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My name is Jose Rivero, and I'm a security manager here
at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. And my topic is heroes.
Salman Rushdie says that the telling and receiving of
stories is a part of human nature and that that instinct
is hardwired into our DNA. Basically, he says we're storytelling animals.
I've always loved movies; I loved cowboy movies, I loved the samurai movies
ancient Rome, you know Steve Reeves. I've always loved comic
books. And, as I got older, I really developed myself drawing
what I now know were storyboards, but I didn't know until I went to art school that that's
what I was drawing, kind of cinematic compositions of these heroes. They were always
handsome and beautiful and muscular and doing the right thing, empathetic,
cool, and stoic and you know, things that were very attractive to me as a kid.
I was born in Cuba, so I was bombarded by propaganda posters
and photographs. Everywhere you'd go there would be these
posters of people from all different parts of the world, heroic people with
strong leaders, representing various revolutions that had taken place over the
last ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years. I didn't fall for the political message.
When I would go home, my parents, my grandparents would tell me exactly
the opposite of what I had been told in school. They talked about how great
it would be to someday come to the United States, and about abundance in the United States, but yet
it made for great visuals. The artistic expression of those posters had great merit and
had great attraction to me as a child and I'm sure to many others. You know, not unlike
Washington Crossing the Delaware. I mean, here's this strong leader with the heroes
on the ship fighting through the weather and the conditions to fight a revolution.
As a child, because of the blockade in Cuba, new western films didn't
come into the Cuban theaters, so in order to replace them they put
samurai movies. The Portrait of the Warrior, I think of Toshiro Mifune in the movies, the samurai
is stroking his beard, he looks confident. He's armed and he seems very strong, yet relaxed.
What seems to me to be one of the most influential if not the most influential
story of our times is the story of Christ. I've learned most of the story
by looking at paintings –annunciation, lamentations, denials, baptisms.
Da Messina just, he simply does a portrait of Christ with a crown of thorns. And
Christ is Sicilian-looking, he's south-Italian looking. It's a straight-on portrait,
he does it with a dark background, Christ from the chest up, with a very sad, hurt-
looking face. It's simple, and it's telling a very powerful part of that story.
I studied painting illustration at the School of Visual Arts here in New York,
and when I was younger I was much more into, into, like, these perfect heroes,
these, you know propaganda poster heroes, these very muscular physical presences.
The Buddha is something that I appreciate much more now as a hero, like the Christ figure,
who is vulnerable, who is capable of having pain inflicted upon him, who is trying very
hard to be the best example of humankind but who is still human. And this piece represents
that very well. It is damaged; the hands aren't there. There's a lot of abrasion to the
piece. So not only is the Buddha vulnerable, but the sculpture itself is vulnerable.
In every one of these, it's fine art, it's much more than an illustration, but
the artist, through the composition and through the action of the individuals
has chosen them just at the right moment and shown them in just the right way, from the
right angle, that you don't need the title, you don't need to know who the characters are
to tell the story.