Diego Rivera Detroit Industry Murals

The Detroit Industry Murals (1932–1933) are a series of frescoes by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera, consisting of twenty-seven panels depicting industry at the Ford Motor Company and in Detroit. They pay tribute to Detroit's manufacturing base and labor force at a time when, in the first half of the twentieth century, Detroit was the center of America's most important industry—automobile manufacturing—and a symbol of modernity and the power of labor and capitalism. Commissioned by Edsel Ford, then president of the Ford Motor Company, Rivera completed the 27-panel work at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1933, and Rivera himself considered it his most successful work. Together, the panels surround the interior Rivera Court in the Detroit Institute of Arts. The murals stand as one of the most celebrated public artworks in American history, drawing visitors from around the world to Midtown Detroit to this day.

Background and Commission

Between July 1932 and March 1933, Diego Rivera, a premier leader in the 1920s Mexican Mural Movement, executed one of this country's finest modern monumental artworks devoted to industry. Detroit Industry was commissioned by William Valentiner, the director of the DIA at the time, with backing from DIA patron Edsel Ford, Henry Ford's son and heir, and unenthusiastic approval from the Detroit Arts Commission. The only request was that the murals address the history of Detroit and the development of industry.

The project was commissioned by capitalist Edsel Ford but conceived by Rivera—known for following Marxist philosophy—as a tribute to the city's industries and labor force. A leader of the Mexican mural movement, Rivera sought to bring art to the masses through large-scale public works, which often featured stylized representations of the working classes and indigenous cultures of Mexico. Rivera saw industry as the indigenous culture of Detroit.

When Rivera arrived in Detroit in 1932 to paint these walls, the city was a leading industrial center of the world, but it was also the city hit hardest by the Great Depression—industrial production and the workforce were a third of what they had been before the 1929 Crash. Rivera arrived days after an infamous Hunger March where thousands of unemployed workers walked from downtown Detroit to the gates of the Ford Motor Company River Rouge plant to demand employment; armed Ford security guards met them and shot into the marchers, killing six people, in a confrontation that became known as the Battle of the Overpass.

Rivera and spouse Frida Kahlo arrived in Detroit in April 1932 to begin the preparatory work, spending months at the Ford Motor Company's River Rouge factory and other industrial sites, taking photographs and making sketches. He spent three months touring all of the plants, preparing hundreds of sketches and concepts for the mural; the official Rouge plant photographer, W. J. Stettler, aided Rivera's search for visual reference material. The painting itself began in July, with his assistants preparing the plaster walls but Rivera himself doing all the painting. Rivera completed the commission in eight months—a relatively short period for such a large and complex work—by routinely working fifteen-hour days without breaks between; he lost 100 pounds over the course of the project because of the rigorous schedule.

The Fresco Technique and Composition

The plaster was pre-mixed with pure lime, which serves as a binder; as the plaster dries, thin paint is permanently bonded to the surface through a chemical process, after which Rivera could affix his finished drawings to the wall. This ancient buon fresco technique, long associated with Italian Renaissance masters, was one Rivera had refined during years of work in Mexico.

Often considered the most complex artworks devoted to American industry, the Detroit Industry mural cycle depicts the city's manufacturing base and labor force on all four walls of the Detroit Institute of Arts Garden Court, since renamed the Diego Court. The courtyard featuring the murals is aligned on the east/west/north/south axis, and Rivera used this orientation symbolically.

On the east wall, the direction of the sunrise and beginnings, he represented a child in the bulb of a plant cradled by two plowshares and framed on either side by hefty nudes holding grain and fruit—symbolizing bountiful harvests—and these panels introduce some of the world's earliest technology in agriculture. On the west wall, the direction of sunsets and endings, Rivera continued the theme of the development of technology with depictions of aviation, shipping, and energy production; a passenger plane and military bombers clearly represent the benefits and dangers of technology, and depictions of a hawk and dove underscore this theme.

The largest panel, on the north wall, focuses on the construction of the engine and transmission of an automobile, combining the interior of five buildings at the Rouge—the blast furnace, open hearth furnace, production foundry, motor assembly plant, and steel rolling mills—and represents all the important operations in the production of the 1932 Ford V-8. On the south wall, the wall of light and the exterior of things, Rivera painted the assembly of the body of the car; the parts stamped out at the stamping press on the right are then welded in the welding buck in the upper center, and surrounding this image are painting, upholstering, and the final assembly where the chassis is joined to the body, culminating in a finished tiny red car at the end of the assembly line.

Rivera drew upon his background in cubism, showing multiple angles simultaneously, to depict the bustling activity and relationship among processes taking place on the factory floor. The murals combine ancient and Christian symbols in their patterns with monumental figures on top, the workers' everyday world of the factories in the center, and small monochrome predella panels showing a day in the life of a worker on the lower edge.

