Teotihuacán II: The Shape of Space and Time

Introduction: This is not the blog I set out to write. The blog about the Temple of Quetzalcóatl is next, I promise. As sometimes happens, the subject matter took over the writing of this post, which is not all bad. For us raised in the West, space and time are two separate and distinct phenomena. 

But the Mesoamerican concept of space and time is completely different. For them, space and time are understood to be a single, unitary entity. This notion is so alien to our mental habits that it's difficult for us to comprehend. But it's worth expending the mental effort because this concept rests at the heart of Mesoamerican culture, religion, politics and civic life. The consistency of its appearance throughout the region is, in fact, one of the features that distinguishes Mesoamerican culture. So, here goes...

Standing atop the massive wall—la gran plataforma—looking down at the plaza, I heard the voice of the sage,

"Teotihuacán was not only a container of religious symbolism, it was itself a religious symbol."

I reflected on what had been in the minds of Teotihuacán's first planners and architects. Jenny's first post Teotihuacán I: 'Where the Gods are Made' introduced the 'What' of Teotihuacán—the city's grid pattern and the construction of the Pyramid of the Moon and the Sun. But that post doesn't really explore the 'Why' of the place.

Looking south on Avenue of the Dead
toward the Pyramid of the Sun

Jenny's post Mesoamerican God-Kings as City Planners—written after our visits to archaeological sites in Chiapas, including Palenque and Toniná—gives important background information. But Palenque flourished in the seventh century; Toniná in the sixth to ninth centuries, while Teotihuacán was at its height in the sixth century—a hundred years before Palenque and five hundred years before Toniná.

Along with Monte Albán—built by the Zapotecs in Oaxaca at roughly the same time as Teotihuacán—Teotihuacán is among the first religious-political-ceremonial centers to arise in Mesoamerica.

There is a monumental difference between the two centers. Teotihuacán stands alone as the first capital in Mesoamerica. During its second phase in the third century, Teotihuacán's population numbered about 30,000. At its height in 500 CE, the city's population reached at least 100,000—and some experts estimate the population to have reached as high as 200,000.

So I find myself returning to the question,

"What was in the minds of Teotihuacán's first planners and architects?"

Teotihuacán as Metaphor

Archaeological excavations suggests that Teotihuacán's planners and architects set out to build a city in the image of their cosmology—their view of the universe. In this sense, Teotihuacán is a city based on metaphor. Shakespeare comes to mind, "All the world's a stage."

Verbal metaphors of Teotihuacán come from the later Aztecs, "City of Gods," or even more accurately, "City Where Men are Made Gods."

The metaphors employed at Teotihuacán are images that, usually used to designate one thing, are applied to other realities. The comparison between the two is implicit. The Teotihuacanos understood this visual-spatial language, but we outsiders—and at Teotihuacán, we are all outsiders—have to struggle to achieve even limited understanding.

The Teotihuacanos lived and breathed the visual metaphors that embraced them—in the murals that lined the Avenue of the Dead, faced the Pyramids and covered the walls of their palacios (residential complexes). Most of all, they physically walked through the spatial metaphor that comprised Teotihuacán's physical structure.

The Shape of Space and Time

In the Mesoamerican cosmovision or worldview, space and time are represented by the quincunx—a symbol whose variations are ubiquitous throughout Mesoamerica, seen not only in the images found at Mesoamerican archaeological sites, including Monte Albán (Zapotecs), Palenque (Maya), the Mixtec calendar, Aztec calendar, but throughout contemporary Mexico as well. Once you become familiar with the pattern, you'll be surprised to see it everywhere!

The quincunx (Figure 1) depicts the 52-year calendrical cycle marked by celebration of Nuevo Fuego (New Fire). The belief was that the world was in danger of ending. To forestall this event, all fires were extinguished, and a single New Fire was ritually lit at the temple atop Cerro de la Estrella (Hill of the Star).  Priests lit tapers from the New Fire, and runners carried them to all the pueblos. The different colors represent the four 13-year components that define the 52-year cycle.

Figure 1: We came upon this diagram using the quincunx at the Cerro de la Estrella (Hill of the Star) archaeological site in Mexico City. The red circle in the center is the axis mundi, which represents the center of the universe. 

A quincunx is formed by the arrangement of five points inside a square. Variations on this basic pattern are practically endless. I even found it recommended as the preferred pattern for planting fruit trees in an orchard!

I tried to find a digital image of the Teotihuacán four-petal flower with its center point, but initial Internet searches yielded nothing. The four-leaf clover actually comes close:

Figure 2: Teotihuacán's four-petal flower sign with its center circle is remarkable similar to this four-leaf clover, whose stem forms the fifth point. 

