The enticement of looking beyond the familiar and re-examining the world from new perspectives lies at the heart of the work of Mexican painter, Jos Clemente Orozco. Between 1927 and 1934, Orozco made a name for himself in the United States, taking advantage of an American interest in all things Mexican while seizing the opportunity to expand the realm of his own artistic vision.
In its ongoing exhibition, "Jos Clemente Orozco in the United States, 1927-1934," the Hood Museum of Art presents a comprehensive survey of Orozco's artistic output during these seven years. While American attraction to Mexican culture was certainly in vogue at the time of his arrival in the United States, Orozco's more than 120 works from this period betray his mutual interest in the culture of the United States and in pushing the boundaries of his own oeuvre.
Dartmouth seems a particularly appropriate locale for an Orozco retrospective, as the reserve corridor in Baker Library has served as home to the muralist's renowned "Epic of American Civilization" since its completion in 1934. Still, Orozco's body of work during his tenure in the United States extended far beyond these monumental frescoes, the preparation and stories behind which are featured in one section of the exhibition.
Orozco's artistic style undoubtedly changed while he painted and lived in the United States. While trying to uncover the perfect balance between Mexican themes tailored for an American audience and his own examination of a foreign culture, Orozco was also working to define his Mexican identity within the context of the United States.
Orozco's Mexican origins figure inextricably into his artwork. He was already a renowned mural painter in Mexico by the time he arrived in the United States. He was a prominent participant in the 1920s post-revolutionary public art movements in Mexico, wherein art was to serve as a tool to rebuild the nation. Such art, then, was not to cater to the elite; instead, it was to be art for the masses, monumental yet accessible to all.
His revolution-era art is not an attempt at propaganda, but rather a statement of political and artistic independence. It is this objective distance that seems to give his visual commentary a greater weight, as it focuses on human behavior and is not entrenched in political ideals. In this sense, his art could speak to a broader audience, but, at the same time, risked offending those who were the targets of his biting honesty.
"These are not glorifying images of the revolution. Both the revolutionaries and the reactionaries engage in brutalism. He was not going to present the revolution as the glorious cause the post-revolutionary government would have liked," said Hood curator Diane Miliotes, who organized the show along with Renato Gonzlez Mello of the National Autonomous University.of Mexico.
By 1927, the year Orozco would arrive in the United States for his prolonged stay, he had fallen out of favor in Mexico. In place of Orozco's "constant critical eye," as Miliotes called it, painter Diego Rivera became the new favorite, as he was more willing to cater to his post-revolutionary public.
Because of this, Orozco began to turn his attentions northward, where he knew there was a burgeoning intellectual and cultural exchange between the United States and Mexico throughout the 1920s. The inherently Mexican historical themes embodied in Orozco's work, he believed, could prove desirable to an American audience.
However, Orozco was lured to the United States by more than mere opportunism. He came to New York propelled by the promise of an exhibition of his revolutionary drawings, begun in 1926 at the behest of a Mexican colleague.
The drawings present an intriguing contrast to the monumental style so inscribed in Orozco's murals. Perhaps portending the changes his work would undergo during the following seven years on foreign soil, Orozco's drawings exhibit his willingness to modify his customary techniques to fit within a new context.
"Human figures are pushed up to the surface of the representation. The human figure becomes the means by which he conveys the revolution as the seat of human conflict," Miliotes said.
Orozco would return again and again to jarring and disturbing themes such as human conflict. His signature mix of expressiveness and frankness give Orozco's art its power, superseding specific moments in time and speaking on a more universal level.
Accordingly, in an attempt to offer the greatest insight into Orozco's work of the period, the show is organized thematically rather than chronologically. The exhibition focuses on themes ranging from Mexican folklore to images of New York, an entirely new subject for Orozco.
Indeed, the seven years in the U.S. proved a time of enormous experimentation and artistic transformation for Orozco. While he began to turn to North American subjects, he managed to retain the Mexican themes in his work as well.
Orozco brought with him to the United States his uniquely forceful style -- that same mix of brutal subject matter and elegant rendering that had made him so famous in Mexico -- now offering new slants on familiar American iconography.
"It is evident [in his New York paintings] that he has some misgivings about the modern city, although he was clearly fascinated by the mechanical and the architectural," Miliotes said.
In these New York scenes, the vibrant coloration normally associated with Orozco's mural work gives way to a more somber palette. Recalling his hesitance to idealize revolutionary Mexico, Orozco's city scenes bespeak a similarly ambivalent attitude toward technology and an implicit criticism of the emerging metropolis. In this sense, Orozco's approach to the city from a foreigner's standpoint differentiates his paintings from those of many American painters of the same period, some of whom even went so far as to see technology as a new religion.
"Any confidence in technology as a savior for the modern world or society is very much muted. The redemptive hope of technology and architecture is swept aside," Miliotes said.
These haunting scenes of the American city seem to clearly illustrate how the United States opened new doors to Orozco's ever-transforming artistic vision. Still, Orozco's fascination with New York represents only one side of the cultural exchange in which he was immersed. He remained aware that his American audience desired art that was categorically Mexican rather than a Mexican's interpretation of American culture.
Returning to Mexican themes in the late twenties and early thirties, then, Orozco kept the whims of the mass market in mind but did not permit commercial interest to be the sole driving force behind his work.
"These are still interesting, deep paintings, but you can just see that he was not totally into it," Miliotes said.
Nonetheless, Orozco seems to hint at a new, more abstracted dimension in these paintings, suggesting his pending experimentation with modernism. New York, with its countless museums and galleries, was at the center of the art world and gave Orozco an unparalleled entre into the artistic avant-garde.
Orozco dabbled in numerous techniques, from the metaphysical and surrealistic to the cubistic and precisionist. Still, this was more a period of fleeting experimentation for Orozco than for permanent changes in his artistic proclivities.
"Frankly, most of these paintings are one-time experiments in a particular genre, rather than something he is devoted to exploring deeply. He is experimenting promiscuously," Miliotes said.
This period of experimentation and the modernity of the cultural landscape of the United States surely left an indelible mark on Orozco's artistic vision. At the same time, though, Orozco left to America his startlingly honest portrayals of human struggle tied in with his own native Mexican culture. Orozco reinvigorated his style during those seven years in the United States, incorporating new iconography and infusing cutting edge techniques into a repertoire that, in the end, remains distinctly and extraordinarily his own.
