Abstract
This paper argues that in centering the interior of the earth as crucial to the political goals of the revolution, Diego Rivera contests not only the ownership of subsoil resources, but also capitalist epistemologies of the subsoil and their understanding of the relationship of the subsoil to social and political ecologies. In The Song of the Earth and Those who Till and Liberate It, the liberation of both people and the earth are cast not as linear teleologies with fixed endpoints, but rather as cyclical temporalities of constant renewal. These cycles are depicted not as parallel, but rather as interdependent life cycles of a larger ecology; the resulting deaths of the West wall’s revolution are figured as elemental geneses of the East wall’s cycle of organic life. The Chapingo murals thus reveal an important complexity to Rivera’s revolutionary ideology: a belief in the mutual dependence between environmental sustainability and the equitable distribution and control of resources. Ultimately, these murals reflect the extent to which in post-revolutionary Mexico, the renewability of subsoil resources was not seen as just important to the success of revolutionary goals, but also dependent upon them.
Highlights
Diego Rivera’s bright, 41-part fresco series in the former baroque chapel of Chapingo’s Autonomous University has been called “the Sistine Chapel of the Twentieth Century,” an analogy which draws our attention to the exhaustive, global treatment of the space’s interior, and the abundance of nude, muscular bodies against brightly colored backdrops which evoke its Italian counterpart.[1]
The product of land distribution following the Mexican revolution, the university had only recently been established as an agricultural school when Rivera received the commission in 1924
In a brilliant use of space, and as a nod to the university’s educational purpose, the parallel East and West walls of the chapel show the twin trajectories of political revolution alongside the progression of natural forces of the earth
Summary
Diego Rivera’s bright, 41-part fresco series in the former baroque chapel of Chapingo’s Autonomous University has been called “the Sistine Chapel of the Twentieth Century,” an analogy which draws our attention to the exhaustive, global treatment of the space’s interior, and the abundance of nude, muscular bodies against brightly colored backdrops which evoke its Italian counterpart (fig. 1).[1].
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