Update: Reed and I recently spent a few days in the colonial city of Puebla, about an hour outside of Mexico City. The hotel where we stayed is a restored sixteenth century convent. I blinked in disbelief when we found nestled in the space made where two arches connect—this colonial rendition of Teotihuacán's four-petal flower symbol!

The four-petal flower symbol is prominent in this remnant of the original, 16th c. fresco. Its similarity to the four-leaf clover is quite remarkable!

A cross with arms of equal length forms this quincunx.

Figure 3: The end points of the quincunx's two arms represent the four cardinal directions. The circle at the center point represents the axis mundi (World Axis), sometimes referred to as the world navel.

Hold on to your hat! The solar diagram below shows how the Teotihuacanos and those who followed them

"...understood space and time as manifestations of a cosmic order underlying all reality, an order that expressed itself in space and time but was itself beyond space and time."

Figure 4:The Shape of Space and Time(Adapted from R.H. and P.T. Markman, Masks of the Spirit, p. 121). 

• Time: The diagram depicts time as the daily path of the Sun (Yellow Vertical Ellipse) through space. Rising in the East (Red Line), the Sun passes its Zenith as it moves across the Heavens before descending, at sunset in the West (Black Line), to travel through the Underworld passing its Nadir before rising again in the East. Teotihuacán's astronomers also tracked the Sun's monthly and annual paths, which were elaborated on complex and remarkably accurate calendrical systems.

• World Axis: The Blue Line connecting the Sun's highest (zenith) and lowest (nadir) points is the axis mundi (World Axis). The intersection of the axis mundi with the East-West line locates the center, which is the point—symbolically the world center—around which the Sun revolves.

• Space: The diagram depicts space as a rectangle (outlined by dashed line), or by the Green Horizontal Elipse. In any event, these horizontal shapes represent the plane that is the World of Humans.

According to experts, the Mesoamerican mental image of earthly space was of a landmass that was square, circular or four-lobed, "resembling our four-leafed clover," as one expert phrased it.

This landmass was conceived as a crocodilian or toad-like monster floating in water that merged with the sky at the horizons, thus enclosing the earth in an "envelope" of spirit represented by the water underneath [Underworld accessed through caves, streams, wells, etc.] and the sky above [Heavens accessed from mountaintops and pyramids].

Aerial View: Pyramid of the Sun

Take a look at this aerial view of Pyramid of the Sun (Click Google Map). Seen from directly above, the pyramid forms a quincunx. The staircase in the middle of the west facade is the west 'point' of the quincunx; barely visible are staircases in the middle of the east-north-south facades.

The central axis—axis mundi (fifth point of the quincunx)—is defined by the pyramid's highest and lowest points:

• Its highest point is the top of the pyramid (visible  on Google Map at the center of the pyramid); a temple constructed at the top gave priests ritual access to the Heavens;  
• Its lowest point is an ancient cave above which the pyramid was constructed; the cave gave priests ritual access to the Underworld below;
• The line that connects the cave below to the pyramid's highest point is the axis mundi. 

Axis Mundi Links Heavens, Earth, Underworld

Is your head spinning?  Mine, too.  But hang on.  Remember Mircea Eliade, the 1960's spiritual scholar and hippie guru? He observed that the line connecting the highest and lowest points is a familiar feature of any shamanistic religion.

This central axis of the universe

"...is conceived as having three levels—sky [heavens], earth, underworld—three great cosmic regions that can be traveled because they are linked by this central axis."

The point at which this axis penetrates the earthly plane (center point of the quincunx) provides

...an "opening,"a "hole"; it is through this hole that the gods descend to earth [from the Heavens] and the dead [travel] to the [Underworld]; it is through the same hole that the soul of the shaman [priest] in ecstasy can fly up or down in the course of his celestial or infernal journeys. . . .  Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1964. 

It is widely accepted that Teotihuacán's priests were following in the footsteps of earlier shamans in mediating between this world and the world of the spirit. The rites and practices at Teotihuacán and, later, throughout all of Mesoamerica, were undertaken by rulers regarded as god-kings.

As embodiments of the gods, priest-kings ascended sacred staircases to temples built near the Heavens and descended the pyramid's subterranean stairways and tunnels to sacred caves. In these temples, the god-kings performed rites to assure harmony between the realm of the spirit and the world of man.

Thus the line that connects Sunrise in the East (Red) and Sunset in the West (Black) on the solar diagram 'shapes' and defines the earth's surface and the time-frame of man's life and death, as represented by the Sun's daily rising and setting.

