Moving

Shifting a Masterpiece, One Panel at a Time

The phalanges of a worker standing in front of a 4,000-pound plate stand on the edge. They look nervously from under their helmets, and their fears are understandable. This is the last of 10 equal pieces in Diego Rivera’s huge frescoes. Pan American Unity: Arguably the greatest artwork of the 20th century in San Francisco.

The stakes are even higher as this piece is certainly the most fragile of the set. That job took months as workers moved off a 10-foot wall at San Francisco City University, which has been around since 1961. SFMOMA. Moving the precious 1940 mural was an elaborate operation that included vibration monitors, precision cutting tools, ropes, and complex rigging connected to a three-story crane. If this work falls or clings to another stressor, its loss reverberates in the art world and beyond.

“Keep calm,” says Reed Rigger Esteban Granados to observers who gathered on June 17 to witness this moment. He has to concentrate on communicating with the crane operator. When the workers pushed the panel out of the berth a few minutes later and slowly lowered it to the floor, Granados spoke the four words the project organizer had been waiting for.

“Looks great,” says Granados. “Is beautiful.”

long time no see

“beautiful.”

“You look amazing.”

“It is wonderful.”

These are the terms people have used to describe the mural itself, but the best can also be applied to the removal of the mural from the CCSF’s well-named Diego Rivera Theater. It took years of planning and months of testing on the duplicating wall and two duplicating plates developed by engineers and exposed to falls and other extreme conditions. Pan American Unity We are finally nearing the end of our long journey to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will live for the next two years before moving back to City College in new spaces in 2023.

“We tried to recreate everything that happened here,” says Miguel Michel, the technical project manager for the move, who, along with other workers, is overseeing the dismantling of the last panel. “For example, it is much better to hold the panel from below than from above. When I tried to hold it from the first two points, it created new cracks. ”

In theory, Pan American Unity is always designed to be posable. In 1940 Rivera painted elaborate scenes on ten reinforced concrete slabs. The total weight of these panels exceeds 30 tons, but with the right planning, Rivera imagines them to be dismantled, transported and reassembled. Reality was very different; back Pan American Unity made its debut on Treasure Island for the so-called Golden Gate International Exposition, which co-funded the Treasure Island Expo, and for the City College Library, designed by famous San Francisco architect Timothy Pfluger, a patron saint of the Rivera. It was planed. However, the beginning of World War II in 1941 interrupted Pfluger’s design and eventually the construction of the library. And when Pflueger died in 1946, Pan American Unity It was kept in City College until 1961 when the plaque was strangely affixed to the inside wall of the Diego Rivera Theater.

Weird thing?

When project staff began the full-scale study of the wall, everything from the original 1961 mortar used by workers to fill the space inside the wall to the complete lack of a “finished product” was faced with major challenges. Found. That said, there was no detailed actual plan. How workers assembled and affixed fresco panels to the walls of the CCSF. From an architectural point of view, the lack of a finished product is a serious violation. Project staff spent more time examining the outside walls of the mural to get inside the walls and further understand how to remove the 10 panels from the 12-inch thick plaster and concrete lining. I had to spend a lot of time. Excessive pressure anywhere along the path, such as drilling holes in the outside wall or attaching cables to lift the panel, can damage the mural. This is actually said to be worth more than $ 100 million.

“As a fixed, portable mural, it shouldn’t have been there like that,” said Bryan Cain, general manager of Atthowe Fine Art Services, who worked with the company’s staff to move the mural. “That’s the biggest, well-intentioned mistake I’ve ever seen…. It’s like an eardrum made of a very fragile, brittle material that shouldn’t crack, but it’s a concrete wall. Permanently trapped. What’s happening? ”

The month all panels were removed was fine, but three days after the project team removed the last panel at CCSF, they faced another final step. The crane pulled it from a truck on Howard Street, lifted it over the city’s power lines with the help of ground workers, and placed it in the Roberts Family Gallery on the museum’s ground floor.

Does Pan American Unity exist? It will be open to the public in a new form on June 28th. You can visit the gallery on the first floor for free. Pan American Unity Eighty-one years after Rivera was completed, we greet visitors to a light-filled space that only shows art designed to produce murals of the highest quality.

Wide stroke

Take this topic, for example. The official title of the mural is in English marriage of the artistic expression of the north and south on this continent. (In Spanish: Unión de la Expresión Artística del Nortey Sur de este Continente. Rivera is the custom of the Maya and Aztec people, a US president like Abraham Lincoln or Pfluger (where 140 new Montgomery buildings are just around the corner from SFMOMA) .

