Myth Understood

"The Guarantees" (1928-29), detail

"The politics of 'The Guarantees'—created in 1928–1929, after Rivera’s sojourn in the U.S.S.R., at the Ministry of Education—are nastier than those of The Endowment. While two peasant women sweep away the cadaver of a top-hatted capitalist (along with the hat of a bishop, whose corpse presumably also resides in the rubbish), a superbly rendered soldier (check out the nuanced khaki of his uniform) bayonets another moneymonger, who’s simultaneously bludgeoned by a worker with a hammer of the hammer-and-sickle variety. Meanwhile, the sickle is being used to slit the throat of yet another banker. But even today’s hedge-fund directors who might show up as cultural tourists to gaze upon Rivera’s stunning mural panel would have to appreciate its air-tight composition of rounded forms (heads, shoulders) anchored by long straight lines (the two broom handles, the soldier’s rifle, the framing architecture). Rivera’s talent for the human visage is on display in the superb, doubting face of the woman just to the right of the sweepers: she wears jewelry, but is probably not a member of the hated ruling class. And although she seems to approve of the radical goings-on, she doesn’t appear to be a gung-ho revolutionary, either. Finally, Rivera the colorist gives us two slightly different yellows for the broom whisks—and not merely in the interests of decoration, as they lend a crucial, if subtle, spatial depth to the panel."

Dan Bibb