(piano music)
- [Voiceover] We're in The Palace of Fine Arts
in Mexico City, surrounded by enormous murals
by some of the most important mural painters in Mexico,
including Orozco, Siqueiros and Diego Rivera.
- [Voiceover] And the idea behind
the mural painters in Mexico in the 1920s and 30s
was to create a truly public art in the public spaces
of Mexico City and other cities in Mexico.
- [Voiceover] Mural painting can't be moved.
Unlike oil on canvas, it can't be bought
and sold and put in a private home.
And so this is really for the people.
- [Voiceover] This is shortly after the Mexican Revolution,
so this idea of establishing a new republic for Mexico
that would distance it from its dictatorial
and colonial past.
And this particular painting that we're looking at,
"Man, Controller of the Universe," is a true fresco,
that is it's painted directly on the wall with wet plaster.
- [Voiceover] What's really fascinating
is that this is not the first iteration of this painting.
The first painting was commissioned
by John D. Rockefeller Jr. for 30 Rock.
That is the jewel of Rockefeller Center.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. was one of the heirs
to the great standard oil fortune
and undertook major real estate investments
like Rockefeller Center in the middle of Manhattan
in New York City.
Now, Rivera was in the United States.
He had just received a large, one-man exhibition
at the Museum of Modern Art.
And it's important to remember that
John D. Rockefeller's wife, Abby Rockefeller,
was one of the founders of the Museum of Modern Art.
- [Voiceover] And Rivera had already painted murals
in San Francisco, he had painted murals in Detroit.
And so here he is in New York City, in Rockefeller Center.
But that mural doesn't survive.
- [Voiceover] Rivera ran into problems
because he included in the fresco
images of Communist figures.
But, needless to say, Rockefeller was not thrilled
with having Lenin in the lobby
of his centerpiece, Rockefeller Center.
- [Voiceover] No, he's a capitalist.
He's the enemy of Communism.
- [Voiceover] And so he asked Rivera to remove the figures.
Rivera refuses, they come to a stand-off.
- [Voiceover] So the mural was destroyed.
This involved chipping away at the wall itself.
- [Voiceover] Rivera was paid everything
that he was owed and he was locked out.
And then he gets the opportunity
to repaint it here in Mexico City.
- [Voiceover] The original fresco
is called "Man at the Crossroads."
Here in Mexico City, the redone version
is "Man Controller of the Universe."
And I have to say I like that title better.
We have an enormous figure at the center
who looks as though he's operating a giant machine
and he appears in control of the universe.
But this is also the crossroads.
It's clearly a composition which is divided in two
and this idea of which way will the future go
in the early 1930s when this was painted,
that was very much open question.
- [Voiceover] The 1930s was a time of tremendous strife.
You have Fascism rising in Europe,
economic depression around the world,
tremendous unemployment, deprivation
and people looked at capitalism as the cause.
There had been speculation on Wall Street,
there had been the stock market crash,
and people were starving.
- [Voiceover] Could capitalism be replaced
by a system that was more fair,
that didn't just seemingly to the Communist
benefit an elite.
- [Voiceover] And Rivera was very sympathetic to these ideas
and we see this in this mural.
Let's take a close look at it.
The centerpiece, as you said,
is man controller of the universe.
And look at that hand that's holding up
this little orb that reflects in it a control panel.
The man is in the center of a large X
that is constructed out of attenuated ellipses
and in one we see the cosmos, we see the universe.
In the other, we see the microcosm, we see bacteria.
And, in fact, there are two huge lenses
that frame the figure on either side.
Presumably, this is man's ability now
to look at the great reaches of space
and to look at the smallest life.
- [Voiceover] The great things that science has brought us,
our ability to understand the stars and the planets
and the galaxies and our place within that.
And the other great thing science brings us
is that understanding of the microscopic world,
which allows us to cure diseases.
The early 20th century is this moment
of coming to terms with the amazing fruits
of the Industrial Revolution and the Scientific Revolution.
- [Voiceover] At the top left, we clearly see war,
we see soldiers in gas masks, we see a sky filled
with planes and violence and fire.
- [Voiceover] And tanks in the distance.
- [Voiceover] On the right, we see Moscow,
we see Red Square, we see the Communist workers
of the world united.
And then on both left and right,
we see these huge classical figures.
- [Voiceover] Sculptures that seem broken on the left,
perhaps Zeus, who seems to be wielding a thunderbolt.
He wears a cross around his neck,
perhaps suggesting that Christianity
is just as false as ancient pagan religions.
And on the right, the broken sculpture
has the symbol of the Nazis.
But there's this suggestion that
of the old order fading away, the old classical structures
that underpinned Western civilization no longer functioning.
- [Voiceover] And then we have a whole series of portraits.
On the right side, we see Lenin, we see Trotsky.
On the left, we see Darwin, and then,
we see a group of the wealthy,
completely unaware or uncaring of the suffering of the poor.
And, in fact, if you look very closely,
you can see a portrait of John D. Rockefeller Jr.
Diego Rivera places him here in his anger
at the destruction of his earlier artwork.
And it's been pointed out by some art historians
that John D. Rockefeller's head is just at the bottom
of some of the images of the microscopic world.
And some have suggested that the image
just above his head is syphilis.
- [Voiceover] It's interesting to me is that
on both sides we seem to have the promise of
peoples of different ethnic backgrounds coming together.
If you look at the lower left, we see figures
of different ethnic backgrounds being educated.
And on the right, we see Lenin, who's grasping
the hands of people of different colors.
- [Voiceover] When I look at this painting,
what I'm seeing is a man who's looking at
all the chaos of the modern world,
all of the advances, all of the tremendous goods,
and all of the tremendous evils.
And he's trying to systematize it.
He's trying to understand it, he's trying
to organize it in a way that makes sense
in a world that must have felt to so many people
like a top that was wobbling and was about
to spin out of control.
- [Voiceover] We're still very much at these crossroads.
Technology is ever more important in our lives.
What will technology bring us?
A more egalitarian society,
a world where everyone can be educated?
Or will it bring greater inequality?
These are still things debated today.
- [Voiceover] We are still grappling with
the increasing power of the tools that we have built,
the power that technology has given us,
and the choices that we make
in terms of how we wield that power.
(piano music)