Popol Vuh: the Watercolors of Diego Rivera opens on December 12. This will be the first exhibition in the United States ever to showcase seventeen paintings carried out by the famous Mexican muralist. Together the watercolors tell the story of the Popol Vuh, the Quiché Maya creation myth which survives until today only through a series of coincidences almost too fantastic to not be fiction. The special occasion for this post is that December 10, 2015 will mark the 85th anniversary of the signing of the contract between John Weatherwax and Diego Rivera regarding the commissioning of illustrations for Weatherwax’s translation of the Popol Vuh.
The watercolors were originally ordered back in 1930 by John Weatherwax, a Harvard educated writer. Weatherwax had bounced around a number of different projects, but when he “literally stumbled”[1]across a book which would make possible a valid English translation of the Popol Vuh, his heart was set. No one had yet published a popular English translation of the Popol Vuh and Weatherwax was set on being the first. Drawing from Spanish, French, and German translations of the Popol Vuh, John Weatherwax and his sister poured over versions of the Popol Vuh until they had constructed their own edition, ‘Seven-Times-the-Colour-of-Fire’: The Ancient American Mythology of the Popol Vuh. Though the manuscript was beautifully written, Weatherwax said of himself that he was a writer rather than a translator and much of the intent of the original Codex Chichicastenango– the earliest surviving version of the Quiché origin story—was lost in his version.
The text was unarguably invigorating, but Weatherwax wanted to breathe further life into his book by having it illustrated. Weatherwax met Diego Rivera in 1930 to ask for his assistance in getting the movie of his friend, famous director Sergei Eisenstein, filmed in Mexico. During Weatherwax’s conversation with Rivera the topic of the Popol Vuh came up however and Rivera was immediately gripped. It was not much later that Weatherwax would sit by Diego Rivera while he was painting his mural the Allegory of California for the Pacific Stock Exchange and read to him the chapters of ‘Seven-Times-the-Colour-of-Fire’. With both parties excited at the prospect of working together, on December 10, 1930 Weatherwax formally commissioned twenty six illustrations from Rivera and a contract was signed; six of the graphics would be full page drawings and the remaining twenty would frame the book’s ten chapters.
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Original contract signed by Diego Rivera and John Weatherwax, from the Archives of American Art
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Sadly the enthusiasm quickly died and progress on the book slowed at an alarming rate. At the time Diego was overwhelmed by requests for murals, and he cared enough about the Popol Vuh watercolors that he chose to spend time with each of them rather than simply pumping them out. His tempered pace would eventually become the downfall of the book though. Lippincott of Philadelphia, the one publishing house to accept the book eventually grew tired of Rivera pushing back the deadline. Concurrently the troubled economy of the early 1930s fell deeper into depression, it became too fiscally dangerous to publish a book on a subject only a small portion of the general public even knew existed. Naturally Lippincott backed out leaving Weatherwax hanging, while Rivera continued to finish illustrations at his own rate. Despite many subsequent attempts to publish the book Weatherwax was never successful. Frustrated by the entire endeavor he even tried selling the drawings individually. Ultimately the majority of the works ended up in the hands of the Museo Casa Diego Rivera, part of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura from which the Bowers Museum is currently receiving the works on loan.
While the collaboration between Rivera and Weatherwax may have ended in a falling out, the two men still managed to individually create wonderful works, each inspired by the other. The contract signed on December 10, 1930 stood as a testament of faith that something excellent would come from their partnership and it did. Now for the first time, almost exactly 85 years later the illustrations are finally being exhibited in the United States. The Bowers Museum is proud to offer what could be the opportunity of a lifetime: to see these rare watercolors and learn about the story of the Popol Vuh as both Weatherwax and Rivera would have wanted.
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