My Art, My Life

by Diego Rivera

  Yet, though aware of their examples, I was slow and timid in translating my inner feelings on canvas. I worked at my paintings in an indifferent, even listless way, lacking the confidence to express myself directly. My work of the period from 1909 through the first half of 1910, though it shows certain superiorities to my Spanish canvases, still looks academic and empty. Today it seems like a collection of masks and disguises to me.

  I have often tried to find an explanation for the incongruity between my understanding of life and my way of responding to it in this period of my painting. Probably the natural timidity of youth was a factor. But more potent, though I was little aware of it then, was my Mexican-American inferiority complex, my awe before historic Europe and its culture.

  I know now that he who hopes to be universal in his art must plant in his own soil. Great art is like a tree which grows in a particular place and has a trunk, leaves, blossoms, boughs, fruit, and roots of its own. The more native art is, the more it belongs to the entire world, because taste is rooted in nature. When art is true, it is one with nature. This is the secret of primitive art and also of the art of the masters—MicheLangeto, Cézanne, Seurat, and Renoir. The secret of my best work is that it is Mexican.

  PRIVATE PROPERTY

  APART FROM ITS MASTERPIECES, I was observing the people of France. One characteristic of the French excited my curiosity—their reverence for private property, and especially of property in land. Their attitude toward land was positively religious; beside it all ordinary human values disappeared.

  The neighborly greeting of one peasant to another was a growl. Yet he would never think of taking one fruit from that other’s tree or one grain from his bin—and not because he was afraid of the owner or of the priest. What he was afraid of was transgressing the holy law of property. That fear produced a ferocious honesty.

  I observed, too, that in the urban industrial workers, the petite bourgeoisie and intellectuals, this same worship of landed property lay just under the surface. Even the maddest, gayest, and richest whores and the most Bohemian of the artists dreamed of retiring to the country and working their own land with their hands. A large part of the upper bourgeoisie, including the corrupt politicians, were touched by this mania to own and cultivate land.

  Only in the very heart of the big industrial centers could people be found who were conscious of a new, more humane way of life.

  These few realized that the factory was changing the earth and would one day pull the peasants out of their ruts and bring an end to class society.

  Unfortunately the mass of lower-class workers in Paris looked upon those of their comrades who revealed any class consciousness as devils or as carriers of some loathsome and contagious leprosy. Time and time again, these wretches found themselves fighting alone, going down under police clubs, and being shipped off to penal settlements like Devil’s Island.

  I remember an incident which occurred but a few weeks after my arrival in Paris, one early morning in a café near the main market.

  Although there was nothing outwardly to distinguish this café from others, it mainly catered to the wealthy. Among its upper-class clientele were certain beautiful kept women who, bored with their “paying lovers,” came here to pick up “heart lovers.” The men they affected were the denizens of the legendary world of painting and literature. That is why I was there with other hungry artists: to find a woman to pay for a meal.

  A worker, whose fatigue showed in every line of his face, came into the café, went up to the bar, asked for a drink, and put down his money. The owner, who was standing behind the bar, would not serve him. On being pointedly ignored, the offended worker quietly asked if it was the rule here not to serve anyone who earned his bread with his hands. The owner signalled to a waiter who served as bouncer. The worker understood the situation at once. He angrily informed the owner that no pimp such as he could treat a worker like this. He invited the owner to come out from behind the bar to find out how a worker’s fists felt on his dirty pig face.

  Though he was bigger and stronger, the owner did not accept the challenge. He made a gesture with his thumb and, as if by magic, two policemen appeared in the café. The owner pointed to the worker, whom one of the cops took by the scruff of his neck to pitch him out. When the worker resisted, the other cop smashed his fist in the worker’s face; then, stepping back a few steps, he drew his pistol.

  Not being equipped to deal with this kind of attack, the worker stopped struggling but cried out, “Voilà la liberté!” (“That’s liberty for you!”)

