https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n16/julia-bryan-wilson/on-diego-rivera CloseSearch[ ][Submit] More search Options * Advanced search * Search by contributor * Browse our cover archive Browse by Subject * Arts & Culture * Biography & Memoir * History & Classics * Literature & Criticism * Philosophy & Law * Politics & Economics * Psychology & Anthropology * Science & Technology In the latest issue: [] What Remained of Trump David Runciman What a Bear Wants Patricia Lockwood At the Soane Museum: 'The Romance of Ruins' Josephine Quinn Fergie-alike Andrew O'Hagan After Culloden Neal Ascherson At MoMA PS1: Niki de Saint Phalle Lidija Haas Spymasters Charles Glass Strewn with Loot Adewale Maja-Pearce At the Movies: Bette Davis Michael Wood The Real Fernando Pessoa Colm Toibin Short Cuts: Found Objects Tom Crewe 'Checkout 19' Clair Wills Bowenology David Trotter Serious Doper Jon Day Cassiodorus Michael Kulikowski Poem: 'Moth Orchid' Ange Mlinko One French City Lydia Davis Diary: A Free Speech Agenda Sophie Smith On Diego RiveraJulia Bryan-Wilson Share on TwitterShare on FacebookEmailPrintSearch Close Close AcceptClose Close * + My Account* + Sign out + Sign in * Home * The Paper + Latest Issue + Archive + Contributors + About the LRB * Subjects + Arts & Culture + Biography & Memoir + History & Classics + Literature & Criticism + Philosophy & Law + Politics & Economics + Psychology & Anthropology + Science & Technology * Blog * Podcasts & Videos * Events * Shop + Bookshop + Cake Shop + LRB Store * Subscribe CloseSearch[ ][Submit] More search Options * Search by contributor * Browse our cover archive Browse by Subject * Arts & Culture * Biography & Memoir * History & Classics * Literature & Criticism * Philosophy & Law * Politics & Economics * Psychology & Anthropology * Science & Technology Vol. 43 No. 16 * 12 August 2021 On Diego Rivera Julia Bryan-Wilson Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on WhatsAppEmailPrint 301 words [] [] Diego Rivera's The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on this Continent was painted in front of an audience at the Golden Gate International Exposition, on San Francisco's Treasure Island, during the summer of 1940. It was Rivera's last mural in the US and remains one of his most complicated achievements - both a celebration of cultural exchange and a condemnation of what Frida Kahlo called 'Gringolandia'. It measures 22 feet high and 74 feet wide and weighs almost three tonnes. On the left-hand side Rivera depicted pre-contact Indigenous technologies such as carving and weaving; on the right are the mechanical inventions that had shaped life north of the border - telegrams, tractors, railways. The welter of detail includes distinctive local landscapes and historical figures, including Simon Bolivar and John Brown, making cameos alongside Hitler and Charlie Chaplin. The fresco was recently moved with great care several miles across town to SFMoMA. It will undergo conservation over the next two years while its usual home, the City College of San Francisco (represented by the diver), is renovated. Commanding the lower gallery, it can be seen from the street and by anyone who walks into the museum. At its centre is Coatlicue, the Aztec goddess who gave birth to the moon and the stars. Her figure has been grafted with metal machinery. Is she a harbinger of progress or a melancholy acknowledgement of erased Native spiritualities? Though billed as an optimistic vision of 'Pan American Unity', Rivera's mural has an ominous quality: we can see evidence of imperialism, fascism, the extraction of natural resources. Eighty years on, San Francisco is in the grip of the tech industry, and the rate of destruction in the Americas - natural and cultural - has yet to slow down. Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on WhatsAppEmailPrintLetters Send Letters To: The Editor London Review of Books, 28 Little Russell Street London, WC1A 2HN letters@lrb.co.uk Please include name, address, and a telephone number. Julia Bryan-Wilson --------------------------------------------------------------------- Julia Bryan-Wilson is the director of the Berkeley Arts Research Centre. 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