Every word in this book is a footprint of his enormous vocal leaps, footprints he pressed against my ears like someone stepping on wet cement. I have gathered them, heavy, rough, poorly schooled and profound, the footprints of a fat man who doesn’t equivocate. The soles of his shoes had nails but I never saw myself as a rug. I have respected the raging of this centaur ready for a fight, the invectives out of place, his venting, the tremendous guffaw of his irony. Had I suppressed those aspects, ignitions of his nature, I’d be presenting a false Rivera, a Rivera subject to the conventional. That would be a crime against fidelity.
Nor have I had to rearrange the style too much, convinced that the task of an interview is to retain the energy of a conversation. These pages obey the speed of lips, so to speak, with the need to finish before a deadline. Perhaps the paragraphs filling these pages capture eternal moments, sketching his temperament more accurately than careful and overworked treatments.
Many people will like this basic way of presenting Diego Rivera, but others will inevitably feel the words of the artist as a sudden sting, like the hives produced by certain shellfish. I am sure they will feel a need to refuse the violence used, a desire to argue with his notions directly. Unfortunately, Rivera is incapable of replying personally. Only his work remains, and in it, forever shining, is the testimony of his human truth.
AT THE FOOT OF THE FOUNTAIN
What is a painter?
A painter is, just as any artist, the product of the society in which he lives; individually, a being possessing a neuro-glandular system and an ocular apparatus that aids him in his work, agents that are nothing but receptive conductors, transmitting apparatuses for the aspirations, desires and struggles of the masses that intervene in the medium produced.
What is a picture?
A surface, level or not, covered by colors that determine forms and volumes in space.
And what is a color?
A vibration that affects the photoelectric cells of the retina in a particular way and transmits it to the brain, which then passes it to the endocrine-sympathetic system producing repercussions in accordance with the nature of the vibration, and finally exciting glandular secretions.
What is propaganda art?
All art is propaganda. Sometimes its content reveals the kind of message involved. In other cases, it is veiled ingeniously. The Crucifixion by Mathias Grünewald is propaganda for the devout Christian; the lovers of cardinals playing the role of virgins or saints was propaganda to the taste and liking of papal power, or the Still Life by Chardin, showing a slice of bread, a bottle of wine, a plate of food and a knife, was propaganda for the French Revolution, which called bread bread and wine wine, contrary to the chromes of the Rococo period showing the whoring duchesses and the gigolo dandies as nymphs and satyrs. Any battle painting is propaganda in favor of what was lost. Each Venetian painting depicting a moonlit night with a handsome gondolier rowing lovers is propaganda for the whorehouses of this earth. It doesn’t matter how abstract a painting is. From Kandinsky on, to the last of his followers, it has all been propaganda. Those who maintain to be of no party, and who are quick to sell their work to left-wing, center or right-wing buyers, with no problem or inconvenience, practice the most open of propagandas, the most political, the most opportunistic and abject of them.
Should art be political?
Art should be nothing but art, but there is not a single activity, including prayer and love, that isn’t essentially political. It’s not for nothing that Aristotle defined man, with marvelous clarity and precision, as a political animal. In our time the definition gets inverted, but changing the factors doesn’t alter the result.
How is a mural painted?
You choose the wall, or take what is offered without a choice in the matter. You conceive what you are going to paint and, if you are a muralist, you continue the work of the architect, bearing in mind the circumstances that condition the location, objectively and subjectively. If you are not a muralist, you pay no attention to such factors. In both cases, the surface of the wall is covered as if it were the canvas of a picture, producing forms and volumes in space.
What do you seek in a portrait, the anecdote or the concept?
The anecdote helps me fix the attention on a moment in the existence of the subject, and once this is fixed, to reach the plasticity of the concept.
In what part of the face lies the secret of its expression?
The secret depends on the relation of the whole to its parts, and it is precisely the right expression of these relations and their own characteristics that make the portrait the supreme objective of the art of painting, since it becomes the relatively fixed image of a human existence thanks to the work of another human being.
Do you paint what you think or what you see?
I can’t paint without seeing or thinking, therefore I think depending on what I see and paint what I see and think. When previously unseen forms are painted, they have been thought-of beforehand. The plastic characteristics of a painting conceived in that fashion depend on whether they have been seen in the palette or on the canvas. We then modify those forms, quantities, qualities and specific relations according to our sensibilities.
What is cubism?
Cubism is the art of not placing the chamber pot on the dining room table.
And expressionism?
Expressionism can only be defined by German critics prior to the war.
Impressionism?
According to master Manet’s definition, it means to paint the way a bird sings.
How do you feel about the Aztec Codices?
In a passionate way. My drawings resemble the codices the way a prickly pear resembles another prickly pear because they are the fruit of the same Mexican cactus plant.
What was your impression when you got to know the Bonampak murals?
I naively confess that I felt a great emotion and a vague fear when I saw them in photographs and reproductions, especially the battle scene, because it really looked as if I had done them one day when I surely painted better than I do now. Then I laughed at myself since we are mathematically the same and I am just one of the many that painted Bonampak, and who will continue while Mexico is Mexico and we love it with all and each of the cells of our organisms.
Who are the best critics?
Those whose interests are affected vitally by the form and content of a work of art.
How much money do you have?
Generally, the last amount I have been paid and haven’t spent. Frequently, zero pesos, zero cents, because I always have much more I want to spend than money to do it.
If you are an artist of the people, why do you paint the portraits of bourgeois women?
Because there is nothing I love more in this life than a good-looking woman, and fortunately, beauty comes with different characteristics according to social class. If someone accuses me of making circumstantial portraits for tourists, he can go to the devil. Indian themes acquire greater depth for me because I love them the most.
What is man’s origin?
Man’s origin is the first inter-relative function outside space, measurable in earthly energy and matter; we may add that matter is invariably a form of energy. Consequently, the mind, horrified by this obvious