Connections/Heroes

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.