Tag Archives: communism

Diego Rivera: showing vs. telling

From “The Painting on the Wall,” by Peter Schjeldahl in the November 28, 2012 issue of The New Yorker:

["Frozen Assets"] depicts Depression-racked New York in four tiers: skyscrapers, a homeless shelter, underground pipes, and a bank vault. It can seem a mere polemical illustration; but, given thought, it becomes a distillation of history with a carefully measured, unexhausted potency. It doesn’t tell us what to think, only what must be thought about.

Dieago Rivera, Frozen Assets, 1931.

Dieago Rivera, Frozen Assets, 1931.

(Image from WikiPaintings, and exciting new source!)