You may think a basket of flowers wouldn't be that heavy, but what you can’t see in the basket is the oppressive weight of capitalism.

Diego Rivera was a self-pronounced commie and this painting is a representation of just that. He probably could have used bricks or bowling balls but they're less aesthetically pleasing and he wanted to point a (middle) finger at the frivolities of the wealthy by using pretty pink flowers with which the high-class decorate their fancy-schmancy homes.

Rivera apparently didn’t know which side his bread was buttered on, because one of his great American sponsors (other than the Rockefellers) was a rich man by the name of Albert M. Bender, who is responsible for kickstarting the fame of both Diego Rivera and Ansel Adams in America and donating “The Flower Carrier” to SFMOMA.

This painting contains one of Rivera’s more subliminal messages, which was way better received than the time that he blatantly painted in one of his murals, “God does not exist.” He was constantly battling his benefactors over his controversial beliefs, but Rivera was very serious about the anti-capitalist messages he conveyed in his work, despite the sources of his sponsorship. He claimed that, “If the artist can’t feel everything that humanity feels, if the artist isn’t capable of loving until he forgets himself and sacrifices himself if necessary, if he won’t put down his magic brush and head the fight against the oppressor, then he isn’t a great artist.” Rivera put down his “magic brush” a few too many times if you ask me, but he was in fact a great artist. We still like Frida better, though.