While I was in Detroit, I went to see the River Rouge Factory in nearby Dearborn. The photo on the left is mine and the one on the right shows the factory in the 1930s. The red brick building in my photo shows one of the remaining buildings from the time when Frida and Diego visited the factory. Most of the other buildings were redone in 1999. In the photo on the left, you can see a lot of greenery, but in the photo on the right there isn't much. The new factory is much more environmentally friendly. The old factory emitted so many toxins that plant life, insects, and animals died. I was happy to hear that the new CEO Bill Ford cares about the environment. I think when Frida was there in 1932 it was a dustier and more bleak looking place. Today, it is part of a large Ford complex that includes the Henry Ford Museum, the Benson Ford Research Center, and an area with old villages set up, complete with a train. A bus takes you from the Henry Ford Museum to the factory where you can go on a tour. I saw the inside where the workers on the assembly line were constructing a Ford F-150 truck. It was fascinating to watch, but they do not allow any photos. This photo above shows part of Diego Rivera's mural that he painted in 1932/33 at the Detroit Institute of Arts. He creates a dynamic image as the man in the front pushes the frame of the car onto the assembly belt and the others behind him do their part as well. Everyone is working together. They form a mass as few faces are visible, making their individual identities unimportant. Diego, the communist, wanted to reveal how modern technology could liberate the worker by making physical labor less taxing. Henry Ford wanted to create an efficient system that allowed his company to produce more cars and more profits. He came up with the idea of the assembly line for the creation of cars. Today, the workers have one minute to do their section before the car moves on; however, I was told that if the worker needs more time, then, s/he can pull on a yellow chord to stop the line. Ford apparently borrowed this idea from Honda. When Frida and Diego visited the factory, the workers didn't have this type of control and the line moved faster. Many workers expressed how stressful it was to have to do repetitive movements in quick intervals over the course of their shift. In 1932, there was no union that looked out for the worker. Henry Ford was vehemently opposed to unions, but in 1941, the workers won the battle to unionize.
I love the way Diego depicts the workers here in this panel above and in another one across from it in the courtyard at the Detroit Institute of Arts, but I can't say that I saw this exact image when I toured the factory. In Diego's mural, you can see some of the visitors on a tour in the left background. Here, they are on ground level, but today visitors walk above the workers. It seems less intrusive, but the workers can still see you if they look up. I was the first person of the morning to take the tour, so it was very quiet. There are docents seated all around the perimeter and as you advance to a new location, the docent tells you what the workers are doing down below. Even though 1 minute is not a lot of time to work on your section, it looked as if the assembly line moved slowly. I didn't see a lot of people working together as in Diego's mural. The people looked as if they were working on their part separately; however, when it came to putting on the moon roof, I did see a couple of people working in unison. As much as I love Diego's murals of the factory workers, I think he painted an idealized vision, not reality. In one of my next blog posts, I'll reflect on Frida's view of the Ford factory. © Celia S. Stahr 2015
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As you can see, I went to the exhibit today. These advertisements are all over the city. I even saw one on the way to the hotel from the airport. Unfortunately, the DIA didn't allow photographs in the exhibition. It is an impressive show. There are walls covered with huge photos like the one you see here. It feels as if Frida and Diego are watching you peruse their paintings. I'd seen most of the Frida paintings before, but I saw one for the first time as well as some drawings I'd never seen before. It's always a revelation to see works of art in person. Details you've never noticed before pop out and the colors in paintings are always quite different. In one of Frida's paintings, I always thought two greens she used were quite similar. I discovered today that this is not true. In a painting she made about the suicide of Dorothy Hale, she shows three images of Dorothy jumping from a building. In reproductions, you can easily miss the first small image of Dorothy. I always tell my students that you need to see a retrospective of an artist's body of work before you can judge the art or fully understand it. That's certainly true with Frida. This exhibit gives you a glimpse, an important one at that, but not the full picture. It doesn't have all the Detroit paintings and it doesn't have all the works from the U.S. But, I enjoyed it because it gave me a better understanding of Detroit in the thirties due to a short film and an important look at Frida's work alongside Diego's. Nevertheless, the exhibition features more of Diego's art. I guess that's why his name is first in the title. If I were in charge, I'd shift this power dynamic to make it a bit more egalitarian. At the end of May in 1931, Frida left San Francisco. After a brief foray in Mexico, she came back to the United States. Frida and Diego went to New York for Diego's retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art. Then, they went to Detroit. This is a picture I took last night flying into Detroit. The smoke from a factory in the distance reminds me of Henry Ford's River Rouge plant. Frida didn't fly into Detroit, she took the train. I'm back in Detroit to see an exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts, which features Frida and Diego's art from the time they spent in Detroit from 1932-1933. I'm excited to see the exhibition today. I'll write all about it tonight or tomorrow. |
Celia Stahr teaches art history at the University of San Francisco. She’s interested in women artists and artists who cross cultural boundaries. She fell in love with the power of Frida Kahlo's art in the 1980s, a feeling that has intensified over the years. Frida in America took 10 years to research and write, but Stahr never lost interest in this fascinating woman and artist.
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