The cross created by the intersection of these two lines (Zenith-Nadir; East-West) forms a vertical quincunx. It was this worldview that Teotihuacán's planners and architects had in mind when they designed their city. Their intent was to create an earthly image of the cosmos as depicted by the quincunx.

Summary 

What is even more amazing as we look back from the vantage point of some two thousand years, is that later ceremonial centers throughout Mesoamerica laid out their cities following Teotihuacán's urban plan. Some experts speculate that their imitation reflects Teotihuacán's economic, political and military hegemony, but others say that the imitation rose from a desire to create on the earthly plane an image of the cosmos itself—an imago mundi (World Image).

Memorably, the Markmans have written about the grid design employed widely in Mesoamerican ceremonial centers. The grid design, they write, laid out the on the earthly terrain

"...five points of the quincunx that symbolized the earth and the cosmos, life and motion, and the endless cyclic whirling of time."

Related Posts

• Teotihuacán I: 'Where the Gods are Made' (Pyramids of the Moon and Sun, Avenue of the Dead);
• Teotihuacán III: Seat of Political-Religious Power;
• Teotihuacán IV: Temple of Quetzalcoatl (The Plumed Serpent);
• Teotihuacán V: Residential Palaces and Mural Art.

Still Curious?

Here is another example of the quincunx at Teotihuacán:

Fertility Goddess, Mural at Tetitla Palace, Teotihuacán.

The face of the goddess is portrayed between her outstretched hands; she has three layers of 'necklaces'. The green jade (symbol of life) necklace and ear plugs next to her face; the next layer has an undulating pattern, probably a serpent (fertility symbol); the third layer shows five squared, evenly spaced objects—the center object is presented as a diamond—within each squared object appear five dots in the pattern of the quincunx. (Click to expand)

Here are quincunx's from other contexts:

Spanish Colonial fountain, exConvento Churubusco, Coyoacán, Mexico City. Shaped in the pattern of the quincunx, the four points (corners) represent the cardinal directions; the fountain in the center is the axis mundi.  Reed had the nagging idea that the design of this fountain went back to the Moors, and he was right! See fountain below.

A similar, four-pointed fountain of Persian design in the Garden of the Sultana, Generalife ("Architect's Garden"), Granada, Spain (Photo Courtesy of Wikipedia). The Moors brought this Persian design with them to Spain. Given the ubiquity of the design worldwide, Carl Jung might opine that the pattern is a world archetype.  

Here's yet another pattern of the quincunx:

Pattern of the quincunx appears as symbol in alchemy. 

Perhaps Jung is correct!

For the Irish, Four-Leaf Clovers symbolize Faith, Love, Hope and Luck.

Teotihuacán I: 'City Where the Gods are Made'

A few weeks ago, we decided to revisit Teotihuacán, the archaeological site about an hour by bus (40 km/30 miles) northeast of Mexico City. Nearly twenty years ago when we first visited, Reed exclaimed, "Now I know why the word monumental was coined!"

From the massive stone wall that borders one side of the Avenue, Reed shot this video (19 sec) of the Avenue of the Dead (Calzada de los Muertos) to convey the monumentality that is Teotihuacán.

The short begins with a pan of the ceremonial courtyard (lined with temple bases) in front of the Pyramid of the Moon (Pirámide de la Luna), followed by a long shot down the Avenue of the Dead, also lined by the bases of temples that have long-since yielded to the ravages of time and winds up with a shot of the Pyramid of the Sun (Pirámide del Sol).

Site map of Teotihuacán's major landmarks (Click to Enlarge): 

• Avenue of the Dead is 4 km (1.2 mile) road on north-south axis;
• Pyramid of the Moon is dark blue rectangle at top;
• Pyramid of the Sun is light blue square at right;
• Ciudadela is yellow square at bottom;
• San Juan River (arrow indicates light blue) runs beside Avenue on east-west axis. 

Now's a good time to mention that Teotihuacan's ceremonial spaces are enclosed by massive stone walls, which means that one literally enters into them. Access to the Avenue of the Dead, for example, means climbing stairs to the top of a stone wall, walking across the wall's width, then descending down to the Avenue, where the space surrounds today's visitor just as it surrounded Teotihuacanos two thousand years ago.  Talk about a managed environment!

Who were the Teotihuacanos?

The ethnic origin of the people who constructed Teotihuacán on the northeast shore of Lake Texcoco is not known. Likely candidates are the totonacos (Veracruz state), the nahuas (northern Mexico; southwest U.S.) and the otomí (Hidalgo, México y Querétaro states).

