My Answer

Zapatista Landscape 1915

The painting Zapatista Landscape was painted in 1915, long after Synthetic Cubism had been developed and practiced by Pablo Picasso. So the stylistic and compositional devices that Rivera used were not revolutionary or new to the style. Edward J. Sullivan in his article From Mexico to Montparnasse-and Back (Art In America of November 1999) includes examples of stylistic painting techniques that Picasso 9 supposedly took from Zapatista Landscape for use in his own paintings of 1914-1915, but as I have said I found examples of what he describes as plagiarized techniques in paintings by Piccasso that pre-date Zapatista Landscape. In his article Sullivan’s examples of Picasso’s plagiarism are his use of “pointillist” dots, the voidllike areas of white and the overall composition. I find it hard to accept. But what is truly unique for my eyes about this painting Zapatista Landscape is it is painted by a person who originated in the American Continent and refers to political activities that most Parisian non-Mexican born artists care little about in 1915, the Mexican Revolution. Another thing I find very interesting about this painting are all the visual references it has to different levels of Mexican culture and history, it effectively displays cultural metaphors in a way that had never been done previous. I have read many paragraphs about this painting but I have yet to find anyone referring to the Tlaloc “Sleepy Eye” in the hat. This is a visual reference to the Pre-Columbian rain god through the use of the half-lidded eye in the brim of the hat that looks out at us within the Mexican Revolution references, the serape, the hat and gun. This painting represents three levels of cultural identity for Diego Rivera, the pre-Columbian raingod, the Mexican peasant and the European aggressor, all set among a stark volcanic Mexican landscape. This painting painted in Europe in 1915 could be painted in California in 2000 and still be relevant to the concepts of assimilation and misplaced histories of Chicano peoples. I desire that this painting, in its lonely isolation and misplaced mismatched cultural references, be considered a masterpiece of conceptual “Chicano Art”. This painting was done by a Mexican who is far from home and working within Western Art historical means, but expressing colonial concepts of aggression and survival within assimilation issues. Traditionally the concept of “Chicano” has been described to me as anyone of Mexican decent who was born or has lived in the United States and is a participant in the general culture but at the same 10 time separates themselves from the influence and direction of the dominant American culture, asserting and expressing their desire to be Mexican within a white/non-Mexican context.