  Infuriated by the catcalls of the bystanders, the policeman again struck the worker who then shouted, “Et la fraternité!” (“And brotherhood, too!”)

  At this, my friends and I leaped to his aid, precipitating a little battle of the class war.

  NO MORE CÉZANNES

  As I HAVE PREVIOUSLY SAID, I came to Europe as a disciple of Cézanne, whom I had long considered the greatest of the modern masters. I had hoped to study under him, but Cézanne having died before I reached France, the best I could do was look for his paintings. I was still too shy to go where they were mostly to be found, in the homes of private collectors. I, therefore, did my hunting on the Rue Lafitte where the more celebrated dealers in modern paintings had their shops. When I came upon a Cézanne, I would stand rooted before it, studying and enjoying it.

  One day I saw a beautiful Cézanne in the window of Ambroise Vollard, the dealer who, I learned later, had been the first to take an interest in Cézanne. I began looking at the canvas at about eleven o’clock in the morning. At noon Vollard went out to lunch, locking the door of his gallery. Returning about an hour later and finding me still absorbed by the painting in his window, Vollard threw me a fierce glance. From his desk in the shop he looked up, from time to time, and glared at me. I was so shabbily dressed he must have taken me for a burglar.

  Suddenly Vollard got up, took another Cézanne from the middle of the shop and put it in the window in place of the first. After a while, he replaced the second canvas with a third. Then he brought out three more Cézannes in succession. It had now become dark. Vollard turned on the lights in the window and inserted still another Cézanne.

  Though his expression remained glowering, he finally turned on all the lights in the gallery, and with hungry, affectionate gestures, began to remove paintings from the walls and arranged them on the floor where I could see them from the doorway. Among these was the wonderful “Card Players.” I stared enraptured, oblivious of a hard rain which had begun to fall and was now drenching me to the skin.

  Finally, coming to the doorway, Vollard shouted, “ Vous comprenez, je n’en ai plus.” (“You understand, I have no more.”)

  When at last I started to leave, Vollard walked to the door, obviously intending to tell me something. But afraid that he was angry, I hurried away.

  It was late at night when I arrived at my studio, and I was burning with fever. My thermometer read 104°F. The fever continued for the next three days. But it was a marvelous delirium; all the Cézannes kept passing before my eyes in a continuous stream, each one blending with the next. At times I saw exquisite Cézannes which Cézanne had never painted.

  To this day, I feel grateful to Vollard for the gruff benevolence he extended to me that day outside his shop. On my way home I had noticed the time on an illuminated public clock—half past two. Probably no man has ever stood so long as I, admiring masterpieces in the street under a furious rain. But what art dealer has ever kept his shop open so late just to please one poor, fascinated student?

  When Picasso brought Vollard to my studio in Paris in 1915, I told him that I would always be thankful to him and the reason why. Vollard threw up his hands again as he had done then and exclaimed, laughing, “I still have no more!”

  THE SUN WORSHIPPERS OF BRUGES

  THE SUMMER OF 1909 I went to Brussels, where I remained a short while to paint. Here I came upon Maria Gutiérrez Blanchard, a painter friend I had met in Spain. Marí
a was a hunchback, standing little more than four feet from the floor. But atop her deformed body was an extremely beautiful head. Hers were, also, the most wonderful hands I have ever seen. Her physical tragedy was reflected in her works, through which she later became recognized as one of the leading artists of Paris.

  With Maria was a slender blonde young Russian painter, Angeline Belloff: a kind, sensitive, almost unbelievably decent person. Much to her misfortune, Angeline would become my common-law wife two years later.

  From Brussels, together with Maria and Angeline, I went to Bruges to meet an old friend, Enrique Friedman, a Mexican painter of German ancestry. We were an odd-looking pair, Friedman and I, loaded down with our paintboxes, canvases, easels, and other painting gear. The Bruges children ran after us, and when we set up our easels, they crowded around and made such a racket it was impossible for us to work.