Nor do we know what the Teotihuacanos called themselves. Six hundred years after Teotihuacán was abandoned, the Aztecs named the ruins, "Lugar donde fueron hechos los dioses" (Place Where the Gods Were Made) or "Ciudad de los dioses" ("City of the Gods"). The Aztecs revered Teotihuacán as the Place of Origins, even claiming in their own sacred history that the Fifth Sun, the Aztec Era, was born out of sacred fire at Teotihuacán.  (For more about the Aztec Creation Myth, see Jenny's Aztec Stone of the Five Suns)

Teotihuacán received a gradual influx of population from Cuicuilco which was, from about 800 BCE, the leading political, cultural and economic center in the Valley of Mexico. This migration likely increased as Cuicuilco's nearby volcano, Xitle, became progressively more active. When Xitle finally erupted in the first century CE, its lava flow buried Cuicuilco—causing the city's remaining inhabitants to flee in panic. (For more, see Jenny's Cuicuilco, Volcanoes and the Fragility of Life in Mesoamerica.)

Excavation of the barrio zapoteco (Zapotec neighborhood; people from Monte Albán in present-day Oaxaca) has identified objects originating from the Gulf Coast (Olmecs in Veracruz) and the Yucatán (Maya). Based on these findings, the current hypothesis is that Teotihuacán was a cosmopolitan urban center which, at its height, was also inhabited by ethnically-diverse groups from various regions of Mesoamerica.

How did Teotihuacán come to be?

Teotihuacán's founders took care to locate their settlement where the soil would produce high crop yields. The city's location enabled it to exploit key natural resources—obsidian from the north, products taken from Lake Texcoco, water from nearby springs, and control of commercial routes between the Valley of Mexico and the Gulf Coast.

Surely the Cuicuilcas had these factors in mind as they continued their migration to Teotihuacán.  But the Cuicuilcas did not arrive empty-handed—they brought with them a complex, centralized social organization that over time served to strengthen the social and economic structure of Teotihuacán.

Taken together, these forces set the stage for the urban project known as Teotihuacán. Over time, its monumental magnificence, precise spatial order, exuberant craft and market systems, and sacred prestige helped make this city the center of an expanding, pulsating empire. Teotihuacán was the first true capital in central Mexico, where a fully integrated, rich, and well-fed society operated under the authority of supernatural forces.

How did Teotihuacán develop?

At the time of Xitle's eruption, Teotihuacán had only about 5,000 inhabitants. At its apogee around 500 CE, the city's population is estimated to have exceeded 100,000—perhaps reaching as many as 200,000.

Teotihuacán's growth from 100-150 CE was fueled by migrants from all over the Valley of Mexico, and these migrants were promptly put to work! During this time period, the city's urban plan was drawn up and key cultural characteristics emerged. Teotihuacán developed as a theocratic, hierarchically stratified city, just as Cuicuilco had once been.

Teotihuacán's planners and architects intentionally laid out the city as a four-part image of the cosmos. Mexican-American professor of religion at Harvard Divinity School, David Carrasco narrates,

"This greatest of Classic cities, with its immense towering pyramids of the sun and moon, elaborate ceremonial courtyards, and residential palaces...originated underground at the mouth of a well. Recent excavations show that directly under the Pyramid of the Sun lie the remains of an ancient tunnel and shrine area, which was an early, if not original, sacred center for ritual and...pilgrimages."

Carrasco continues,

"Throughout Mesoamerican history caves are valued as the place of origins of ancestral peoples and the openings to the powers and gods of the underworld. Like the city that was to spread out above it, this cave was artificially reshaped and decorated into the form of a four-petaled flower representing the division of space into four cardinal regions around a center. It is possible that the cave was Teotihuacán's earliest imago mundi, or sacred image of the cosmos."  [Emphasis added]

The planners' intent was to recreate the imago mundi by dividing the terrain of Teotihuacán into four quadrants, which they achieved by defining an urban grid organized by two main avenues: Avenue of the Dead (North-South axis) aligns with geographic north, as determined by the sun's path. The intersecting East-West Avenue was defined by the San Juan River, whose course the planner's diverted to conform to their desired southeast orientation!

These two avenues divided the city into four huge quadrants within which hundreds of residential, ritual, and craft buildings were constructed.

Avenue of the Dead, looking north to the Pyramid of the Moon on a sunny day. The  Pyramid of the Moon, fronted by a huge ceremonial courtyard, forms the Avenue's north boundary. Experts suggest that the pyramid may have been built to mimic the extinct volcano visible behind the pyramid. Structures lining the Avenue are the bases of temples destroyed over time. 

