멕시코 벽화운동의 정치적 의미: 리베라, 오로스코, 시케이로스의 비교분석

Abstract

Mexican muralism was hailed as one of major contributions in the history of cultural nationalism in the twentieth century Latin America. Most interpretations of the post-revolutionary muralism stressed the homogenous and monolithic character of the movement. These post factum interpretations, however, conceal the internal contradictions within the movement and fails to identify the multiple visions to "reconquer the past and project the future". Even though the public art of muralism was subsidized by the populist government, visual languages of muralists were differentiated according to their visions of the past and the future. Therefore, it is absurd to portray the movement as a monolithic one.

This study aims to explain the three distinct visions of the "Great Three Artists" through reinterpretation of their mural paintings. It, however, is not intended to be an exhaustive research of their works. Instead, the analysis offered will be helpful to the viewers of mural paintings in understanding the hidden side of cultural nationalism.

The interpretation offered here is that Diego Rivera painted the murals from the perspective of "official history". His populist aesthetics bifurcated the world into the good (the people, indian heritage, labourers, peasants, pre-Columbian world) and the bad (power bloc, the wealthy, the foreign, post-Columbian world etc.). The mural paintings of Orozco tried to portray the post-revolutionary experiences of anti-heros: demagogues, ideological perverts, rich peoples, corrupted politicians, etc. The interpretation of national history in the murals by Siqueiros was influenced by the Third International and orthodox Marxism. His murals presented the world influenced by Marxism: proletariat, financial capital, fascism, etc. But Mexico at that time was predominantly an underdeveloped country of peasants.

This study points out the similarity between the interpretations of the national history and the three different versions of muralism: the version of Diego Rivera with the orthodox interpretation; the version of David Alfaro Siqueiros with the marxist interpretation; the version of Jose Clemente Orozco with the liberal revisionist interpretation.