Continuing the story: student expands mural tradition at Dartmouth

Posted 07/12/01, by James Donnelly

Separated by years of history, culture, ethnicity and gender, nothing appears to connect the famed Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco and Karin Goodfellow, a recently graduated Dartmouth studio art major from Boston. Nothing, that is, until one sees their art.

Before graduating Goodfellow completed a mural in the Dartmouth Geography Department that complements and expands upon Orozco's renowned 1930s mural work in the College's Baker Library. Though Orozco died 30 years before Goodfellow was born, the stories and critical ideas firmly established in both works bind them closely together.

Now recognized as international treasures, Orozco's murals were controversial when they debuted at Dartmouth, mostly for their perceived socialist and anti-intellectual bias. They are now considered to be among the greatest works of art and social commentary of the 20th century. Orozco sought to convey the epic of human civilization in the Americas in 24 individual panels created between 1932 and 1934. One panel, titled "Gods of the Modern World," depicts skeletal figures clothed in academic gowns attending the birth of infants sealed in bell jars as they are taken from the prone figure of a skeletal mother. Called "hideous" and "ugly" by critics, "Gods" was among the most controversial panels of Orozco's work.

But the controversy surrounding the murals was anticipated and desired. "Passive acceptance has no legitimate place in the educational process," wrote Dartmouth Professor of Art Artemis Packard in 1934 in an essay introducing the murals to the campus. "The double-edged incisiveness of controversy is one of the major educational values to be derived from work as positive and vital as Orozco's.... Whatever may be the final judgment of time on the place of Orozco and these murals in the great tradition of art, the college generation which witnessed the creation of these frescoes had a rare and exciting privilege."

Seventy years later, Karin Goodfellow uses "the double-edged incisiveness of controversy" in her mural to present an idea that is intellectually and artistically challenging. Students graduating from college study a skeleton figure, similar to the one in Orozco's mural, before venturing into a potentially constraining world. Set against a fractured New Hampshire landscape, the figures offer powerful social commentary on post-college life. Goodfellow says she was inspired by what she saw around her. "I see people working so hard to find jobs, to get money, to get ahead," Goodfellow said. "I wanted to respond to that through art."

Just as Orozco found inspiration in the shape and arrangement of the walls in Baker Library, Goodfellow was stirred by the visible rectangular pattern of the concrete blocks that make up the wall in the Geography Department. Multilayered acrylic hues are painted in bold perpendicular strokes.

"In some ways I wanted to incorporate the texture [of the wall] and in other ways defy it," Goodfellow said. As a result, a tree both grows naturally, curving and angling, but also bends around the grooves between the cinder blocks.

Orozco was supported by the College while he completed his mural work, serving as visiting professor from 1932 to 34. Similarly, Goodfellow's project was supported by the Dartmouth Geography Department, which supplied her with the space to work, and paid for lighting and materials. "We saw in Karin's work a tremendous energy and inventiveness which we knew would be an exciting addition to the Department," said Richard Wright, Professor of Geography and Associate Dean of the Faculty for the Social Sciences. "We are delighted with the result."

The generous offer by the Geography Department to provide wall space and financial support gave Goodfellow the chance to complete her studies in a way that was meaningful to her and made a lasting contribution to the College. The mural became her Senior Culminating Experience (a program in which Dartmouth seniors develop a sophisticated understanding of their major field by completing a senior project).

Goodfellow says she feels a strong connection to Orozco and other Latin American masters who brought about a renaissance in mural painting in the Americas. She has worked in Ecuador and plans to continue her studies in Lima and Cuzco, Peru, next year, sponsored by one of Dartmouth's Reynolds Fellowships. The program finances a year of study outside the United States. "I find it fascinating," Goodfellow said of Latin America. "I'm from Boston, went to public school in the suburbs and now I'm at Dartmouth. But there's definitely something intriguing for me there. I can't say I'm part of that tradition, but I definitely feel the connection. I know my mural would be really different if I hadn't spent time learning from Orozco."

Painting an entire wall by oneself is exhausting work. Often laboring late into the night, it was not unusual for Goodfellow to fall asleep on the couches in the Geography Department's lounge. "I'd wake up after painting all night and students and professors would be walking past. It was all very open. People would walk into the lounge to read their mail or get coffee," Goodfellow recounts. She thinks she must have felt a little of what it was like for Orozco, working so many years ago in the Dartmouth Library. "A mural is a public piece of art," Goodfellow said. "It's created in public and exists where people will be looking at it for a long time to come."

There is no predicting who will see the mural or what they will think. Perhaps years from now someone else will pick up the brush and continue the story where Goodfellow and Orozco left off.

- by James Donnelly