dieser beitrag wurde verfasst in: englisch (eng/en)
künstler: José Clemente Orozco
titel: Migrations. Human Sacrifices. The Appearance of Quetzalcoatl. Corn Culture. Anglo-America. Hispano-America. Science. Christ Destroys His Cross
jahr: 1932-34
adresse: Baker-Berry Library (reserve corridors), Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
eingetragen von Alex Winiger am 16.03.2016, 10:34 (email senden)
I have been included in what is called the non-relief personnel of the W.P.A. Art Project. My supervisor, Lou Bloch, first assigned me to assist a group of younger painters who are preparing walls for fresco. Before a painter can ever commence working on the actual wall, he must submit a carefully drawn sketch. This is passed on by a jury, usually consisting of the director of the building and officials of the projects.
I spent some time in the psychiatric wards over at Bellevue Hospital. What a three-ring circus that place is! None of the doctors want the hospital walls painted, and they do everything possible to stop the work. But of course they can't because this is a building that belongs to the city.
On the Project at Bellevue there are two Mexicans painting walls: Emilio Amero and Luis Arenal. Arenal got himself in trouble the other day. At the last moment, when he was completing one of his panels, he changed a banana tree to a papaya. This gave the director of the hospital a chance to have the entire wall whitewashed, since Arenal had deviated from his original design.
eingetragen von Alex Winiger am 16.03.2016, 10:34 (email senden)
The doctors didn't want Amero's fresco on their walls, either. He is painting, with great care, two stylized white horses on each side of the doorway. The doctors say these horses don't look like horses to them, and that if their patients see such distorted forms they will never get well.
eingetragen von Alex Winiger am 16.03.2016, 10:34 (email senden)
Ariel Zúñiga está convencido de que el mural que pintó Amero en 1937 para el hospital Bellevue no fue destruido, sino recubierto con cal. Su último mural sobrevive en Norman.
eingetragen von Alex Winiger am 16.03.2016, 10:34 (email senden)
Die von Gudrun Baudisch gestaltete Stuckdecke im grossen Festsaal ist heute unter einer abgehängten Decke verborgen. Wappen, Standarten und Waffen verschiedener Zeiten vom Heer Friedichs des Grossen bis zur Wehrmacht Adolf Hitlers sind in ein geometrisches Muster eingebunden. Das Offizierskasino verfügt über einen rustikalen Bierkeller, dessen ursprüngliche Ausstattung mit Kachelofen, Holzbänken und farbigen Wandbildern noch vorhanden sind. Man sieht Ritter beim Gelage, einen Teufel und im Vorraum die mächtige Gestalt des Königs Gambrinus, des sagenhaften Erfinder des Bieres. Im Flur sind Bauern bei der Ernte und Winzer bei der Weinlese dargestellt. Mehrere Bilder in Putzkratztechnik erzählen die Geschichte von Don Quichotte und Sancho Pansa.
eingetragen von Alex Winiger am 16.03.2016, 10:34 (email senden)
Finally, after waiting some time, we [Ione Robinson and Dorothy Oechsner, the wife of Alfred Oechsner] were taken into a large drafting room. There must have been a hundred archictects bending over their drafting boards. The director spoke excellent English and I was surprised at his knowledge of our country [the USA]. He laughed a great deal about the W.P.A., and said that in Germany there weren't any relief projects; what people did in Germany each day was a permanent thing towards sharing the rebuilding of their country. He said that it was a pity that a country as great as America had no "organisation or definite direction". And then he went on to explain that when an artist was commissioned to paint a mural in Germany, he worked as a co-ordinated unit with the architect. No wall painting was selected by competition; artists were chosen according to their established merits, given a plan of the building, and a knowledge of everything that was to be placed in it — and then they worked together with the craftsmen who were selected to supply the interior furnishings, etc., so that a finished room was a perfect unit.
As we walked through this building and came across the murals, I was surprised that they did not contain some propaganda message. Most of them were purely decorative — each room was furnished with exquisite taste. But in spite of it all, one felt the meaning of everything that represented Nazi Germany. Hitler's face would pop up, lighted dramatically, at the end of a long hallway, or there would be a streamlined eagle fiercely flying across an empty wall. The symbols of the Third Reich were used in telling the story of this new Germany. There were no pictorial "illustrations" on the meaning of National Socialism. I came across many beautifully designed iron gates, and through the scrolls of metal there was always an insignificant but perfectly conceived symbol. As the afternoon wore on, I realized the effect these symbols had on me. One's imagination is set free to improvise by a symbol, one is not caught in a vacuum of looking at another's conception of an idea. This is what happens in a purely pictorial manifestation, when one finds his mind groping to understand what the artist felt. Symbols leave one as free as the moon, sun, or stars. The imaginations can reach almost any height of adoration — or fear!
eingetragen von Alex Winiger am 04.01.2017, 22:25 (email senden)
«Das Wandbild 'Bildnis der Bourgeoisie', 1939 von Siqueiros und einem Kollektiv, dem auch der aus Spanien emigrierte Josep Renau angehörte, im Treppenaufgang des Gebäudes der Elektrikergewerkschaft gemalt, wurde an einigen Stellen von Rissen durchzogen, einige Bereiche lösten sich von der Wand. Es gelang jedoch, das gesamte Wandbild (100 m2) in großer Eile abzunehmen, bevor der stark eingestürzte Bau gesprengt wurde.»