Though he would have preferred Pablo Picasso, in 1932 oil heir and future politician Nelson A. Rockefeller approached artist Diego Rivera with the offer of painting a mural at Rockefeller Center's RCA Building (now better known as 30 Rock). The Mexican mural master wasn’t too enthusiastic at first, but the two men eventually reached an agreement and in 1933, scaffolds, plaster, paints and painters arrived upon the scene.
Men at the Crossroads
Perhaps Rockefeller should have realized that Rivera, one of the foremost proponents of socially conscious art, was unlikely to celebrate capitalism in his work. Rivera instead came up with a mural that featured capitalist greed and Russian leader Vladimir Lenin amid labor unrest, and once Rockefeller discovered Rivera's plan, he was not at all pleased.
Rockefeller did not want to have Lenin glorified in an American structure and requested that the revolutionary's image be removed from the grand scheme of things. Rivera and his crew of assistants refused, yet Rivera did offer to include Abraham Lincoln in the mural as a concession if Lenin could remain.
Rockefeller held firm on the no-Lenin edict and the project, which would have been called Man at the Crossroads, reached the ultimate crossroad and was terminated. Rivera was able to keep his fee, while his mural was slated for total destruction. Rivera wanted to have photos taken of the existing work, but Rockefeller’s firmly-stationed security guards at the building’s entrance turned Rivera and his camera man away.
Lucienne Bloch
Fortunately for Rivera, a volunteer assistant named Lucienne Bloch was on his apprentice crew, and Lucienne had enough clever nerve to sneak in and photograph the mural as it then was. Her fellow Rivera assistant Stephen Pope Dimitroff teamed up with Frida Kahlo, Rivera’s equally iconic wife, and diverted the guards’ attention while Lucienne took pictures. Lucienne had a small spy camera hidden in her blouse and went quickly to work, preserving images of what would never come to be—or at least not at Rockefeller Center. Rivera did reproduce the full Lenin concept in a mural back home at Mexico City‘s Palacio de Bellas Artes, where it remains to this day.
Bloch's unique friendship with Frida Kahlo was bolstered by the fact that Lucienne’s father, composer Ernest Bloch, had had extramarital affairs and been unfaithful to Lucienne’s mother. Though she loved her father, Lucienne empathized with the pain of adultery and refused to inflict that upon another woman. Kahlo was also an artistically kindred spirit, so no matter how intriguing the charismatic Rivera might have been, Lucienne stayed true to her amiga Frida.
Lucienne Bloch went on to have a long and fruitful career as a photographer, illustrator, lithographer, sculptor and muralist in her own right, including her WPA-funded fresco "The Evolution of Music" and a project commissioned by the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Lucienne also married and collaborated creatively with Stephen Dimitroff, raising a family and living in California for several decades until her death in 1999 at age ninety.
Sources
- American Women Artists -- Charlotte Streifer Rubenstein (Avon Books, 1982)
- Lucienne Bloch Obituary -- The New York Times
- Lucienne Bloch Biography -- LucienneBloch.com
