COMPARE AND CONTRAST ESSAYCompare andcontrast Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry fresco program in the DetroitInstitute of the Arts with José Clemente Orozco’s Epic of AmericanCivilization fresco program...

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Compare and Contrast
The Detroit Industry Murals are a set of 27 frescoes by Diego Rivera (a Mexican artist) featuring sectors in Detroit and at the Ford Motor Company. They encircle the Rivera Court on the inside of the Detroit Institute of Arts. However, The Epic of American Civilization is a work of art by José Clemente Orozco, a painter. It is housed in the Baker Memorial Library's basement room on the Dartmouth College campus in Hanover, New Hampshire. The work of art, which was drawn between 1932 and 1934, is made up of 24 mural panels, with the main themes being the influence of both indigenous European and Native American colonists on the United States, as well as the effect of war (especially the First World War and Mexican Civil War) and rapid urbanisation on the human spirit.
In 1932, Edsel Ford, Henry Ford's son and founder of the Ford Motor Company, and William Valentiner (head of the Detroit Institute of Arts), commissioned Diego to paint two frescoes for the museum's Garden Court. In May 1932, Orozco had been a visiting lecturer in the Department of Art at Dartmouth College. He began working on it in 1932 and finished it in 1934. The frescoes, which are true frescos depicted effectively on the walls, were created by Orozco to analyse and compare the effects of two ancient civilizations on the North American region. Orozco completed the mural while his compatriot's painter, Diego Rivera, had been working on his frescoes at New York's Rockefeller Center. While Rivera's image of Lenin resulted in his work of art being drawn over, Orozco had been given complete political independence to paint whatever he wanted.
The Detroit Industry Mural Cycle, widely regarded as one of the most intricate works committed to the American sector, illustrates the city's industrial base and workforce on every four walls of the Detroit Institute of Arts Garden Court, now retitled the Diego Court. The Epic of American Civilization murals, on the other hand, can be found in the...