The Chessboard of Time: Reawakening the Dream of Labor

This conceptual reinterpretation of Diego Rivera’s  The Alarm Clock moves beyond the literal depiction of an object and into the realm of metaphor, titled  The Chessboard of Time . Here, the alarm clock no longer simply signals a day’s beginning—it becomes a symbol of choice, conflict, strategy, and survival. Rivera’s fascination with machinery and human labor is transformed into a broader meditation on how life itself unfolds like a high-stakes game, where every move counts and time remains the most formidable opponent.  

At the center of the composition, the classic cubist elements of Rivera’s original are reshaped into a floating chessboard suspended in uncertain space. Pieces are mid-motion, frozen in the midst of a match both chaotic and inevitable. Below, fragments of Rivera’s cubist textures—a clock, a spade, playing cards—meld into one another, their solidity dissolving into a soft turbulence of forms. A human figure, partly obscured and spectral, leans heavily toward the board, hand poised over a pawn, face shadowed in anxious thought. This is not a leisurely game. It is survival encoded in moves of hesitation and hope.  

Above the chessboard, fractured skies bleed through layers of dark fire and muted storms. There are no clear horizons. Instead, clouds swirl in countercurrents, resembling time slipping backward and forward at once. The alarm clock's dial, now fragmented and scattered across the piece, hints that time here is not linear but fractal—looping back into itself, trapping the players in an endless cycle of waking, working, waiting.  

The color choices serve as the emotional architecture of the piece. At the foundation, earthy ochres and rusted reds echo the heavy labor of Rivera’s workers—the color of raw clay, bruised knuckles, and sweat-streaked walls. These tones suggest groundedness and struggle, anchoring the chaotic composition to the world of physical survival. Overlapping this base are splashes of deep charcoal, cool slate, and tarnished silver—industrial tones that speak to machinery, metal, and the ticking inevitability of mechanized time.  

Central to the eye’s movement are sharp white and black contrasts—chess pieces illuminated against the dusty background. The stark black-and-white divisions are not just aesthetic; they symbolize the binary choices life often demands: move or stagnate, risk or retreat, yield or resist. Yet the blurred edges where these sharp colors meet suggest that even the clearest seeming choices bleed into uncertainty.  

Pockets of golden-yellow light thread through the chaos, especially near the broken clock and the figure's trembling hand. This gold was chosen carefully, not to symbolize victory but to hint at fleeting hope—the small, hard-won moments of insight or triumph that punctuate the long game of existence. The golden light is fragile and easily swallowed by surrounding greys and browns, emphasizing how fleeting and precious such moments are.  

The figure at the chessboard, though faceless, carries immense emotional weight. Half-emerged from abstraction, it represents the human at the center of Rivera’s philosophy—the laborer, the thinker, the struggler—caught between dreams and deadlines. Its partial invisibility suggests that identity under industrial time becomes blurred, not wholly erased but fragmented, piece by piece, by the demands of systems larger than any single life.  

When I created  The Chessboard of Time , I thought deeply about Rivera’s own tensions—his love of human ingenuity and craft versus his suspicion of dehumanizing industrialization. The alarm clock, for me, became not just a symbol of waking up but a summons to constant, often exhausting vigilance. Life is a game where every decision feels immense, and time, like an opponent, is relentless. I wanted to capture not only the anxiety of that battle but also the stubborn dignity of those who continue to play, to hope, to act—even when the clock’s ticking feels like thunder in their ears.  

The composition is deliberately disorienting, flowing neither vertically nor horizontally in a predictable way. Instead, movement spins diagonally across the frame, forcing the viewer’s eye to chase after meaning. This was intentional: it recreates the restless, unsleeping mind that grapples with time’s demands. There are no resting points. Every section asks a question, then leaves it unanswered.