Pyramid of the Moon

During this phase, the first stage of the Pyramid of the Moon was completed, and the large ceremonial courtyard in front of the Pyramid—with its own temples—was planned.

Pyramid of the Moon seen from across its ceremonial courtyard.

This photo was taken  from atop the same wall where the video was shot. 

Ceremonial Courtyard lined with temple bases; photo taken from second level of Pyramid of the Moon, looking south on the Avenue of the Dead. If you look carefully, you can see people standing on three levels: 1) One level  below the camera; 2) On the platform in front of the pyramid; 3) At the level of the courtyard and Avenue of the Dead. 

Most of what remains of the pyramids and temples is stone, but that isn't how Teotihuacanos experienced their city. Pyramids and temples were covered with colored murals relating mythic activities of the gods.

Teotihuacán expert, René Millon, comments,

"[The Avenue of the Dead was intended to] overwhelm the viewer, to impress upon him the power and the glory of the gods of Teotihuacán and their earthly representatives."

Mural of puma or mountain lion in its original location gives an idea of what the Avenue of the Dead looked like to those who entered into its space. The alternating red, white and green waves symbolize an aquatic setting. 

This next mural has been restored. I don't know where it was originally located, but I'm using it to show the richness of the colors. It's hard for me to imagine what it was like to walk down the Avenue of the Dead in its heyday, but it must have been a breath-taking experience. 

Mural with Feathered Serpent and Flowering Trees in red, green, blue and yellow. The trees' green roots are in the symbol of ollin, which stands for the Life-Force.From Harald J Wagner Collection, DeYoung Museum, San Francisco.

I have to admit: it's also difficult for me to imagine the veritable army of artisans who must have worked continuously to create and maintain these murals.  But labor they did, and fragments such as this one tease us about the magnificence that was Teotihuacán's Avenue of the Dead.

Pyramid of the Sun

During this same 150-year period, the entire Pyramid of the Sun was built in one herculean effort. When completed, this pyramid built above the sacred cave served as the city center. Recalling the Mesoamerican Sacred Tree—whose roots reach down to the inframundo (Underworld) and whose branches support the Heavens above—makes it easier for us to sense what the pyramid meant to the Teotihuacanos.

At Teotihuacán, the Pyramid of the Sun gave form to the axis mundi (world axis). Priests gained access to the Underworld by descending to the sacred cave below the pyramid. Similarly, priests gained access to the gods who resided in the Heavens by ascending the pyramid's stairs to the temple (now gone) of the gods...to the Heavens. Some experts compare this priestly role to the earlier role of the shaman in northern cultures.

To convey the experience of having the monumental Pyramid of the Sun gradually come into view as one enters its sacred ('set apart') space, Reed shot this video (14 sec) as he mounted the stairs of the stone wall surrounding the plaza in front of the pyramid.

Note the width of the stone wall and its height above the level of the plaza. Anyone occupying this space can have absolutely no doubt about where he/she is located! (For more, see comments about Monte Albán in Jenny's Travel Journal: Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco)

Pirámide del Sol (Pyramid of the Sun)

from the level of its plaza (ceremonial courtyard). 

The Pyramid of the Sun, then, represented the primordial mountain from which came water (well in the sacred cave below the pyramid), the essential resource that assured life through bountiful corn harvests. The pyramid was also connected to an astronomical event that was linked, in turn, to the agricultural cycle. 

Pirámide del Sol (Pyramid of the Sun).
At 738 ft (225 m) across and 246 ft (75 m) high,
the pyramid is the third largest in the world.  

The Great Stairway of the Pyramid of the Sun faces a westerly point on the horizon where the Pleides constellation appears directly in front of it. In late May, before sunrise on the day the sun passes its zenith, the Pleides makes its first annual appearance above the horizon at Teotihuacán.

There's no way for us to know for sure, but it is likely that this stellar event signaled the elites to begin organizing the people to prepare for the new agricultural season. It also provides a useful example of how the Mesoamerican cosmovision regarded time (planting season) and space (pyramid situated to face the appearance of Pleides) as constituting a single essential reality.

Turning again to David Carrasco,

"[Teotihuacán] was not only a container of religious symbolism, it was itself a religious symbol." [Emphasis added]

Even today, this ancient site retains enormous numinous power.

Related Posts

• Teotihuacán II:  The Shape of Space and Time
• Teotihuacán III:  Seat of Political-Religious Power
• Teotihuacán IV: Temple of Quetzalcoatl (The Plumed Serpent)
• Teotihuacán V:  Residential Palaces and Mural Art

Still Curious?

