OROZCO "EXPLAINS"
The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art
Volume 7, Number 4, August 1940
José Clemente Orozco
José Clemente Orozco: OROZCO "EXPLAINS." New York City: The Museum of Modern Art, 1940. First edition [The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, Vol. VII, No. 4, August 1940]. A good staple-bound booklet with worn and spotted wrappers. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print.
7.25 x 9.25 staple-bound booklet with 12 pages and 19 black-and-white photos by Eliot Elifoson: "This 'explanation' was written by Mr. Orozco. The quotation marks in his title indicate his feeling that explanations are unnecessary."
From the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: "In this text, José Clemente Orozco marks his distance from the ideological and aesthetic positions of either Diego Rivera or David Alfaro Siqueiros. Without mentioning them by name, Orozco criticizes the political orientation that characterized the mural work of Rivera and Siqueiros. Even more, Orozco declares that Mexican Muralism should not have any social or ideological function whichever, rather it should be exclusively “artistic.” Orozco attacks the didactic intentions of certain individuals and institutions, in this case the New York Museum of Modern Art, that try to educate the public—either naively or pretentiously—on the analysis and dissemination of Modern art, and abstract art in particular.
"José Clemente Orozco (1883–1949) prepared this text at the time he was finishing work on the portable work Dive Bomber (1940) for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. This commissioned work was created during the run of the great exhibition Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art, which took place at MoMA in the spring of 1940. Alfred H. Barr Jr. (1902–1981), in his role as the founder and director of the museum (1929–33), asked Orozco to write this text as a commentary on his recently finished mural. It seems that Barr’s interest was governed by a double motivation. He was concerned that the general public should comprehend and seek out Modern art. From his point of view, the way to achieve this was through clear, simple, and direct explanations. However, Barr was aware that exhibition of Mexican art at MoMA was motivated by a diplomatic objective: to develop the bonds of friendship between Mexico and the United States within the context of World War II. Granting a voice to some of the participants—in this case Orozco—was a way to fulfill such a goal.
"The paradox of the situation was that Orozco held an adverse opinion of didactic explanations of art and he was also an artist who was not interested in becoming involved with politics. As he was unable to reject Barr’s invitation, the published text is characterized as much by skepticism (embedded in the values at stake) as by a questioning of the didactic and political with regard to Modern art." — Alejandro Ugalde