Page 46 - Studio International - February 1974

agency. Art Net has premises at 53 advertising photograph of a against hopeful, forward-looking
Endell St., London WC2. conjuring trick, by Nikolas Muray. ones. Sometimes accused of
The Peter Blake Show, which has The most powerful work of art in the excessive clarity, his paintings were
been shown in Amsterdam and show was surely a three-shot study of intended to have a direct effect on
Hamburg, is now at the Palais des an unidentified execution by electric uneducated workers. There is no
Beaux Arts in Brussels, 12 February to chair in New York in the 1890s, by blurring of the edges. His second
10 March. From there it will travel to William Van Der Weyde. The convict is mural commission in Mexico, started
Arnhem. a black, wearing the broad stripe. in 1939 after two years of fighting for
Compiled by Paul Martin In the first shot he is led in by Republican Spain, is on the walls of a
warders, a chaplain, and other white narrow staircase in the building of the
The International Museum of officials. In the second shot he looks Mexican Union of Electricians. The
Photography is well worth a special the camera squarely in the 'eye'. Portrait of the Bourgeoisie is in three
visit to Rochester, New York, a city By the time of the third shot he is parts ; in the centre a steel monster
which otherwise is not arresting to the blindfolded and the current is applied. converts the blood of the workers
casual tourist. The museum is housed The convict's gaze in the second into gold, like a scene from
in the former residence of George shot (he could have turned his head Metropolis, on the right a figure with
Eastman and contains a large away, had he wished) made me think a parrot's head harangues the
collection of pictures, films and hard about the contractual marching soldiers, and on the left a
apparatus, as well as a scientific relationship implied in a posed worker with a rifle seizes power. Siqueiros. Photo: Constantino, Polanco,
section. The museum has just photograph (or painting), and about Banished from Mexico in 1932 for Mexico
mounted an exhibition of recent the dubious morality of 'candid' his political activities (he was a
acquisitions, prepared by Robert photo-reportage where the gifted and inflammatory speaker, and and various levels of scaffolding held
Sobieszek, director of its research photographer exploits a technological among other things president of the apprentices and pots of paint. His
centre, and William Jenkins. It advantage over the persons of other National Revolutionary Federation of wife appeared, Siqueiros talked of
included work by a wide range of people, who are often at a severe Mineworkers), he went to the States turning the Tres Pico studio into a
artists from Francis Frith to Paolozzi disadvantage in other ways too. and, encouraged by the advanced 'people's gallery'. He interrupted the
and was a rare visual treat. Jonathan Benthall technology there, continued his conversation to explain to a student in
The selection of 'classical' constant experiments with new the higher reaches of the mural
photography of every genre is most techniques. Unsuccessful experiments section that the green she was using
sensitive. However, one's eye is David Alfaro with a spray gun were followed by the must be the 'essence of green'. He
equally drawn by samples of the more successful use of Pyroxiline and spoke to her in a poetic manner about
medium's astonishingly diverse Siqueiros other modern plastics materials awareness of the pigment in relation
social applications, from French suitable for painting. He started to the form it filled.
David Alfaro Siqueiros died in adding solid materials to the surfaces. Siqueiros said he felt his work as a
Cuernavaca, Mexico, on 6 January. In his last great project, begun after political activist was inseparable from
He was 77, the last surviving member four years' imprisonment ending in his work as an artist. He talked at
of the three greatest modern mural 1964, a series of murals on cement length about his involvement with the
painters in Mexico. panels in iron frames covering an Mexican Communist Party, his various
He himself was absent when I estimated total of over 4000 square exiles and his years of imprisonment.