Reed's First Picassa Photo Album of Teotihuacán: From the Monumental to the Miniature

The DeYoung Museum, San Francisco, CA; Harald J. Wagner Collection has the largest collection of murals from Teotihuacán outside Mexico.  Link: http://deyoung.famsf.org/deyoung/collections/harald-wagner-collection-teotihuacan-murals

Excellent, if somewhat dated, photos of Teotihuacán (Text is in Spanish):  http://charrowrc.tripod.com/id19.html

Diego Rivera: European Apprenticeship & Mexican Homecoming

In 1907, at age 21, Diego's paintings caught the eye of the governor of the state of Veracruz, who awarded him a traveling scholarship. The award enabled him to travel to Europe. For the first two years, he studied with Eduardo Chicharro in Madrid, Spain. From Spain he moved on to Paris, to live and work with the great gathering of artists in Montparnasse, including Modigliani.

View of Toledo, Diego Rivera, 1912 -  Cubist elements are evident even before the artist moved to Paris.

Diego returned to Mexico only once for a brief visit in 1910, just before the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution that lasted for the next decade and whose violence devastated the country. Diego spent the years of the Mexican Revolution in Paris studying and working—and occasionally showing his work. 

Amedeo Modigliani's portrait of Diego Rivera (1914).

In those years, Paris was witnessing the beginning of cubism in the paintings of such eminent painters as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. From 1913 to 1917, Rivera enthusiastically embraced the Cubist school of art.

Paisaje zapatista. El guerrillero (Zapatista Country: Guerrilla Fighter), Diego Rivera, 1915.

But in 1917, Rivera shifted toward Post-Impressionism—inspired by Paul Cézanne's paintings and attracted by the simple forms and large patches of vivid colors. His paintings began to attract attention, and he was given even more opportunities to show his work.

Still Life, Diego Rivera, 1918. The style reflects the influence of Rousseau and Cezanne. 

The Outskirts of Paris, Diego Rivera, 1918 -- In the Post-Impressionist style of Rousseau and Cezanne. 

In 1920, at the urging of Alberto J. Pani, Mexican ambassador to France, Diego spent time in Italy studying the work of the Renaissance fresco masters, including Giotto, Uccello, Piero della Francesca, Mantegna and Michelangelo.  

Viewing their masterpieces first-hand had a profound impact on Rivera's artistic sensibility—leading him to integrate his two main passions: the Post-Impressionist use of simple shapes and vibrant colors to represent realist subjects, and the application of paint to walls to create textured frescoes. In Italy, Diego laid down the artistic foundation for what would become the Mexican Mural Renaissance (described below). 

Mesoamerican Influences

But Rivera didn't limit his study to the European tradition. To ground his art in Mexico's history, Rivera studied Mesoamerican painting and portraiture—very likely before he left for Europe at age 21. I haven't been able to find objective confirmation of my intuitive sense that Diego's friend and mentor, the engraver-illustrator-political cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada might have suggested this direction to Diego, but it is difficult to ignore Posada's probable role.

An earlier post on Jenny's Blog discusses José Posada's work and its influence on the young Diego. Meanwhile, the fact remains that over his lifetime Diego collected thousands of precolumbian artifacts now housed at his Anahuacalli Museum in Coyoacán, Mexico City. 

Rivera's murals have a specific and unmistakable Mesoamerican feel for geometric shapes and use of colors. From Maya stele (stone columns on which were sculpted glyphs that recorded a ruler's deeds), Rivera acquired the powerful, yet challenging idea that a mural should tell a story rather than simply present an image—a concept strongly reinforced by Posada's body of work. 

Mexico's Revolution Winds Down  

With the election in 1920 of Álvaro Obregón Salido as president of the Second Republic of Mexico, the violence associated with the Mexican Revolution finally came to an end.

President Obregón appointed José Vasconcelos as Secretary of Public Education. Trained as an attorney, Vasconcelos was also an educator, writer, philosopher and politician who was serving as president of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) prior to his appointment as Secretary. Quite naturally, Vasconcelos promoted academic freedom and freedom of thought.

But Vasconcelos also championed an educated citizenry. In pursuit of this goal, he undertook a major public education effort that included construction of over 1,000 rural schools and almost 2,000 public libraries across the country. Above all, Vasconcelos reaffirmed traditional cultural, ethical and aesthetic values as constituting the essential foundation for the emergence of Latin America as a social and political reality.

Mexican Muralism, or Mexican Mural Renaissance

It was in this political and social context that Secretary Vasconcelos and President Obregón supported development of the art movement known today as Mexican Muralism, or the Mexican Mural Renaissance—a designation that recognizes the Mesoamerican roots of the movement.

