Sugar Cane

1931

Fresco on reinforced cement in a galvanized-steel framework, 57 1/8 x 94 1/8" (145.1 x 239.1 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Cameron Morris, 1943. © 2011 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, México, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Set on a sugar plantation, this portable mural introduces the tensions over labor, race, and economic inequity that simmered in Mexico after the Revolution. In the foreground, an Indian woman, with the traditional braids and white clothes of a peasant, cuts papayas from a tree while her children collect the fruit in reed baskets. Behind them, dark-skinned men with bowed heads gather bunches of sugar cane. A foreman, with distinctly lighter skin and hair, watches over them on horseback, and in the background a pale hacendado (wealthy landowner) languishes in a hammock. In this panel, Rivera adapted Marxist ideas about class struggle—an understanding of history born in industrialized Europe—to the context of Mexico, a primarily agrarian country until after World War II.

Sugar Cane is based loosely on a panel from Rivera’s mural cycle at the Palacio de Cortés in Cuernavaca, Mexico. The most noticeable change made to this source image is the family group added to the foreground of the portable mural. This detail offers a foil to the harsh scene of exploitation that unfolds in the middle and background of the work. Nonetheless, commentators in the U.S. press immediately recognized the panel’s political message, highlighting the “unremitting toil” depicted.

Diego Rivera. Sugar Plantation. 1930. Fresco, approx. 14' 3 1/4" x 111" (4.35 x 2.82 m). Palacio de Cortés, Museo Regional Cuauhnáhuac, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Cuernavaca, Mexico. © 2011 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, México, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph © 2011 Eumelia Hernández, Ricardo Alvarado; Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes

Precedents for Sugar Cane’s focus on Indian peasants and workers are found in Rivera’s early mural panels at the Secretaría de Educación Pública, begun in 1923. At that time, viewers were unaccustomed to seeing Mexico’s native people as a worthy subject of high art, and many objected loudly to Rivera’s large-scale depictions of indigenous figures.

Diego Rivera. Cane Harvest. 1923. Fresco, approx. 13' 11 1/4" x 83 7/8" (4.25 x 2.13 m). North wall of the Patio del Trabajo (Courtyard of Labor), first floor, Secretaría de Educación Pública, Mexico City. © 2011 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, México, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Schalkwijk/Art Resource, New York

Considered separately from the rest of the panel, the woman and children in Sugar Cane might seem to invoke a picturesque vision of rural life. They recall other works by Rivera that promote a benign, folksy image of Mexico. Oil-on-canvas paintings like Flower Day, which won the purchase prize at the First Pan-American Exhibition of Oil Paintings at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art (now known as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), appealed to U.S. collectors but irked critics on the left who questioned Rivera’s political commitment. In Sugar Cane, the indigenous family, paired with a stark portrayal of unjust labor practices, illustrates that Mexico’s agrarian system exploited not only Indian men but also women and children.

Diego Rivera. Flower Day. 1925. Oil on canvas, 58 x 47 1/2" (147.32 x 120.65 cm). Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles. The Los Angeles County Fund (25.7.1). © 2011 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, México, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Digital image © 2011 Museum Associates/LACMA/Art Resource, New York

In Sugar Cane, Rivera frames his composition as though he is looking through the viewfinder of a camera. The bodies of the female laborers at the lower edge of the work, for instance, are cut off at the waist, giving the impression that this panel presents only a fragment of a larger composition. Rivera’s practice of “cropping” his images may stem from his contact with photographers and filmmakers. He was a longtime friend of Tina Modotti, and he worked with the Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein on his unfinished masterwork іQue viva México!

Sergei Eisenstein (Russian, 1898–1948). Film still from іQue viva México! 1931. 35mm prints from unedited film footage. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photograph by The Museum of Modern Art, Department of Imaging Services (Robert Kastler)