The top of the north and south walls contains the "four races" panel, with the four races of Rivera's mural—representing African, European, Asian, and American Indian identities—taking the position of the deity. Below the four races are panels representing geological strata showing iron ore under the red race, coal with fossils and diamonds under the black race, limestone under the white race, and sand and fossils under the yellow race.

Rivera cast a cosmological significance to the industrial complex by integrating images of Aztec deities into the machines. The twenty-seven interrelated panels depict industry and technology as the indigenous culture of Detroit and stress the relationship between man and machine and the continuous life cycle, illustrating the dual nature of humanity and technology—their constructive and destructive aspects—where factories both support and enslave the workers in an elaborate system that begins with raw materials and ends with the manufacture of a car.

For one of the murals, a painting about vaccination, Rivera went to the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical plant. Rivera saw medical technology as the new savior of mankind; he based the image of the child in the vaccination panel on the kidnapped Lindbergh baby, Mary on the popular movie star Jean Harlow, and the doctor on a portrait of museum director William Valentiner—with the three scientist-wise men he referred to as a Catholic, a Protestant, and a Jew.

Controversy and Public Reaction

When the 27 fresco panels that comprise Detroit Industry were opened for public viewing in late March 1933, the outcry was immediate. Before the murals were even unveiled, negative press had begun to emerge; a front-page Detroit News editorial called the murals un-American and foolishly vulgar.

When the murals were unveiled, they sparked a major controversy; some critics claimed they were sacrilegious, others objected to images of the working class featured in such a prominent place, still others were upset at the sum the artist was paid at the height of the Great Depression, and the Detroit City Council even considered a vote to whitewash the murals. When the murals were completed, the Detroit Institute of Arts invited various clergymen to comment, and Catholic and Episcopalian clergy condemned the murals as blasphemous.

Days after the opening, a New York Times article, "Detroit in Furor over Rivera Art," reported that "the murals are being attacked by one faction as 'communistic' and 'irreligious.'" An anonymous call to the museum from the conservative American Citizens League led to the Times headline, "Police Guard Rivera's Murals After Phoned Threat." Art historian Hayden Herrera reported that factory workers volunteered to stand guard over the murals, an offer that left Rivera "euphoric."

Architect Albert Kahn, also a member of the Arts Commission, wrote in The Detroit News the day after the March unveiling that "Detroit Industry" was "a great, powerful piece of art" that "put Detroit on the map artistically." In the end, Edsel Ford publicly accepted the murals for the museum collection. Ford, who was chair of the Detroit Arts Commission at the time, initially kept a low profile but finally came forward in support of the murals, saying "I am thoroughly convinced that the day will come when Detroit will be proud to have this work in its midst."

One notable consequence of the denunciation was a dramatic increase in the flow of visitors to the DIA; the Sunday after the opening, visitors flocked to the museum, and the headline in the Detroit Times read: "10,000 Jam Art Institute to See Disputed Murals." Some art historians, including Graham W.J. Beal, DIA director from 1999 to 2015, believe that Edsel Ford actually stoked the controversy to drum up traffic and build public support for the museum.

Later, during the McCarthy era, a large sign was placed in the courtyard defending the artistic merit of the murals while attacking Rivera's politics.

Legacy and Significance

The Detroit Industry mural cycle is considered the most complex artwork focused on American industry. A case has been made that the cycle is universal, reflecting not only the essence of the industrial culture of Detroit but also a belief in technology and science that remains operative today—a history-making work of art in which the working class and industrialists both find affirmation.

Rivera's technique for painting frescoes, his portrayal of American life on public buildings, and the 1920s Mexican mural program itself directly led to and influenced the New Deal mural programs of the 1930s and 1940s. The murals' impact on public art in the United States was profound, helping establish the principle that monumental art belongs not only in private galleries but in civic and public spaces accessible to all citizens.

At the legendary UAW Local 600, which represents workers at the Rouge plant, many workers and union leaders are proud of the murals; the local president has displayed reproductions in his office and in the large main hall of the local, and a nearby public library also exhibits an image of the murals.

The Rivera murals were never actually at risk of physical destruction because they are part of the building itself, though they became the symbol of the DIA's fight for its life during Detroit's bankruptcy crisis; as one observer noted, "there's a lovely irony in contemplating that this work by the 20th century's most important Mexican artist remains one of America's most significant monuments to itself." The coalition that formed around the DIA raised $816 million to bail out the city's public employee pension fund, and in return, the City of Detroit transferred ownership of the museum to a nonprofit to prevent such a threat from ever arising again—a process completed in late 2014.

The following spring, the DIA opened a new exhibit, "Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit," featuring 70 works by both artists, including eight rarely shown, large-size charcoal studies.

The Detroit Industry murals remain today one of the most engaging major modern works of the twentieth century. Visitors to the Detroit Institute of Arts can walk through the Rivera Court and see these remarkable, historic murals in person.