Vida y Drama' takes a lively look at Mexico

    They had a constitution, but, of course, not consensus. The Mexican Revolution was sputtering out, the occasional last peal of war still shaking the run-down walls of buildings across the country. A small collective of artists saw an opportunity — many opportunities, really: coat these walls, enliven a nation of stagnated artistic thought and sustain progressive social fervor as the revolution faded.
    The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's (MFA) new exhibition, "Vida y Drama: Modern Mexican Prints," explores the politics of early 20th century Mexico through the lens of various artists and genres and is roughly organized into three parts: prints in the artistic tradition of muralism, politicized posters produced in the wake of World War II and portraiture. The exhibition departs from its artists' most well-known medium, murals, but the immediate necessity that comes peeling off the wall in their biggest works shows up with equal potency in these prints.
    The exhibit opens with a collection of prints made in the aftermath of the Mexican revolution by artists including "los tres grandes," or "the big three" muralists — Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Through varying stylistic modes, each artist comments on the state of Mexico in the wake of political upheaval.
    One work in the exhibition, Rivera's "Open Air School" (1932), tackles the social challenge of widespread illiteracy that Mexico faced with an image of hope. In the print, Rivera depicts a group of women gathered around in a field, reading from a book.
    He renders them in soft, muted grays and in a style influenced by the indigenous roots of rural Mexico. The image expresses the need to improve literacy, but does so without words, and Rivera draws the viewer's attention to the didactic function of visual imagery and its power to transcend language.
    Orozco's images, on the other hand, express the steep human toll paid in war. Orozco's "Rear Guard" (1929) illustrates a group of "soldaderas" -— women of the revolution who traveled in support of and often fought alongside the men. The rounded shoulders of the figures' dark forms appear tired and worn as the group treks through the countryside. Orozco employs darkly saturated ink and sharp contrast to heighten the gravity of the scene. The hats of the countless figures tip downward at the angle of their heads, perhaps in grief for those who were lost or in sheer exhaustion. The rifles slung across their backs seem to pierce the grey sky above them, echoing the violence of the war. For all their wearied vitality, the figures are all faceless, not representing a particular group or family but rather all of those affected by the war.
    Other images of note are Rivera's "Zapata" (1932), which the MFA declares the most famous Mexican print, and Orozco's "The Masses" (1935). The exhibit's title image, Alberto Beltrán's "Vida y Drama de México" (1957), is a preparatory drawing for a poster that advertised a collection of prints made by a workshop of artists in response to Mexico's political and economic failures of the time.
    The exhibit includes both the sketch for the poster and the poster itself, which depicts a pair of artist's hands in the process of making a print. One notable revision that Beltrán made in the final image is the placement of the hands. In the original drawing, the hands appear to project from the depth of the picture space, as though the viewer is facing the person to whom they belong. But in the final poster, the hands have been repositioned as though they belong to the viewer herself. This imagery forces the person in front of it to participate in the poster, and calls for the viewer to become involved in the political message of the exhibit.
    "Vida y Drama" is inherently international, as the images are in dialogue with global politics and artistic movements. Portraits by American photographer Edward Weston are sprinkled in with the exhibition's other works. Weston's portrait of Orozco depicts the artist in close proximity and casts a focus on his illuminated, round glasses. Weston was interested in photographing everyday sights so as to highlight their essential geometric forms and reduce them to pure shapes, and in doing so, Weston compels the viewer to observe the surrounding world in a new way.
    These photographs also provide a link to the neighboring exhibit, "Viva Mexico! Edward Weston and His Contemporaries," located in the Herb Ritts Gallery, which nicely complements "Vida y Drama."