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Tamayo versus the Mexican Mural PaintersAuthor(s): Bernard S. MyersSource: College Art Journal, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Winter, 1954), pp. 100-105Published by: College Art Association

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TAMAYO VERSUS THE MEXICANMURAL PAINTERSBernard S. Myers

THE Mexican Revolution in art reached its first climax in the middletwenties, coming to an end for the time being in a conscious reaction againstmural painting during the less-than-Revolutionary Calles period (1924-1934).This intellectual trend was sparked by a literary group, "Los Contem-poraneos," that published the works of European and American writers andpainters and by an artistic group centered in Guadalajara and calling itself"Bohemia."

Although many of these men objected to the "stridency" of MexicanRevolutionary art others, including M&rida, Tamayo, Castellanos, andRodriguez Lozano, had been teachers in the open-air schools in the earlytwenties. Moreover, none of them ever lost sight of his ancient heritage,however they may have been influenced by modern French and other schoolsof painting. In this group, Rufino Tamayo seems to have been the first torevive the interest in easel painting and to advance the idea of paintii g forits own sake.

His first important paintings during the middle twenties were exhibited ata one-man show in Mexico City in 1926-in an empty store on the AvenidaMadero, since there were apparently no galleries at the time. They present ablend of simple everyday themes with contemporary French techniques ofpainting. Fauve still-life arrangements alternate with monumentalized figurepieces that relate him to the general postwar classicism of his contemporaries.These works may be exemplified by a Still-Life (Fig. 1) showing fruit in a dishpainted with reference to Braque but arranged with the symmetry characteristicof fruit displays in the Mexican markets. The artist's intention here and inall his subsequent works is to organize the two-dimensional picture surfacein the manner we have come to recognize as "modern" but with his ownresonant and personal color quality, at that time still comparatively dark.His more classical work of this period can be seen in the monumentalbrooding Self-Portrait of 1931 in the Salo Hale collection.

The authorof "Modern Art in the Making,"has recentlycompleted"MexicanPaintingin Our Time,"from whichthe article on Tamayohas been selected.OxfordUniversityPress will publish he book n the spring.

101

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102 COLLEGE ART JOURNALWhereas the Revolutionary painters consciously refer to the ancient artsof Mexico, Tamayo has tended to depend more on his personal experiences

with handicrafts of today, such as the cleverly distorted Judas figures, made ofpapier miche and painted in brilliant colors. Their elongated bodies andtiny heads, their angular planes seem echoed especially in the latter-day worksof Tamayo.But the difference between Tamayo and the social painters is far moreprofound; it is a basic difference of aesthetic purpose and of the very meaningof art. His belief in absolute values of form and color is expressed in thefollowing words: "It seems to me that to pretend that its [painting's] value isderived from other elements, particularly from ideological content which isnot otherwise related to plastic content, cannot but be considered a fallacywhich can temporarily deceive the unwary, but which Time, ruthless enemyof everything specious, will undertake to refute."It is significant that as early as 1929 Tamayo is hailed by anti-Rev-olutionary critics as the "leader of a new Mexican school of painting" andas symbol of a counter-Revolutionary trend. Critics of this kind feel that theMexican Revolution is a revolution of the middle class and not of the pro-letariat, and that the art direction of Tamayo and his associates represents anacknowledgement of the final stabilization of the movement. For periodicalsdevoted to the interests of the Calles regime and those of foreign capital inMexico, this view is not too suprising. Writers in these journals seem to enjoywhat they call the "failure" of the Syndicate (the trade union of "TechnicalWorkers, Painters and Sculptors") as a sign of the fact that the Revolutionwas misdirected in its earlier phases. They believe, further, that the Mexicanartistic Revolution was no revolution but really "pseudo-communistic" andthat the peasants shown in those paintings are a "cross between MorelosZapatistas and Russian moujiks."

Some Mexican artists have become the favorites of the reactionaries asthey have escaped into the safe paths of linear mysticism or decorative charm.This is scarcely true of Tamayo, however, whose art remains progressive inessence just as his feeling for Mexico and its people is continually expressed inhis own indigenous manner, as well as by constant reference to current ideas.Thus his water-color sketch for a government mural commission that was notexecuted, The Conquest of Mexico (1932), is a poetic and evocative inter-pretation of a scene that had been handled in a much more representational wayby the Riveristas. Here the painter uses for the first time the idea of the colonialcentaur. This theme, later developed by Siqueiros and finally executed byTamayo himself in his Palace of Fine Arts mural in 1952, reflects the


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TAMAYO AND MEXICAN MURAL PAINTERS 103superstitious ear of the Indianswho had never seen horsesand who thoughtof the riderasgrowingoutof the animal.