Through Ambassador Pani, Diego was in contact with José Vasconcelos. In 1921 both men encouraged Diego to return to Mexico to apply his artistic skills in service to his country.

The Mural Movement was dominated by los tres grandes (the three great ones): Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco. These artists helped to forge a new national cultural consciousness, or mexicanidad (Mexican-ness). To support their work, the government established a program of commissions for a large number of murals.

The overriding idea was that art ought to be accessible to all, and that each artist must contribute to glorifying the people's strengths and building a more egalitarian future. To this end, the painter Siqueiros wrote, "We condemn so-called easel painting and all the art produced by ultra-intellectual circles on the grounds that it is aristocratic, and we glorify the expression of monumental Art because it is public property." 

Diego Rivera: First Murals in Mexico

When Diego Rivera returned to Mexico in 1921, he was thirty-five years old. For one of his numerous autobiographies, "My Art, My Life" (1960), co-written in English with Gladys March, Diego reminisced:  

"My homecoming produced an aesthetic exhilaration which it is impossible to describe. It was as if I were being born anew, born in a new world... I was in the very center of the plastic world, where forms and colors existed in absolute purity. In everything I saw a potential masterpiece—the crowds, the markets, the festivals, the marching battalions, the workingmen in the shop and in the fields—in every glowing face, in every luminous child....   My style was born as children are born, in a moment, except that this birth had come after a torturous pregnancy of thirty-five years.“ [Emphasis added]

In this ecstatic description, Diego's enormous ego is evident ("I was in the very center...."). Equally striking is the glimpse the artist gives us of his creative imagination ("In everything I saw a potential masterpiece...").

It is the last sentence, however, that may be most significant—illuminating, as it does, Diego Rivera's awareness of the lengthy and 'torturous' artistic training that laid the foundation for what might look to the outsider as an 'instantaneous' emergence of artistic style. Not so, says the artist. One might be excused for  sensing perhaps the slightest whiff of messianic purpose as Diego describes himself assuming the role he may well have believed himself destined to perform in his country's history.   

Rivera's first murals in Mexico, titled La Creación, were made in the Anfiteatro Bolivar (Bolivar Lecture Hall) of the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria. Critics suggest that these murals are not as advanced as work done during Rivera's Cubist period in Paris—likening the style of these murals to a version of what is recognized today as Art Deco. At this point, sniff these critics, Diego's political ideas were more radical than his artistic ones.

Creación [Artística y Scientífica], Diego Rivera, Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, 1921.

In 1922 Rivera was the leading figure in the formation of a Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors whose manifesto—borrowing language of the Russian Revolutionary Constructivists—proclaimed a collective repudiation of so-called easel-painting and all art of ultra-intellectual circles in favor of art works that were both physically and intellectually accessible to the mass public. The manifesto thus reflects Diego's artistic vision—that is, the influence of José Posada's art for the people and the story-telling concept implicit on Maya stele. 

The first murals in Rivera's fully mature style were done for the east patio of the Secretaria de Educación Pública (SEP) in Mexico City. Working up to eighteen hours a day, it took Rivera just over four years to complete this gigantic series of compositions—117 fresco panels covering almost 1600 square meters of wall. The intense mental and physical effort begun by Rivera in 1923 ended early in 1928 and established the artist as a leader of the new Mexican school.

Diego Rivera: (Detail) Día de muertos (Day of the Dead), fresco, 1923-1924,  Patio de las Fiestas, SEP. 

Is Diego's debt to Posada perhaps acknowledged in this mural?

Diego Rivera: Mecanización del campo (Mechanization of the Countryside), fresco, 1926, Patio de las Fiestas, SEP.

Diego Rivera: La liberación del peón (Liberation of a peasant), fresco, 1928, Patio de las Fiestas, SEP. 

The frescoes in the Auditorium of the National School of Agriculture in Chapingo (1927) are considered by many critics to be his masterworks. The general theme of the frescoes is human biological and social development. The overall unity of the work and the quality of each of the different parts, especially the female nudes, show Rivera at the height of his creative power.

In the old hacienda chapel—now the University Ceremonies Room—is a mural by Diego Rivera called Tierra Fecundada (Fertile Land). Begun in 1924 and completed in 1927, the work covers an area of over 700 sq m (7,500 sq ft) and is divided into three parts. The left panel depicts man’s struggle to acquire land; the center panel depicts the communion between Man and Earth (an element of the Mesoamerican worldview); the right panel shows the evolution of Mother Nature. 

