For this assignment I chose José Clemente Orozco’s Dive Bomber and Tank. José Clemente Orozco was a Mexican Painter. He was born in the State of Jalisco, Mexico in the year of 1883. He was one of those painters who took deep passion into painting murals that had some sort of political idea/message behind it. This is known to be Social Realism. José was an important figure during the Mexican mural renaissance, during this period in time he worked with another great artist from Mexico as well and that was none other than Diego Rivera. But it wasn’t always easy for him. According to Britannica’s description on Orozco, early in his life his dreams of becoming an artist were put on hold because his father wanted him to pursue a career in agronomy and later on learn about architecture. This isn’t what he wanted though, but that being his father’s command/wish he thought it was only right to give it a shot. Although, this didn’t end well for José. At the age of 17 he lost one of his hands in an accident while he was at the lab. This meant he couldn’t do architecture anymore. In 1905, he re-entered the academy where he was previously taking drawing classes before he headed to pursue his father’s architecture dream. José came back more motivated than ever. After many ups and downs throughout his artistic life he became one of the best and most recognized painters. Which is why I was lucky enough to visually see one of his works displayed in the famous Museum of Modern Art (also known as the MoMA). The piece of work I am talking about is the Dive Bomber and Tank. I have included a picture to this post showing you what the art piece looks like. So, this piece was made in 1940 during WW2. If someone who didn’t know the background story of this painting saw this they would make comments about the details portrayed by José. For example, in the painting we can see what seems to be faces, legs and chains and other metal like objects. The colors of the painting seem to be dark. I was able to see a use of whites and dark grays in this art. According to MoMA’s description of this piece, Dive Bomber and Tank was José’s statement opposing to violence. For more clarity I googled what a dive bomber plane looked like and when comparing it to the painting it looked like what he was trying to show us was a dive bomber plane crashing into people. Since this was shortly after WW2, it was José’s goal to portray the effects of war on humanity. I remember entering The Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Galleries area and seeing this big art piece right in front of a Picasso piece. I was immediately drawn to it. The details were what caught my attention.At first what came to my mind without reading a description, I thought it would be something depressing and then after reading what it was about, it all made sense, because of the things I was able to identify on it. One question I had when seeing this, ways to ask José himself, what drew him to making something like this and of he could make one of recent times what would it look like.
This is a very powerful piece, and I can see how it caught your attention. I don’t think, however, that it qualifies as Modernist for two reasons. First, Social Realism was a different aesthetic movement that coincided with Modernism, but differed from it in important ways. It required realism, for one, but it also believed that art should serve a political or ideological purpose. The other reason that this isn’t Modernist is because Modernism began in the 1890s and ended with the outbreak of WWII, as I explained in the instructions for this assignment.