Tuesday, February 01, 2022
A NEW ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHY DIEGO RIVERA: "All bristling melodrama and animal energy"
Diego Rivera by Francisco de la Mora and José Luis Pescador review – rumbustious hymn to a radical artist
In this frenetic, rumbustious new graphic biography of Diego Rivera by Francisco de la Mora and José Luis Pescador, the Mexican artist’s third wife (and fourth: they married twice) appears only fleetingly. We don’t find out where or how they met; the powerful connection between them, never fully explained, must simply be taken for granted by the reader. But perhaps the authors feel that Frida Kahlo has had a bit too much attention just lately: who could forget the snaking queues at the V&A’s show of her work in 2018? In their book, then, it’s Rivera who is centre stage. Like a raging bull, rushing into the ring for a fight, he dominates every page, all bristling melodrama and animal energy.
“There have been two great accidents in my life,” Kahlo said. “Diego was by far the worst.” There is surely hyperbole in this statement, however unhappy Rivera made her at times (both of them were repeatedly unfaithful). But you grasp her meaning: the sense of collision that accompanied her husband wherever he went. Though his talent was prodigious – he went to art school at 11 – it often struggled to find its place in a life that was by any standards overpopulated with incident. Born in 1886, Rivera was the son of a journalist who was involved in revolutionary politics, instincts he would famously go on to share. Travelling in Europe, he met Lenin in Paris and Stalin in Moscow; later, he offered refuge to Trotsky during his Mexican exile. But revolutionaries come in many guises. If he talked the talk – even after fame arrived, he remained proudly un-clubbable – he was also easily distracted, usually (though not exclusively) by women.
De la Mora and Pescador pick and choose when it comes to the biographical details. They make little, for instance, of Rivera’s Jewishness on his mother’s side – her family was supposed to have converso history (ancestors who were forced to convert to Catholicism) – something that he felt informed both his art and his politics. But they’re predictably enthralled – and who can blame them? – by his years in Paris, where he knew Braque, Picasso and Modigliani and embraced cubism (a passion that did not last). There is, perhaps, a bit too much wild sex in their book – bed springs are always groaning; women are ecstatic at his merest touch – but they make the most both of his return to Mexico and, later, the time he spent in the US, where he accepted commissions from such giants of capitalism as John D Rockefeller.
Pescador, who illustrates, has a feeling for the epic scene; he knows just how to do it, stepping back from the frame, opening things out. Depicting the artist at work at his mural The History of Mexico in the stairwell of the National Palace in Mexico City – Rivera’s Sistine Chapel, it took six years to complete – he uses fold-out pages, the better to give us a 360-degree fix on the spectacle and the result is quite wonderful, a moment of quiet in a narrative that is at times very noisy. Rivera and Kahlo, now in a wheelchair, are tiny on a landing. Like two small children, their chins are raised, they eyes look ever upwards. Here is his vision, vast and teeming and fervent, and it seems that even they must struggle to take it all in.
Diego Rivera by Francisco de la Mora and José Luis Pescador is published by SelfMadeHero (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
CONCERNED ENOUGH . . .
Privacy Advocates, Lawmakers Concerned About IRS's Facial Recognition Plan
“No one should be forced to submit to facial recognition as a condition of accessing essential government services," said Sen. Ron Wyden.
2014 UKRAINE RE-PLAY REWIND: NeoCon Victoria Nuland
US has secret weapon against Russia – Nuland
If Washington discloses its sanctions in advance, Moscow will take steps to get around them, a top officials warns
By Jonny Tickle
"The US is to keep its planned sanctions against Russia completely secret, so Moscow doesn’t have the opportunity to mitigate them in advance, a senior American official said on Sunday.
Speaking to CBS, US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland explained that Washington was working on a set of measures that would be imposed were Russia to invade Ukraine, but would not be letting the Kremlin know what they were beforehand.
“With regard to this package of sanctions … deterrence is best when there’s a little bit of strategic ambiguity around exactly what we are going to do,” Nuland explained. “So, we’ve said financial measures, we’ve said export controls, we’ve said new sanctions on Russian elites. But if we put them on the table now, then Russia will be able to start mitigating, and that doesn’t make any sense to us.”
Nuland’s statement came as a group of US lawmakers from both the Democratic and Republican parties, led by Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), reported that they were close to agreeing on a set of sanctions that could be implemented immediately after any Russian invasion.
According to Washington, the package of measures is designed to deter Russia from considering a military incursion into Ukraine. Moscow stands accused of placing 100,000 troops on the border, with some alleging it is planning an attack. This claim has been repeatedly denied by the Kremlin and played down by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Reports have suggested the sanctions will focus on Russian banks and the export and import of certain goods. The US has also been working with the EU to develop a multilateral response that could take aim at the energy industry.
“We are working intensively with Congress on this piece of legislation that we expect will be very well aligned with what we are building with our NATO allies and partners,” Nuland said."
Source: https://www.rt.com/russia/547807-us-keep-sanctions-secret/
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