Spirit of Detroit

From worrying about banks, Detroiters had last week turned to fighting about art. Last year Edsel Ford gave the money for a set of frescoes on Detroit industries, to adorn the walls of an Italianate garden court in Detroit's Institute of Arts. Director Wilhelm R. Valentiner gave the job to the new world's foremost muralist, robustious Diego Rivera, who came and swabbed for eight months, losing 125 Ib. (from 310) the while.* Last month for the first time Detroiters were let into the court whose plain white panels had been covered with Rivera's brilliant pigments./-

The main panels showed the automobile industry from the mine to the assembly line at Ford Motor Co.'s River Rouge plant, populated by Rivera's chunky, concentrated figures. Others showed a pharmaceutical factory (Parke, Davis & Co.), airplane welders, poison gas workers, topped in huge scale by females representing the raw materials of Detroit's industries: a white woman for limestone, black for coal, yellow for sand, red for iron ore. Critics rated the frescoes first-class, noted an increasing hardness and sharpness in Rivera's detail. Nearly overlooked was a little panel high on one wall, showing a child being vaccinated in a serum laboratory. In the foreground were serum-giving animals, a horse, a bull and sheep, traditional beasts of Holy Nativity pictures.

The nurse's white cap and the child's yellow hair looked like halos (see cut). Deliberately archaic, the little panel reminded Detroiters of medieval church paintings. Detroit's art fight started when some clergymen called the vaccination panel a sacrilegious parody. The Institute's secretary blasted back that anyone who saw the Holy Family in that picture "can see spooks in the dark!" One clergyman found a further slur on Christianity in the Gothic decorations of a commercial radio topped by an adding machine in the Parke, Davis panel. Director Valentiner retorted that the museum had "invested more taxpayers' money in symbols, emblems and decorations of the Christian faith" than in those of any other religion. But hot criticism continued and last week the Detroit News swept up the whole job as "a slander to Detroit workingmen," advised returning the walls to plain white plaster.

While protest meetings crackled, Edsel Ford went before the Detroit City Council with his Arts Commission budget. With him went Architect Albert Kahn, a fellow Institute director. The City Councilmen took the chance to lambaste the frescoes Mr. Ford had given Detroit. One called them a "travesty on the spirit of Detroit . . . and Mr. Ford's factories. . . . There is not a man there with a pleasant look or a smile. . . . The anatomical exhibitions . . . can't be sent through the mails." Messrs. Ford & Kahn made no reply.

Afterward Edsel Ford told newshawks: "I admire Mr. Rivera's spirit. I really believe he was trying to express his idea of the spirit of Detroit."

*By a diet of albumins and thyroid extract; no proteins, salt, sugar, cereals, cream, potatoes or meat. His doctor: Ignactius Millian, one-time cancer doctor at Manhattan's Central & Neurological Hospital on Welfare Island.

/- Reproductions in color were published in the February issue of FORTUNE.

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