A paint drip exposed Lenin inside Rockefeller Center's lobby mural
In 1933 the Rockefellers hired Diego Rivera, a known communist, to paint the lobby of the RCA Building. When a newspaper called his fresco anti-capitalist, Rivera slipped in a portrait of Lenin. Workers painting above it let some paint drip, the architect came to inspect, and the hidden face ended the whole project.
The commission grew out of friendship. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller had bought many Rivera works at a MoMA show in the winter of 1931 to 1932, and at a lunch in January 1932 she floated the idea of a Rivera mural for the new complex. Her husband, John D. Rockefeller Jr., wanted a 63 by 17 foot work that would make passers-by stop and reflect. Their son Nelson had hoped for Matisse and Picasso on the flanking walls; Matisse was busy with the Barnes Foundation and Picasso never answered a telegram addressed to Pierre Picasso.
Rivera was paid $21,000, more than double the $10,000 he earned for Detroit Industry, but he missed a clause giving Rockefeller Center full ownership of the result. His design placed a worker at the controls of machinery in the centre, with giant lenses throwing ellipses of light full of cells and exploding suns, the worlds opened up by microscope and telescope. To one side, rich society women played cards beneath soldiers and war machines. On the other, Lenin joined hands with workers of several races below a May Day rally.
The trouble started on 24 April 1933, when the New York World-Telegram attacked the fresco. Rivera, or an assistant, responded by adding Lenin, then had helpers scrub the face from the blueprints. It might have stayed hidden until architect Raymond Hood examined the drip. Nelson asked for the portrait to be removed; Rivera refused.
In May 1933 Rockefeller had the unfinished wall covered over, prompting protests and boycotts by artists. The fresco was removed in 1934 and a Josep Maria Sert mural took its place three years later. Rivera, who had photographs taken when he sensed danger, repainted the composition in Mexico as Man, Controller of the Universe, where its unfinished lower band of roots and plants was finally completed. E. B. White answered the affair with a ballad, and the films Frida and Cradle Will Rock both restaged it.
Source: Man at the Crossroads