Rivera threw himself into the mural – of course with Frida Kahlo and whoever else he knew or knew personally. He also added ominous characters and scenes from the world on the verge of war. A picture of Joseph Stalin in a white hood with a bloody sickle shows that Rivera’s friend Leon Trotsky was recently killed in Mexico.

Celebrating his life as Mexico’s foremost mural painter, Rivera created a panoramic scene that unleashes events and layers of people in a grand vision, like Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. Rivera’s murals often emphasized communism or socialism’s ideal ability to revolutionize workers, indigenous peoples, and society in the murals that combine the Aztec goddess Coatlique with the Ford Motor Company’s die cutting machine.

He saw Rivera working on a mural on Treasure Island Pan American Unity. According to the Diego Rivera Mural Project, supported by CCSF, it is work that really bridges the gap between times and people. “It’s about the fusion of artistic forms of expression in the north and south on this continent. That’s all, “Rivera is said to have written. “I think that’s what it takes to turn American art into real American art. This mixture of Indian, Mexican and Eskimo art with the urge to make machines, the artistic urge. But the material aspects of life are largely the same impulse, but in different expressions. “

Like Michelle, a 25-year-old student at the Mechanical Design and Innovation Center at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the main engineering team for the project that moved murals from CCSF to SFMOMA are from Mexico, and it’s murals. He says he feels a deep personal connection to the subject – and how important it is to pay more attention to the murals.

“It was very moving to see the murals,” recalled Alejandro Ramirez, who leads the project’s engineering team (and Professor Michelle from the National Autonomous University of Mexico), recalling his first impressions in 2018 and joining in with the murals. Say you were asked. It works out. “My mother is American and my father is Mexican. When I saw the mural it was as I was taught. Do whatever you can to support this project. I said i’m going. “

Rivera America

Rivera died in 1957, but the theme he was embedding was Pan-American Unity. Newly relevant when politicians in the United States discuss immigration policies in the United States, the economic interdependence between countries, and the debts that each generation owes not only to their predecessors but to those who follow. I am. To see a mural like Pan American Unity isn’t just about looking into the past, it’s about seeing the inseparable progress that culture is making. And the mural itself – its brightly colored pigments and its meaning – reminds us that the best art always needs care. Visitors to SFMOMA in July will see workshops making corrections and optimizations. Pan American UnityAs a visitor to Treasure Island in 1940, Rivera was able to paint a giant mural. (Next year SFMOMA will say “Diego Rivera America ..”)

The fresco’s debut on June 28 at SFMOMA will usher in an important new era for the work, says longtime historian William Maynes. Pan American Unity A prominent member of the Diego Rivera Mural Project, which began researching ways to move murals out of CCSF in 2010.

Maynes stands at the Roberts Family Gallery on June 20, watching them as workers install the final plaque on the wall. Pan American Unity It is about to see a public rebirth. He says the SFMOMA fresco move is a “coming out party” to showcase the work in front of more people.

At SFMOMA, a special steel support system stabilizes and locks the 10 panels in place. When Pan American Unity returns to the CCSF and back to the new Performing Arts Center in 2023, the murals will have a similar support system with much better display space for visitors than the current Diego Rivera Theater does. The mural is never drilled into the wall. This means that the next time you move the mural, make sure it doesn’t involve too much physical activity or sweat from your nerves.

Guardian Kianan Graves, who oversees the protection of murals, tells Pan American Unity she’s experiencing part of the “trauma of life” and therefore calls it “small delamination, which means separation between layers of plaster”. There was some powder and pigment loss and some cracks. But compared to the mobile Rivera’s other portable frescoes, this is certainly the greatest and best that it has seen in its life. ”

In other words, the visitor who sees Pan American Unity at the SFMOMA can see works that look very similar to Rivera’s wet plaster with pigments. He and his assistant had to finish each new wet piece in one quick session. After all, it took four months to complete a huge fresco. It’s been 81 years, say everyone who worked on the wall painting (restorers, riggers, engineers, etc.). Pan American Unity It should take at least 1,000 years. It is important that the mural is treated in a friendly manner.

Jonathan Cliel is a contributor.twitter @WriterJCuriel

Moving a masterpiece, one panel after the other source link Moving a masterpiece, one panel after the other

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