  After much discussion, Friedman and I hit upon a complicated but successful solution of this problem. First we applied to the local police for permanent residence permits. A polite and friendly inspector came to call upon us personally with the required application forms, one item of which called for a statement of religious belief.

  When we came to it, I nudged Friedman and asked the inspector, “Is it essential to declare our religion?”

  “Yes, sir,” he replied. “Though the Catholic religion is our official faith, this is a free country, and people may practice whatever religion they wish. We merely ask you to give us that information so that you will be permitted to do so.”

  We responded with an amiable, “ Thank you, sir,” and proceeded to fill the blank with the words “sun worshipper.”

  The inspector showed no surprise. “So, gentlemen,” he said, “as in many of the oldest cultures, I see you worship the necessary astral body and spring of all life on earth. Your religion is much older than Christianity. It will be protected according to the law of our democratic country.”

  To this day, I don’t know whether the inspector was naive or whether, in his sober Flemish way, he had decided to play ball with us. The following sunrise found Friedman and me standing naked before the big window of our chamber, which faced east and also looked out on the fish market where the Bruges housewives gathered early. Being young men, Friedman and I were not bad to look at, and we attracted an appreciative audience. When we came outside later, we found two uniformed men with bicycles waiting for us. The protection of Belgian law was thus being given the visiting sun worshippers, and for a few days, we were able to paint away in peace.

  Then suddenly, we lost our bodyguards. One day all the police of Bruges were sent to the nearby fashionable resort town of Ostend La Magnifique. The Tsar of Russia was expected to arrive there for a brief vacation. The children were immediately upon us—and worse than before. New measures were needed. But what could we do? At last Friedman and I devised another complicated plan based on the fact that Angeline was a Russian.

  Together we went to our landlord and asked him to purchase two Belgian pistols, unofficially and without a police permit. I explained that, as a Mexican, I was an ardent collector of good firearms, especially those of Belgian manufacture. Friedman, I said, also desired a Belgian pistol, because he admired fine workmanship. Since Belgian firearms were world renowned, and nowhere more so than in Mexico, we were particularly eager to get good specimens.

  As I talked on, our big, blond landlord’s big round eyes grew bigger and rounder. Raising his hands in agitation, he asked, “Gentlemen, are you serious about this?”

  In reply I whispered, “I’ll give you one day to get the pistols and a month’s rent in advance.”

  The man’s mouth opened and closed without sounding a word.

  At dinner the same day, however, our friend the police inspector, obviously tipped off by the landlord, paid us a social call. He asked if we’d like to play a friendly game of billiards. Friedman was an expert player, and we accepted the invitation. In the course of the game the local police budget changed hands, the inspector proving to be a third-rate amateur. Or perhaps our questions were too distracting. We asked him about the whereabouts of the Tsar and the police measures being taken to protect him. Our stratagem worked so well that, shortly after, another police inspector arrived and went into an immediate huddle with the landlord. The latter took him down to the wine cellar, where we had chosen to dine on snacks of ham and smoked fish and sample the landlord’s wines. The landlord went upstairs again, but the inspector, pretending to be following him, took up a post where he could overhear us.

  Pretending not to know about this, Friedman called up to the landlord, “Boss, don’t forget. Early tomorrow morning we must have the pistols my friend asked for. Better come down now and let’s have the directions to Ostend. We want to use the side road, not the highway. If you misdirect us or fail to get us the pistols, you won’t be good for much in the future. And if you go and tattle to the police, it will be worse for you!”

  The man answered in a trembling voice, “Believe me, gentlemen, I swear to you that tomorrow the pistols will be here. I swear it by the health of my soul. I’ll also give you the directions you want to Ostend.”

  We then went upstairs. As soon as we appeared, he took out a map and hastily began explaining the routes. When we got up to our room, we exploded in gales of laughter, speculating on what might happen yet.

