City/Town

Infant In The Bulb Of A Plant

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Here is the central portion of the east wall of Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry frescoes in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Rivera’s wife, Frida Kahlo, had a miscarriage during their time in Detroit and the infant in the image is a tribute to that loss.

Rivera, a communist, was invited to paint the frescoes by Edsel Ford, of the Ford motor company. He painted four walls of a great hall in 1932-1933, celebrating industrial and medical progress while also portraying its deadly uses, and mixing Aztec, Mexican and Christian imagery. The east wall is the first in viewing order, just as in church liturgies.

See also: Building The Model B (South) | Life & Death (West) | The Assembly Line (North)

Below is an (unaccredited) image of Rivera painting the outline (the “cartoon”) for this section of the wall, in 1932.

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Copyright © 2013 Cathal Woods
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Life & Death

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Above is a striking panel from the west wall of the Diego Rivera ‘Detroit Industry’ hall in the Detroit Institute of Arts. One of Rivera’s main themes was the dual use of technology, for both good and bad, and here he represents aviation both commercial and military. The bottom panel shows worldwide shipping and the extraction of natural resources by developed countries (on the right, you can see rubber trees being tapped).

See also: Infant In The Bulb Of A Plant (East) | Building The Model B (South) | The Assembly Line (North)

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Copyright © 2013 Cathal Woods
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The Assembly Line

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As can be seen from the final image below (showing the whole of the main panel), a bright sunlight was streaming through the glass ceiling on the day of our visit to Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry frescoes in the Detroit Institute of Arts, making many of our images of the north wall unusable and degrading the quality of the few included here. They nonetheless show the stunning level of detail Rivera went to despite the massive size of the work. These are all of the main panel, the bottom third of which shows construction of the eight-cylinder engine for the Model B (probably).

For more information, see also: Infant In The Bulb Of A Plant (East) | Building The Model B (South) | Life & Death (West)

Top centre …

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Bottom centre …

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Bottom left …

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Shot of the main panel on the north wall …

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Copyright © 2013 Cathal Woods
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Smithfield Market

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The two murals featured here, depicting Smithfield in the ‘good old days’ — before it was fire-bombed in 1974 (gallery of 10 images at the Tele) – are inside the modern Smithfield, rebuilt in 1986, depicted in the third and fourth images. Update 2013-11: The two ‘Memories of Smithfield’ paintings are by Angela Ginn and Lorraine Burrell, 1999; funded by Belfast City Council.

The external shot is taken from the rear of Castlecourt. The foreign multinationals in it appear to be flourishing, while many units are vacant inside Smithfield.

For background: A 40-page booklet on the history of Smithfield | BBC footage from 1959. Click here for a video about bookseller John Clancy.

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Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Building The Model B

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Today we feature the main panel of the South wall of the Diego Rivera Detroit Industry frescoes in the Detroit Institute of Arts, which shows the construction of an automobile (probably the Model B – we will see the V-8 engine being produced on the north wall) at Ford’s River Rouge plant in Dearborn. The wide shot is above and more detailed shots of the lower left, the right third, and the lower central portion follow.

Here is a video of the Rouge plant in 1938 and 1939 …

 

See also: Infant In The Bulb Of A Plant (East) | Life & Death (West) | The Assembly Line (North)

Here is the right third – in the bottom right corner (above the strip with panels charting a day in the life of workers) can be seen Edsel Ford, of Ford Motors, and William Valentiner, director of the Detroit Institute of Arts at the time Rivera painted the frescoes (1932-1933).

The lower left portion …

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Below are three shots of the lower central section, of increasing proximity to the work; the third demonstrates the amazing level of detail of the frescoes.

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Copyright © 2013 Cathal Woods
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Everyone Has The Right To Participate

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Pallets lined up in preparation for bonfires on the Twelfth (of July) in front of the human rights mural on the green behind Hopewell Crescent. A mural of the event being celebrated – King Billy (William Of Orange) crossing the Boyne river in 1690 – can be seen in the distance on the right. The words on the wall to the right read: “Where after all do universal human rights begin? … In small places close to home, so close & so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world … such are the places that every man, woman & child seek equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity.”

In the image below, more pallets and a couch.

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Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X01116 X01115 [X01568] [X05277] mental health it affects us all sustainable employment required for all regeneration not gentrification to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect at all times right to a proper education

Tullycarnet Memorial

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A three-stone memorial to army soldiers from both World Wards in Tullycarnet, featuring a line from the gospel of John (“Greater love has no-one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” 15:13) and a song by Randall Wallace for the 2002 movie We Were Soldiers called ‘The Mansions of the Lord’: To fallen soldiers let us sing, where no rockets fly nor bullets wing, our broken brothers let us bring, to the mansions of the Lord. No more weeping, no more fight, no prayers pleading through the night, just divine embrace, eternal light, in the mansions of the Lord. Where no mothers cry and no children weep, we will stand and guard though the angels sleep, Oh through the ages safely keep, the mansions of the Lord.”

By Ross Wilson with support from the International Fund For Ireland (IFI)

For a wide shot, see War And Peace.

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