the Mechanistic to the Creative Life, shows a nude young man as he emerges from a pile of mechanical debris.
This initial work clearly shows a simplistic approach that would become more and more complex as the larger mural cycle developed. Man Released may have been part of an original plan for a Daedalus theme to the murals, suggests Helm, which was later abandoned when it became clear to the college that Orozco’s Quetzalcoatl cycle had been thoroughly explored by the artist and was ready to be executed on the walls at Baker Library.
Quetzalcoatl
The myth of Quetzalcoatl was well known throughout Latin America. It is based on the story of the fall of the Toltec civilization. It was believed that Quetzalcoatl came to the Aztec-Toltec people and demanded that they cease human sacrifice and the worship of other gods. When the people refused to abandon their warlike ways, Quetzalcoatl left in a fit of rage and disappointment, promising to return one day and topple the civilization of mankind.
Several theories, supported by Helm in Man of Fire, state that Cortez was believed to be the fulfillment of this prophecy, bringing about the destruction of the indigenous tribes and ushering in a new way of life. In Orozco’s own mural, Quetzalcoatl is represented as a light-skinned, white-haired god with blue eyes. It is not difficult to imagine how the indigenous people might have seen the light-skinned Cortez as the embodiment of Quetzalcoatl’s return.
