(5 of 5)
. This happened with the confluence of modernism, Marxism and nostalgia for the fresco cycles of pre-Hispanic antiquity that turned in the 1920s, under the patronage of Mexico's Minister of Education Jose Vasconcelos, into the mural movement: Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. The special value of this show is that instead of treating these Big Three as isolated characters, it presents a dozen or more other Mexican artists of the time in some depth -- starting with the spectacularly gifted Saturnino Herran, who would certainly be as celebrated today as Rivera himself if he had not died in 1918 at the age of 30, and ending with Rufino Tamayo, who is still alive at 91. Tamayo's paintings, like The Merry Drinker, 1946, are based as much on Mexican popular art with its bright organic colors as on the inspiration of Picasso; broad humor and even a fierce grotesqueness are never far away. And the main body of his work lies within the scale of easel painting, whereas Rivera's does not. Murals, by their nature, cannot be moved around, and so Rivera's coverage in the show hardly does justice to his enormous talent; it is a mere footnote to the big Rivera exhibition seen in the U.S. in 1986. As for Orozco and Siqueiros, their work has suffered the fate of much propaganda art. It tends to look coarse and melodramatic, even on the small scale of the easel painting. One much prefers the fierce, narcissistic and mysteriously sweet images of Frida Kahlo, which anchor the end of the exhibition.
In sum, this show bites off more than it -- or you -- can chew. But it makes you want to go to Mexico, to know this culture better, and on its own terms. As cultural diplomacy, it is a vivid success.