  At dawn the next day, our house was surrounded by a new variety of police on bicycles, probably the gendarmes of a nearby town. When we went out to paint as usual, the gendarmes stood on all sides. Nobody, not even adults, dared to approach us.

  That night the landlord took us down to his wine cellar and gave us the pistols we had requested. After paying him the sum agreed upon, Friedman said, “We’re going to keep these pistols here in your wine cellar. You will give us one key to the cellar and keep the other. In that way, we’ll know that no one else can gain entry here. If our arms are disturbed, we’ll be sure of the culprit.”

  So it was that, until the Tsar of Russia departed from Ostend, the children of Bruges left us alone.

  BEGGARS IN TOP HATS

  FROM BRUGES we made a voyage to England on a small freighter. We arrived at the mouth of the Thames River at eight o’clock one lovely, fog-free summer morning of 1909. Two hours later, we disembarked on a London dock.

  In London, Angeline and I spent much time together visiting the museums. I especially enjoyed seeing the Turners and Blakes. But I spent many more hours walking around the streets of London which, at every hour, seemed to be a city of the poor.

  At dawn, the homeless and jobless overran the sidewalks to rummage through the garbage. Even these despairing people demonstrated the impeccable good manners of the English. No matter how hungry he appeared to be, I never saw an Englishman dip his hand into the waste can until all the women had had their turns. And every one of His Majesty’s subjects observed the rule that he put his hand into it only once.

  Also in the morning, I would sometimes see a gorgeously uniformed coachman carting away the snoring hulk of some wealthy rake in an ornate carriage, lackey and master both oblivious of their fellow countrymen scrounging for their breakfasts of refuse.

  I sometimes wondered why, on this kind of diet, the people of London didn’t die at a prodigious rate. Then I discovered that there was actually a law, backed up by heavy fines, forbidding the mixing of waste food with any other kinds of waste. In other words, garbage cans were legally recognized as the free cafeterias of the vagrant and the poor.

  I was also struck by the crowds of working-class men and women crossing London Bridge of a morning, dressed in the cast-off clothes of the upper bourgeoisie. It was a pathetic carnival, these wrecks of humanity incongruously adorned in evening gowns, satin shoes, garden-party top hats, and cutaways. The people who wore them did not come by these hand-me-down luxury garments free. They bought them in the second-hand shops where they were cheaper than the shoddy new ready-made clothes designed for ordinary men and women.
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br />   I discovered, too, that English law dealt leniently with pimps and prostitutes, despite the formally rigid attitude of the Anglican Church toward their sinful profession. Necessity outargued the moralists. When night fell over the streets of London, hundreds of young girls, some of them mere children, began the dreary search for a man with a few shillings in his pocket. Along the walls, groups of boys waited for their girl friends to return from the hunt. Of course, in the myopic eyes of the law, these boys weren’t pimps nor were the little girls prostitutes; they were too young.

  For the poor, there were also certain places under bridges and along the river front, where at night, sleeping was permitted. The only provision for payment for these open-air dormitories was this. In the morning, a squad of policemen would arrive. One by one, they would wake up the sleepers, line them up, count them off, and give a broom to the last man in the line. This fellow would have to sweep away the rubbish left by all the occupants of the site. Then the newly arisen were permitted to go.

  I was also an interested spectator of long, silent columns of workingmen demonstrating in the public squares and parks of the city. Under the marble arches at the park entrances, I listened to all kinds of speakers, from Presbyterian ministers to socialists and anarchists. I made a drawing of an orator who had roused dockworkers to go on strike and some sketches of striking workmen in a clash with the police in Trafalgar Square.

  A QUALIFIED SUCCESS

  ON THE WAY BACK TO PARIS, I experienced a siege of homesickness. In the British Museum, I had again come upon my first love in art, the art of pre-Conquest Mexico. I began to realize that, in the heavy atmosphere of European culture, 1 had begun to lose my bearings. Suddenly I telt an overmastering need to see my land and my people.