CREATING THE MURALS
Charlot’s multinational heritage was an obvious influence on his works. He was born in 1898 in Paris, France. His father was a Russian exile, and his mother was born in Mexico of French and Indigenous American descent. This ancestry gave Charlot a life-long interest in pre-Columbian American history. After moving to Mexico City, he became a significant contributor to the Mexican Muralist movement, both through his own works and as an assistant to artist Diego Rivera. Charlot moved to New York City in 1928 to begin a teaching career. Among his students was a young Lamar Dodd. A de- cade later, Dodd became head of the UGA art department, and in 1941 he invited Charlot to visit Athens. For the next three years, Charlot gave informal lectures and talks while working on his murals with assistance from UGA art students. At the time, Brooks Hall housed the journalism school. Charlot consulted with its dean, John Drewry, on potential subject matter for murals at the building. Given a 68-foot-long hallway bisected by a door, he created two murals. Charlot chose to pay homage to and highlight the role of journal- ists and documentarians. In the left mural, the Indigenous Aztecs meeting Hernán Cortés’ conquistadors include artists rendering the invaders to inform their emperor. The mural is captioned in headline jargon: “ANNO DMI. 1519. EMPER- OR MONTEZUMA’S SCOUTS COVER AMERICA’S FIRST SCOOP. CORTEZ IN MEXICO.” For the right mural, Charlot observed military paratrooper drills in Alabama for reference and creat- ed a dynamic depiction of the soldiers in the moments before they land. Accompanying them are war reporters, their cam- eras and notepads out while their parachutes trail from their shoulders. The caption reads “ANNO DMI. 1944. PRESS AND CAMERAMEN FLASH ON THE SPOT NEWS. WORLD WAR II.” Above the center door, Charlot included a poignant personi- fication of Time as a Hellenic statue with an open bag filled with symbols of history. “All things that happen in time are cast together in Time’s poke,” he wrote in 1945. “The good with the bad: kings, emperors, poets, klu klux klans [sic], scholars, painters, richmen, poormen, soldiers, a lamb beside a lion. The dove of peace perches outside, waiting for its turn to get in.” Below her is written “TIME DISCLOSETH ALL THINGS,” a timely reminder of truth in the historical record. Charlot’s murals aren’t the only ones in the building. Lor- raine Harris created “The History of Bookmaking” (1945), a painting in true fresco in the entryway on the left. On the right is “The Freedom of the Press” (1947), an oil painting on plaster by John Chalmers Vinson. The two earliest paintings are in the stairway. On the right is Dorothy Douglas Greene’s “Contemporary Journalism” (1942), for which she sketched the offices at the Athens Banner-Herald. On the opposite wall are the remaining fragments of Edith Hodgson’s “Communication of the News” (1943). Both Greene and Hodgson created their murals as thesis projects toward the completion of the master of fine arts degree in painting.
Jean Charlot working on the Brooks Hall murals.
Dorothy Douglas Greene (American, 1918 – 2000; UGA MFA ’42) with her mural “Contemporary Journalism,” 1942.
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