Concierto de locos

Date: 1932

Medium: Block print

Dimensions (cm.): 14.8 x 14.8

Alternate titles: Dios Padre y los cuatro evangelistas; A cuál más afinado

Published edition: 

Contemporary publication: Poster, Radio-concierto por dementes de La Castañeda.

References: Exposición de Homenaje 388 (illus.); Méndez INBA 25; included in Prignitz 402-426

Selected additional references (illustrated): Caplow 2017, 90 (poster); Prignitz 1992, 22; Reyes Palma 1994, pl. 36 (poster)

Commentary: Concierto de locos (Concert of Crazies) also titled Dios Padre y los cuatro evangelistas (God the Father and the Four Evangelists) and A cuál más afinado (Which One of Them Is More in Tune) is a pivotal work that reveals Méndez’s own place in the cultural environment through his pointed commentary on current art and politics. Reminiscent of popular religious prints in Mexico, the work portrays an Old Testament figure of God, surrounded by four “evangelists,” the well-known cultural figures, Rivera, Siqueiros, Dr. Atl and Moisés Sáenz, all people whom Méndez knew. 

The unusual depiction of God has elements of mystical Catholicism, as the bearded figure holds an eye in a triangle, a symbol of the trinity, over one of his eyes.  This motif is also a Masonic symbol, and the Freemasons were very active in Mexican politics from Benito Juárez to Plutarco Elias Calles. In the lower left corner, Rivera, dressed in a pre-Columbian cape, kneels on the ground beating a teponaztle, an Aztec wooden drum. His frog-like appearance is greatly exaggerated, with bulging eyes and thick lips, his body bare underneath his garment. Above him, Dr. Atl swings noisemakers, his bearded chin in the air. Dr. Atl, known for his fierce opinions and his influence on the muralists, had become politically reactionary by 1932, to the point of publicly supporting Hitler. In the upper-right corner, Moisés Sáenz (1881-1941) rings a school bell; Sáenz, a follower of the concepts of John Dewey, was a major figure in education policiy in Mexico. As Sub-Director of the Ministry of Education and proponent of rural education Sáenz played several important roles in education, most notably as private secretary to Vasconcelos, then as Subsecretary of Public Education before heading the Cultural Missions, a project that provided educational training in rural communities. A caricaturized Siqueiros squats at Sáenz' feet, playing a one-stringed harp in the tradition of his Biblical namesake, King David; the harp is shaped like a sickle, referring to Siqueiros’s Communist affiliations. 

Each member of the group plays out his social role, and all of them have strong opinions about Mexican culture and what direction it should take. Rivera represents indigenismo in Mexican art, having by this time created many idealized depictions of Mexican indigenous life, and he had studied pre-Columbian culture, art and architecture, which he included in his murals, prints, and easel paintings.. Méndez here implies that Rivera is a reactionary, looking toward the past. Although still a Marxist, Rivera was now aligned with Trotsky, working for the government in Mexico, and the Fords and the Rockefellers in the United States; his actions generated tremendous controversy among artists in Mexico. Siqueiros represents a more doctrinaire form of Communism, Sáenz stands for the educational bureaucracy, and Atl represents nationalism – his noisemakers look like little Mexican flags. Each character is isolated in an idiosyncratic discourse of his own, brought together in a symmetrical composition that signifies their mutual participation in Mexican cultural affairs. 

Méndez  reacted to their posturing from his own independent point of view, commenting on the arts and art education in Mexico. As Prignitz-Poda explains: It is the representation of the Mexican Renaissance, of the ‘revolutionary’ mural movement, whose apostles believe themselves to be ‘the four.’ The dissonance apparent in the print honestly characterizes the conflictive situation of the artists. As singers of the gospel of the new art, each figure goes about the world proclaiming his version of the truth, believing it to be the only one.” 

The print takes the form of a poster that purports to be an announcement of a radio concert. The text of the poster reads in part, “Radio-Concierto por Dementes de la Castañeda…Por primera vez en el mundo, los enajenandos transmitirán su canto por radio” (“Radio-Concert for the Demented of La Castañeda…For the first time in the world, the idiots will broadcast their song on the radio.”). La Castañeda was a well-known mental hospital, but no such radio concert actually took place. Rather, the print is a joke, and the text a humorous way to impugn the sanity of the four figures in the image. 

Placing Rivera and Siqueiros in the foreground, Méndez focused in particular on their contradictory relationships to each other and to Mexican politics. The Mexican Communist Party had dismissed Rivera in 1929 for displaying pro-Trotsky tendencies, and Siqueiros had been expelled from the Communist Party in 1930 for obscure reasons, though still aligned with Stalin and the Soviet Union. The two artists had begun a series of public disagreements about art that had become increasingly dramatic at this time.  

In Concierto de Locos Méndez seems to be expressing the opinion that the public discourse of these cultural figures was an absurd cacophony. Here Méndez presented political activity as performance, situating the figures in a matrix of relationships based on action and display. The divisions Méndez expressed so brilliantly in this print were undoubtedly a source of both irritation and amusement. Artists and intellectuals in Mexico continued to seek avenues of action that would enable them to be effective agents of social change, but as Communists and leftists they were often involved in prolonged sectarian disputes. Rivera, for example, continued to be an important cultural figure in Mexico and the United States, but his politics led to his exclusion from groups of activist artists.  

In contrast, Méndez was a member of the PCM throughout the 1930s and was closely associated with Siquieros until the end of the decade. Concierto de Locos may have been the first politically satirical wood block print with identifiable public figures since the time of Posada, who often mocked known personages, such as Porfirio Díaz and Francisco Madero. Méndez’s print is an index of his central role in the discourses of art and politics in Mexico in the early 1930s. The print implies his close familiarity and involvement with the issues and controversies that concerned Mexican artists at this time. (Deborah Caplow)

Catalogue record number: 428