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Four nights later Rivera, his temper hidden by a lazy smile, told an audience in Manhattan's Town Hall that of course his art was Communistic propaganda. After the Communists had read him out of the party, "one thing was left for me: to prove that my theory would be accepted in an industrial nation where capitalists rule. ... I had to come as a spy, in disguise. Sometimes in times of war a man disguises himself as a tree. My paintings in this country have become increasingly and gradually clearer.'' Speaking in French he said, "Art is like ham—it nourishes people." The interpreter translated jambon as "food." The audience shouted "Ham!" and Rivera nodded. He concluded, "Because there is a logic of history, the RCA Building will assume its real function—the time depends upon the will of the workers."
While everybody went off halfcocked, the facts slowly emerged. Last November Todd, Robertson, Todd, building & renting managers of Rockefeller Center, planned the RCA Building's lobby as a liberal museum. They selected the social-technical theme, "New Frontiers." to be executed by three foreign muralists, Spanish Jose Maria Sert, British Frank Brangwyn and Mexican Diego Rivera. To Rivera was assigned the subject, "Man at the cross-roads looking with uncertainty but hope for a new solution." Last November, at the depression's low, the U. S. was pessimistic; capitalists pondered Communists, wondered whether Revolution was a possibility. To Rivera's hiring by the Rockefellers the publicity was tremendous. Rivera knew that John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s wife and his son Nelson were trustees of Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art which gave Rivera a show a year ago. In that show was many a frankly Communistic picture by Rivera, notably a fresco Frozen Assets, showing starving men, idle mills. In early March, one of Rockefeller Center's architects, Raymond Hood, went to Detroit where Rivera was finishing his frescoes for the Detroit Institute of Arts. He approved Rivera's big, colored sketch for Rockefeller Center.
The sketch showed a central figure who looked like a blond Russian (eventually posed by Tammany Boss John Francis Curry's grandnephew Hugh Jr., 22) under a big television machine which projected on the rest of the design the worker's choices. These were: marching soldiers with gas-masked heads like wasps; Communists trooping in Moscow's Red Square; a group of unemployed rioting under hard-jawed mounted police; socialite bridge-players and fox-trotters; women exercising; students; a worker, a student and an unemployed worker listening to a Leader. Through the composition criss-crossed two spurs, showing enormously magnified disease bacteria and a galaxy of constellations. Rivera produced another preliminary sketch in black and white and a third, larger one in full color. Both of these were approved by Todd, Robertson, Todd. In none was the head of the Leader that of Lenin.