Justas he gives tremendouspictorialinterestto this theme,Tamayoalsopresents Juarez in 1932 (Ines Amor collection), a Glorification of Zapata(Miguel Covarrubiasollection), Call to Revolution(privatecollection,Mex-ico'City), and two versionsof the Workers'Rhythm,one in the CarrilloGilcollection and another n a privatecollection n the United States-all in 1935.The existenceof these works and similarones is not intended to underline

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Fig. 2. Workers'Rhythm.1935. Coll. Dr. CarilloGil.Tamayo'sactivity n this area,but to show that he does possessRevolutionaryawareness.More important,these paintingsare evidence again of his plastichandling of everydayas well as ordinaryaestheticthemeswithin the Fauve,Cubist,or otherdisciplines.These productsof the thirtiesmarkthe beginningof his first "brightperiod,"in additionto a new feeling for spatialrelation-shipswhich camethrougha directandfirst-time ontactwith originalworksofmodernart,when he took his first show to New York and stayedthere fromlate 1926 to mid-1928. There is a considerablefeeling for backwardandforward movement in pictures of this era, typified by the first Workers'Rhythm (Fig.2) in which the dominant blues and blue-greysare played offagainstthe brownbodies,blacktrees,and effectiveyellow moon in the upperleft-handcorner.

During the thirtiesalso, Tamayoevolves a deeply spatial type of picture


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104 COLLEGE ART JOURNALsuch as theNew York Froma Terrace(Fig. 3) whichconveys he sense of lone-somenessand distance often found in Surrealistpictures,but again with apersonalhandlingof materialor ideas takenfrom outside sources.This workhas its own poeticquality, ike manyothersof the late thirties,thoughwithouttheirfrequentreferences o the Mexicanmilieu in landscape, igures,costumes,etc. Its conceptionof spaceis not entirelythat of the Europeanartist.Herespace,while vast and penetrating-a feeling contributedby the glance, move-ment, and positions of the participants-does not hint at endlessness,but israthera carefullydefinedplasticentity with a beginning and an end, withinwhichTamayo's haractersplaytheirparts.The picturesof this periodalreadyshow the warm but thinly brushed-on

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Fig. 3. New York from a Terrace. 1939. Pierre Matisse Gallery.andsmoothcolorsthatlet themselvesbe absorbednto the fabricof the canvas:light blue, pink, and rose tonalities that give his paintings their Mexicanqualityin spite of generalized hemes.The addedaccentsof yellow, black,orbrown,the subtletransitions rom one intensityto anotherwithin a generallylimited palette, lend Tamayo'swork its peculiarsensitivityand distinction.Whether applied to easel painting in which he was the leading spirit from1926 on, or to mural painting which he has practiced from time to time, heretainsthis subtletyof tone and hue, this delicatebalanceof intensitiesof thesame color. Against the deliberateprimitivismof his forms, these almostim-perceptibleshifts offer an interestingcontrast,a quiet but effective aesthetictension.


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TAMAYO AND MEXICAN MURAL PAINTERS 105However outstanding Tamayo's contribution-and it can be argued thathe is the foremost painter of the Mexican school in the modern sense-the fact

remains that he has been an outside element in the Mexican situation. Becauseof lack of encouragement in his own country where the growing group ofcollectors have concentrated mostly on the work of the "big three" (who havealso been favored in the granting of government commissions), Tamayo finallydecided in 1938 to shift the center of his activities to New York. For the nextdecade and more he spent the major part of each year there and the summersin Mexico.

During the years preceding this decision, there had always been the hopeof accomplishing something. In 1929 he joined Rivera (who had becomedirector of the Academy of San Carlos) in an attempt to improve the teachingmethods there, but the early resignation of the older man under doublepressures from left and right eliminated this activity in 1930. The followingyear Tamayo was appointed to a small Council for the Fine Arts within theMinistry of Education, and in 1932 he became one of the many short-livedchiefs of the Department of Plastic Arts. His attempt to improve art teaching inthe elementary schools was terminated by the end of the Abelardo Rodriguezadministration under Calles. His last act during this period of change was theunfinished series of mural decorations in 1933 for the Conservatory of Musicin Mexico City, of which the gigantesque and somber central figure of Musicis a powerful echo of the precolonial experiences of the painter. Other figuresinclude a nude Intuition, a clothed Intelligence, Humanity, Song, etc.With the new administration of President C.rdenas, the emphasis wasonce again on socially significant ideas and actions. The exiled Revolutionaryartists began to flock back, and there was little hope for Tamayo's kind of artin Mexico-at least for the time being. After a brief stay in New York in 1936,where he had gone as a delegate of the L.E.A.R. (League of RevolutionaryWriters and Artists) together with Siqueiros and Orozco, he decided in 1938to move there more or less permanently. His development during the sub-sequent years and his return to Mexico to become once more part of the move-ment belong to a later phase of Mexican easel and mural painting.


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100 COLLEGE ART JOURNALtravel on any river-rivers are much the same-or on a higher level, theviewer may travel through his own form response arrived at through his ownrecall.I have identified only part of the related clues. The sculpture possessesnothing unknown to any man. I want the viewer to travel by perception thepath I travelled in creating it. The viewer always has the privilege of rejectingit. He can like it, or almost like it. He may feel hostile toward it, if it de-mands more than he is capable of extending. But its understanding can onlycome by affection and visual perception, which were the elements in itsmaking. My own words cannot make it understood and least of all, the wordsof others.

Fig. 1. Still Life. 1929. Coll. Stanley Marcus. --

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