Keen contradictions existed between Rivera's politics and his art. His political beliefs implied opposition to the United States, but his reputation was greatly helped by North American enthusiasm and patronage. One of his finest series of murals (1929-1930)—depicting the fight against the Spanish invaders—were commissioned for the Palacio de Cortés in Cuernavaca  by the influential American ambassador to Mexico, Dwight D. Morrow. 

From the cycle: “Historia de Cuernavaca y Morelos”. Construcción del Palacio de Cortés, 1930-1931.

Rivera's own political career was both public and stormy—at times with deleterious effects on his art. In light of the history of his mother's Jewish family, he felt himself to be a natural Communist. Reflecting back on his formative years, he wrote, "My Jewishness is the dominant element in my life. From this has come my sympathy with the downtrodden masses which motivates all my work."

However, Rivera was often on bad terms with both the Mexican Communist Party and with the official Communists in the Soviet Union—resigning from and rejoining both organizations several times. Attending a conference in Moscow, he was asked to leave by the Soviet government, which branded him a 'renegade'.  

Rivera's stormy relationship with Communism is relevant to his idea of Modernism. For much of his career, Diego tried to make art that would achieve objectives aligned with those of Soviet Socialist Realism. But inside Mexico, Rivera's overriding goal was to make art that would speak directly to the Mexican people—and in the 1920's illiteracy in Mexico was widespread.

Mexican Culture: Visual and Performance (Dance, Film) Arts First—Literature Last

But illiteracy is only a piece—arguably the least interesting piece—of the story. When we were tourists in San Miguel de Allende five years ago, our thirty-something expat innkeeper (who had lived in San Miguel for several years), remarked, "Reading is not part of Mexican culture."

As a lifelong reader, I confess I am just beginning to understand the implications of her remark. If literature is one side of the cultural coin, then the visual and performance arts may be considered the other. Certainly, the exceptional creativity of Mexico's graphic arts today is readily apparent even to a casual visitor.

The woman who helped me with our house in Pátzcuaro was not educated, but she engaged creatively and enthusiastically with the paintings and artesanía in Casa Mariposa. These art objects spoke to her, and she spoke to them—this dialogue, which she shared with me, was lively, delightful, revealing.

To state the obvious: Mexican culture is highly visual; moreover, as a people, Mexicans tend to be visual and auditory learners—cultural characteristics that Diego Rivera understood all too well!

In order to make art for Mexico's common people, then, Rivera had to abandon much that was typical of Modern art—most notably, fragmentation of imagery and the disguise of appearances. But above all, he had to discipline his work to the demands of narrative—a discipline most emphatically rejected by the early Modernists.

Fortunately, story-telling was a discipline that had been enthusiastically championed by the youthful Diego's friend and mentor, José Guadalupe Posada, who conveyed to his young disciple important techniques for using images to tell stories. Many of these techniques were also embraced by subsequent Mexican Muralists—most notably, by José Clemente Orozco, who had also come under the influence of the engraver when, as a student he passed by Posada's shop and stopped for brief chats. Over time, these muralists came to regard Posada as a revered ancestor figure.


Diego Rivera's enormous talent and keen intellect also found expression in work done in the United States, where—unleashed by cultural constraints, no matter how willingly embraced—his imagination was free to explore cutting-edge social-political themes and artistic techniques. But that is for another post!

Still curious?

MOMA in New York City is exhibiting Diego Rivera "Murals at the Museum of Modern Art", which runs until May 14. In its five-week run from December 22, 1931, to January 27, 1932, the exhibit shattered MOMA attendance records. MoMA brought Rivera to New York six weeks before the exhibition’s opening and gave him studio space within the Museum, a strategy intended to solve the problem of how to present the work of this famous muralist when murals were by definition made and fixed on site.

Working around the clock with two assistants, Rivera produced five “portable murals”—large blocks of frescoed plaster, slaked lime, and wood that feature bold images drawn from Mexican subject matter and address themes of revolution and class inequity. After the opening, Rivera made three more murals.  These eight murals are the core of the current exhibit.

•  Link to announcement: http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1168 
•  Link to MOMA exhibition site: http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/rivera/index.php

Excellent chronology of Diego's life, with links to paintings (dates provided):  http://www.riveraexperts.com/chrono/chrono1886.html

Good biography, including artistic influences on Diego Rivera:  http://www.diego-rivera.org/article6-diego-rivera-influences.html

Interesting discussion of how Diego's politics affected his art:  http://www.leninimports.com/diego_rivera.html#partone

Good biography of Diego Rivera:  http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Diego_Rivera.aspx