Jose Clemente Orozco’s Prometheus painting in Mexico.

 

What initially drew me to this painting was the title. In my Greek and Roman Mythology class we talked a lot about Prometheus and how he stole fire from Zeus and brought it down to earth. I found out that Orozco did a mural of almost this same thing earlier that same year in the United States.

Jose Clemente Orozco’s Prometheus mural at Pomona College in California.

  

So, why are they different? Well, for Orozco everything that he painted had a reason, and not merely to look cool. The fire Prometheus stole usually represents wisdom or new knowledge (which seems fitting for a mural at a college). In the mural there is a good mix of people reaching for and embracing the fire and people looking away from it in fear. In the painting, there are only two other people and they are cowered in fear. Again, what is that supposed to mean? Wouldn’t people be so excited to have more knowledge and wisdom?!

At this point, the Mexican Revelution had just happened. Although many thought the revelotion was wonderful, Orozco saw it in more of a different light in that it brought about some great changes but with some bad consequences.  The sense of this painting is exactly that—with the good comes the bad; it’s not always strictly the good OR the bad.

I think a lot of times in life we want to label an event that happened in our lives as a good thing or a bad thing. The fact is that all of these “things” whether good or bad have equally significant meaning in our lives in both good and bad ways. It’s important to step back and take a look at how these “good” and “bad” events are actually shaping our lives in ways we didn’t realize; we need a dose of pserspective.