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Good articleMan at the Crossroads has been listed as one of the Art and architecture good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
January 18, 2018Good article nomineeListed
Did You Know
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on January 22, 2018.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the Rockefeller Center mural Man at the Crossroads was destroyed after the artist surreptitiously added a portrait of Lenin?

Comment

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I think that the mural itself is of relevant importance as to have its own space.

I agree. I think a good principle should be that if an artwork possesses an intrinsic significance beyond its own aesthetic, or as simply a component of an artist's or movement's body of work, then it should qualify for its own entry. Is there a photograph of the work? Andrew Riddles 13:55, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Linked to photo of the original mural. --RhoOphuichi (talk) 22:56, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely believe that there should be a link to this article from the Diego Rivera page, as well as from any other page that may bear reference to it.

Rockefeller center

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Crazy question: didn't they recreate this somewhere in NYC (maybe in the Rockefeller center itself??) in the 1980's ?? Maybe I'm hallucinating, but I could have sworn I saw this in NYC, and there was big hoopla at the time about how it was restored/recreated. linas 04:14, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sgt. Pepper inspiration?

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Could this mural have been an inspiration for the cover of the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band? Not just with the arrangement of the faces, but with the plants in the lower front? -- Pacholeknbnj, 5:28 PM EDT, 15 August 2007

Society women drinking?

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I don't see any women drinking. I assume the "society women" are to the left of center. They're playing cards, and one is smoking in the background, but I don't see any drinking. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.89.247.208 (talk) 03:56, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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WHO THE HELL CAN REMOVE THIS STUPID SKYPE LINK PLEASE? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.233.91.84 (talk) 19:29, 28 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Coit Tower

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Working about February to April 1934 the painters of the murals in Coit Tower, San Francisco, reflected recent incidents. Masha Zakheim Jewett's Historical Essay Coit Tower Politics in FoundSF shows and describes the details of the mural "Library" by Bernard Zakheim: The headline of the uppermost newspaper reads "Thousands Slaughtered in Austria" and dates of February 12th, 1934, the start of civil war in Austria (search for weapons at the social democrate Schutzbund, in Hotel Schiff in Linz). The newspaper underneath titles "Local Artists Protest Destruction of Rivera's Fresco", the reader is John Stackpole, the author of the mural showing the Californian industry. Ans a man takes the book "Karl Marx, Capital" out of a shelf. (Moved by the murals in SF 30 years ago, as I came from Linz.) --Helium4 (talk) 12:24, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

STDs?

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Why is there a link to sexually transmitted diseases? Is there any evidence that that was intended by the artist? If so, there should be a citation. If not, it should be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.2.63.2 (talk) 18:30, 23 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to see more about the actual content

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I didn't find anything quickly searching, but I think that the content of the mural is interesting and deserves serious coverage. Surely someone must have described it at some point... To give an idea of what I mean, here's what I'm seeing in it (no, I don't expect the article to take my word for it):

  • Upper left. A dim view of trypanosomes and an empty flask project upward toward a succession of plasmodium infected cells, a polymorphonuclear leukocyte (immune response), bacteria infected cells, and (maybe) a highly stylized notion of virus infected cells.
  • Lower left. The Sun, surrounded by stylized planets, flares out in a nova toward the doomed Moon.
  • Lower right. Perhaps a stylized placenta, the testis at bottom, ovary at the far end, and nipple exuding milk at top symbolize reproduction.
  • Upper right. A stylized dream of distant galaxies and suns awaiting colonization.

With crops at bottom and machines at top, the rich at left and the organized poor at right, I would take the mural to symbolize the choice (crossroads) of humanity between disease and ultimate extinction, or endless growth and expansion into the cosmos.

Of course the question is: did people at the time interpret it in this way, or some other way, or any way? Wnt (talk) 19:31, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to read some interpretation as well.

I was curious about the figure between Trotsky and Karl Engels. After looking at photographs of famous Communists the best I could come up with was a young Josip Broz Tito. See: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Josip_Broz_Tito_in_prison_1928.jpg However, after reading a few other reports descriptions, I think it might be that arch-Communist Abraham Lincoln.

I recognize the contrast between the fascists in the top left and the communists in the top right. The headless statue on the right is holding fasces bearing a kind of swastika, while the statue on the left wears a cross.

It is certainly allegorical. However, my interpretation means nothing to Wikipedia. We'd need the words of a Rivera expert or a committee of artists and political scientists. Humphrey Tribble (talk) 04:52, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Is that Nelson Rockefeller next to Trotsky?

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Between him and Marx/Engels?

Compare this: https://pp.vk.me/c633528/v633528285/26548/zssWgDsq5a4.jpg and this: https://pp.vk.me/c633528/v633528807/40b05/-tRYT4VX_Js.jpg — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.151.31.76 (talk) 03:59, 9 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Images of the original, destroyed version of the mural

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Has the image of the original version had the right to appear of wikipedia yet ? Or it still cannot be freely-used ? Михаил Александрович Шолохов (talk) 09:38, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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