went to see his latest work in 1973 in metres, to be placed in an auditorium In between he expounded upon his
one of the public buildings in Mexico built to house them, the figures are revolutionary ideas on materials and
City, and scaffolding blocked the extended and exaggerated by art theory. He mentioned the
vaulted staircase he had chosen as a coloured metal sculptures. experimental workshop in New York
site. It was not unusual for him, either The first large-scale mural project where he explored 'Duco', plastic
to be absent from his work (he placed in Mexico, organized by Vasconcelos, materials, use of the air brush and the
his active engagement in revolutionary was the decoration of the walls of spray gun as well as projectors and
politics first), or to select a the National Preparatory (pre- other cinematic techniques. Jackson
comparatively cramped and university) School, begun in 1922 Pollock's name only came into the
awkward site for his great plunging and soon literally a battlefield, the discussion briefly, but we were both
forms and powerfully gesturing painters, who included Rivera, aware of the significance of his
figures because it could be more Orozco and Siqueiros, according to participation in the Siqueiros
interesting and potentially dynamic Rivera, defending themselves from Workshop. He referred to certain
than a flat wall. In Como se pinta un the scaffolding with pistols. murals — Chapultepec Castle, the
mural (How to paint a mural) (1951) D. H. Lawrence saw them at work in Palace of Fine Arts. ButI had the
he says the mural painter should 1923, and wrote in The Plumed distinct feeling that his real concern
consider the whole architectonic Serpent: 'Since the Revolution was the here and now —the mural
space, the more complex the better, nowhere had authority and tradition section he was guiding into life that
J. H. Crawford Heads of the People 1863
Visiting card, albumen he is working within, and that finally been so finally overthrown as in the very morning.
the 'active spectator inside the mural Mexican fields of science and art.
recruiting postcards of the First concavity is the only possible switch Science and art are the sport of the
World War (see 'Review' p.1) to a for setting in motion this rhythmic young. Go ahead, my boys !' Germany
panel of nearly 800 metal portrait architectonic machine ; he supplies Dawn Ades
buttons made by an American the required current...' With The last exhibition arranged by
photographer at about the same date, Siqueiros the 'active spectator' does Joanna Dymond writes : I arrived in Klaus Gallwitz at the Kunsthalle in
and thought to represent the not stand and contemplate the Mexico City in the early morning Baden-Baden before going to
membership of a club. They are painted wall—unlike Rivera's murals, hours of National Revolution Day in Frankfurt is devoted to the
arranged in patterns on the basis of static, conceived in panels, usually in 1972. I was there to meet Siqueiros Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and can
sex and dress. As well as being fresco, detailed and slowly at the request of Editions Press in be seen until the end of February.
a poignant relic, this is amusing assimilable. Siqueiros's figures leap San Francisco, in connection with This ambitious enterprise should not
evidence of the way in which out at you, fists clenched, violently several lithographs he had just be seen in isolation, for it fits neatly
photography is used for foreshortened, sometimes out of completed for the 'Mexican Masters into the scheme which Gallwitz began
physiognomic matching. abstract swirling lines and brilliant Suite'. As Siqueiros was being with his Dali exhibition and continued
It was also interesting to see an colours, sometimes out of a mass honoured as a national hero that day by presenting Makart and then the
example of photocollage — used to scene of struggling workers orsoldiers, he arranged to see me early the next nineteenth-century Russian realists.
make a point rather than as a mere when the single figure stands out day at his Tres Pico studio. I expected His principle of looking back
trick—as early as 1863. (See above.) with an effect like an Eisenstein film. to meet a wry and withered artist of 76. necessarily involved the
And witty visual comments on the Siqueiros's paintings are polemical Instead I met a vigorous and well- Pre-Raphaelites, and, even if they had
philosophical enigmas of illusion and and often organized in terms of simple groomed man at the door whose not come back into fashion in England
sign crop up everywhere— less oppositions, monstrously depicted penetrating pale-blue eyes gave me itself, would still have been shown in
portentously than in current avant- capitalism against struggling masses, a warm welcome. A huge mural Baden-Baden. (In that event,
garde art — for instance in an or violated grief-stricken faces section was pinioned on to the walls however, they would have been