Copyright 2019 by Gary > Pullman
Another of the better
stories in Ray Bradbury's collection The Cat's Pajamas
is “Ole, Orozco! Siqueros, Si!”
The
narrator, an art gallery expert, is invited to a wake for Sebastian
Rodriguez, “an unknown artist” who died while painting murals on
a freeway. As Sam Walter explains, “He was hanging upside down over
the edge of the freeway overhang, painting, a pal holding his legs,
when the pal sneezed, God yes, sneezed and let go.”
His
untimely demise cut short a promising career; Cardinal Carlos Jesus
Montoya, who'd spied the genius in the graffiti Rodriguez had
painted, saw his promise, as does the narrator, who suggests that
Rodriguez's work is reminiscent of that of Mexican muralists David
Alfaro Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco.
To
promote and to protect the late artist's reputation, Montoya arranged
to exhibit photographs of Rodriguez's graffiti at a gallery; “then,”
Sam explains to the narrator, “when it was too late” for people
“to . . . change their minds and ask for their money back,” the
cardinal would tell them about Rodriguez's freeway murals.
The
artist's death, however, could have “endangered Rodriguez's
reputation,” had a group of critics not conspired to hide the truth
from the public. As a result of their efforts, Rodriguez's death was
attributed not to his fall from the freeway overpass, but to “a
bike accident, though no bike was found.” When the cardinal
approved of Rodriguez's art, “prices . . . skyrocketed.”
Now, to prevent the public from discovering the fact that Rodriguez was a graffiti artist, the narrator holds Sam's legs while Sam paints over Rodriguez's freeway art.
Bradbury
seems to satirize the commercial aspects of art that is created,
exhibited, bought, and sold in a capitalistic economy. Rodriguez,
although talented by all accounts, was “unknown.” The fact that
he painted murals on freeway surfaces marked him as a graffiti
artist, which would have besmirched his budding reputation as a
legitimate artist, necessitating the conspiracy on the part of
Cardinal Montoya, Sam, the narrator, and those who attended
Rodriguez's wake, to suppress the truth concerning the origin of
Rodriguez's art.
If the
truth of the origins of the photographs in the gallery becomes known,
the narrator suggests, Montoya will be left “with a gallery of
useless photo art,” or, Sam counters, “a gallery full of
priceless relics from an artful dodger's life, dead too soon.” If
marketing doesn't make all the difference in the perception of the
value of an artist's work, it certainly does count, Bradbury
suggests.
David Alfaro Siqueiros: Self-Portrait (1945)
The
irony is deepened by the narrator's comparing the late, unknown
painter's style to that of the celebrated Mexican muralists Siqueiros
and Orozco. Although Rodriguez's art resembles theirs, showing
“genius” in its own right, his paintings, because they began as
graffiti, would be scorned, were the truth known, whereas the murals
of Siqueiros and Orozco are celebrated and cherished.
David Alfaro Siqueiros: The New Democracy (1944)
Irony
is also effected by Rodriguez's having spent “a few hours in jail,”
presumably for defacing public property by painting his murals on the
freeway, because Siqueiros was also incarcerated, but in a Mexican
prison, rather than an American jail, for criticizing Mexican
President Adolfo Lopez Mateos and leading protests on behalf of
teachers and artists on strike. Although Bradbury doesn't describe
Rodriguez's murals, it's possible that he painted murals as
politically sensitive, in their own way, as those of Siqueiros, one
of which, Burial of a Worker, showed a funeral procession in which
workers bore an oversize casket “decorated with a hammer and a
sickle.”
Jose Clemente Orozco: Man of Fire (1938)
Orozco
painted satirical political murals, many of them critical of the
Mexican
Revolution (1910-1920). A supporter of Venustiano Carranza and
General Álvaro Obregón and against Pancho Villa and Emiliano
Zapata, the conservative Orozco was more pessimistic about the
effects of the revolution than some of his colleagues, including
Diego Rivera.
José Clemente Orozco: Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (1936)
In
Rodriguez's art, the narrator sees something of the style, and
perhaps the spirit, of both Siqueiros and Orozco. Perhaps
Rodriguez's work suggested a middle political stance between the more
extreme, polarized positions of these famous muralists. By not
directly stating why the narrator views Rodriguez's work as promising
and important, Bradbury leaves open this and other possibilities.
The
online article
“Mexican muralists: the big three—Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros”
provides information on the background of the Mexican Revolution; the
rise of muralism as a means of communicating with citizens of “a mostly
illiterate country,” a discipline that was dominated by Orozco,
Siqueros, and Rivera; and the styles and themes of these three
artists. Some of this material could enhance the reading of
Bradbury's Story, but also important is an understanding of the
community in which Rodriguez lived, the “Mexican-Hispanic-Jewish
Boyle Heights” the narrator mentions as the setting for Rodriguez's
wake.
Often,
though, murals depict the personal concerns of their artists, which
may or may not be political concerns as well, and the murals' themes
are apt to change from one generation to the next. For example, “Many
of the murals depicted the 1960s movement for Chicano
equality.” However, a fifteen-year-old girl's mural, painted in
2017, illustrates her idea of “women
of influence” and includes depictions of a U. S. Supreme Court
Justice, Sonia Sotomayor; a royal, Princess Diana; and a comedienne
and talk show host, Ellen DeGeneres.
In
his description of Montoya, the narrator of Bradbury's story suggests
the types of themes that would be likely to attract the cardinal's
interest; perhaps Montoya discovered these or similar interests in
the images Rodriguez painted. The narrator sees Carlos Jesus Montoya
as “priest, poet, adventurer in rain forests, love assassin of ten
thousand women, headliner, mystic, and now critic for Art
News Quarterly,”
who surveys “the walls where Sebastian Rodriguez's lost dreams were
suspended,” “lost dreams” which Montoya is keen to preserve.
By
avoiding descriptions of Rodriguez's murals in any but the most
general terms, Bradbury allows his readers to envision the artist's
work however they please, in effect creating for themselves the very
paintings they imagine the artist has painted and allowing them to
become their own muralists, painting their own dreams, “lost” or
present, a community of artists in which each reader paints an
expanse of the same canvas to which everyone else also contributes, just
as actual murals are sometimes painted.
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