Examining The Mexican Revolution Through Diego Riveras National Palace Mural

Mexican History, like the history of every nation, is more than a single story whether given in writing or illustration. The Mexican Revolution of 1910 is a vast collection of events contributing to a larger purpose, and these are scars or achievements various in significance depending on how a person interprets them. The article Revolution as Ritual: Diego Rivera’s National Palace Mural by Leonard Folgarait is an evaluation of painter Diego Rivera’s Mural in the National Palace in Mexico City. This mural is made up of three massive walls around a stairway and is a detailed narrative of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Folgarait makes this piece his subject as he investigates how Rivera faces the challenge as an artist and historian rewriting Mexican history as a visual. Folgarait uses a detailed description breaking down the painting in order to tell how the artist must carefully decide his elements and events to include in the mural from a vast selection and how he will use composition and organization to effectively represent a narrative. Also, the author believes that it is the viewer’s role to sort out the visual as historically accurate as possible into a logical verbal story using their own knowledge. His approach of leading readers back and forth from writing to image is most helpful for their understanding of his reasons, but he is not careful with this method.

Leonard Folgarait first writes a detailed description of the Rivera’s panoramic narrative from the right wall, but it is not detailed enough for all readers to follow quickly. He successfully fulfills his aim in the writing of the entire mural to tell the viewers what main figures in the revolution appear. However, Folgarait’s descriptions of locations for subjects and scenes are confusing even after he states the “wall space without a particular order (20),” the mural being so busy that it flattens to look like patterns, and that he will sort out this confusion. One issue is confusion between photos and paragraphs. Some of his pointers for location of figures and scenes are relative to the entire mural, not the given images of the walls corresponding to his writing. In the quote, “This occurs under the central arch above the eagle (21),” the author is locating an eagle in order to help readers find the priest Hidalgo above. His use of the term “central” is misleading because the desired arch is central relative to the three walls making up the whole mural, not to Fig. 4, which is a photo of three arches above the quote and corresponds to the description. The arch he is trying to point out is on the right side instead of the arch centered in this photo. Readers would look at the central arch relative to Fig. 4’s image space and fail to find the subjects that Folgarait is introducing. Moreover, the author adds confusion by giving several descriptions about images distantly placed in the article; it would make more sense for these images to be on the same page or one page away from the writings evaluating them. On page 22, Folgarait talks about Fig. 7, Fig. 8, and Fig. 9, which are two to three pages away. Two other common errors that his descriptions contain are incorrect details, such as poses and carelessness with similar subjects. An example is when he describes a “feather-costumed Indian standing before him [Hernán Cortés].” The author might have made the mistake to say “standing” because there is no obvious feather-costumed person in an upright pose directly in front of Cortés. There is, however, an oddly-dressed figure laying down and holding a weapon over a pile of less visible bodies located right in front of Cortés and his lance’s point. Also, there are masked figures wearing what could be feathers standing behind Cortés. If Folgarait gave more specific details in this description, readers interested in the mural would find subjects easily.

The argument Folgarait brings up about Rivera as an artist is how he is successful as a historian recreating a country’s revolution on a wall. The author observes the difficulty of presenting a narrative in chronological order where viewers follow correctly. He discusses how the composition of different areas can cause the problem of leaving viewers lost in space where he states it is “so loaded with figures and events that it tends to flatten out at first who a mere colored patterning,” like how many words on a page unify and lose singularity. Folgarait believes there is an admirable quality with the evenness of attention of figures and events of the central wall which are that way because they all equally belong to a moment in history behind the Mexican Revolution. The author then brings up the question of where the story would start in Rivera’s mural. This brings up further questioning such as if Rivera was leaning towards having larger composition in an area where the eye would catch sight of first then moving on, beginning the story from left to right across the walls, reading the first known scene then continuing along, or if there is no true start to the narrative at all. Folgarait shares his idea of viewers taking on the role of sorting it out themselves using their own collected information of the revolution prior to seeing it.

Whether Diego Rivera planned out the layout of his entire mural or not, Leonard Folgarait sees the painter as a man very knowledgeable of the events of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Folgarait wants the audience to look at these walls and challenge their knowledge of this historical moment in Mexico too. He helps readers analyze the parts using detailed descriptions and photos of the walls before discussing the whole so that he can show significant figures displayed within the painting and explain the artist’s use of composition and possible strategies of organization. His article has room for improvement, especially with its layout and being more specific with details, to resolve confusion between the given images and the descriptions.