Picasso, Guernica Picasso, Guernica, oil on canvas, 1937 (Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid) Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker, Dr. Beth Harris
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- So, we thought we'd talk about Picasso's great painting, called "Guernica,"
- which actually, I remember seeing very many times,
- because it used to be in the Museum of Modern Art
- before it was sent back to Spain.
- - Yeah, it was. I kind of feel like I grew up with this painting.
- - Yeah, me too.
- - It was always such a powerful presence at MOMA.
- - Yeah. And it was in a very small little room, so it was very intense.
- - It was. It was. You know what was interesting is that actually,
- in Picasso's will, he lent it to MOMA
- until such time as Spain became a democracy again.
- And remember, Franco lived for a very long time.
- And this painting was made as a response to Franco -
- - Well, to a specific event, the Spanish Civil War -
- - A terrible, terrible event -
- and this is such a loaded and powerful painting
- and has had such an impact, both when it was made
- and long afterwards.
- - Yes, we can talk about two . . .
- So, maybe we should talk about the historical circumstances
- in which it was made.
- It's a gigantic painting, and it was made by Picasso in Paris
- at the request of one of two Spanish governments
- that existed at that moment.
- Remember, there was a civil war going on in Spain,
- and on one side were the Fascists, led by Franco,
- who would win the Spanish Civil War.
- But on the other side were what were called the Republicans.
- It has nothing to do with American Republicans versus Democrats.
- But these were people who wanted a democracy,
- and they tended to be a bit more on the left,
- whereas Franco tended to be very much on the right
- of this political spectrum, in a much more extreme sense
- than we have today. And what happened was that
- Franco was trying to intimidate the population.
- You have to remember, this is . . . we're talking about 1937 now.
- This is before the second World War.
- There had been the horrors of the First World War,
- and there had been the rise of Fascism in Spain,
- in Italy, in Russia -
- -and Germany.
- -and Germany, absolutely.
- -and what happened was, was that Franco decided
- to unleash violence directly on a civilian population
- in order to really cow that population,
- and to assert his power.
- - and to consolidate his power.
- - Absolutely. And so what he did is,
- he actually was in touch with Hitler in Germany,
- and he allowed Hitler to test out some of his bombers
- on the city of Guernica.
- -Hard to believe.
- -It's really incredible. And Picasso was so horrified by this-
- - the world was horrified by this - by the bombings,
- and the mass civilian casualties that resulted.
- Guernica was not a military target.
- -Guernica's a little town.
- -It's a little town. And this is a painting that was Picasso's
- sort of, visceral response to this, that was made
- specifically for an international exhibition in Paris,
- a kind of World's Fair.
- So, maybe we should talk about what we see.
- -Yeah, it's a . . . it's a very powerful image against
- the horrors of wars, I think in the tradition of
- Goya's "Third of May."
- - or David's "The Oath of the Horatii."
- But you know, those were really old paintings.
- And when you think about the 20th century,
- when this was made, history painting,which is
- what we were just referring to,
- it didn't exist, really, anymore.
- So a lot of people have credited Picasso with
- almost single-handedly re-establishing the importance
- of grand history painting. And I think for him,
- this event required that kind of solemnness, that kind of import.
- -Of the tradition of history painting. There are so many things
- that remind me of Goya.
- The figure in the foreground, for example, who's all
- splayed out with a knife in his hand,
- like the Spanish peasants in Goya,
- Christlike in their martyrdom.
- -The other thing that really reminds me of Goya here
- is Picasso's choice to do this painting in black and white -
- - black, white and grays, right.
- - and, you know, Goya's painting is in color,
- but it's all so starkly lit that it might as well be -
- - Right, and it's about the forces of darkness,
- and the forces of good.
- - It is, and the contrasts between light and darkness,
- both in this painting and in the Goya, I think
- it's very consciously Picasso, another Spaniard
- recalling that great example of history painting. Yeah, yeah.
- And that image of the mother and the child on the left,
- - That's so effective.
- -I look at this painting and I can almost hear the bombs,
- and the sirens, and the screaming. It's so palpable.
- -On the extreme right, you have the woman
- who's fleeing the burning building, her burning home.
- And of course this painting is full of symbolism.
- There's the horse, of course, screaming
- There is the broken sword as you had mentioned,
- And then, I think, really potent and really curious and
- interesting is the light source itself, that lamp.
- You know, people have said it looks like a human eye.
- Perhaps the eye of God.
- But you have an electric light bulb there.
- And also it could function as an explosion.
- That could be the explosion of the bombs.
- -I think that's always sort of how it felt to me,
- looking at that, was like the lights flickering on and off,
- and explosions, and lights, and the way that lights . . .
- you know, explosions sort of make lights flicker,
- and it has this feeling of the chaos of that moment.
- - It really does. It really does.
- It also kind of vilifies modernity, in the sense of
- the possibility of having airplanes drop bombs.
- You know, because it's an electric light bulb, after all.
- Something else that I find really interesting here
- is the cross-hatching. Do you see that,
- especially in the body of the horse?
- Some art historians have talked about that
- as a reference to the newsprint that Picasso
- used to put into his paper collages.
- But here, it's actually painted to look like
- a little hatching, as if it might be print.
- But it's not. So it's sort of self-reference.
- But also, a reminder that this is a current event.
- Like Gericault's "Raft of the Medusa," this is a tragedy that has just taken place.
- And it's a pretty extraordinary painting.
- And we know that when Colin Powell went to the UN,
- to make the case for the war in Iraq,
- by saying, claiming that, he believed at the time
- that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,
- or the Bush administration believed it, and Colin Powell went to make that case at the United Nations
- they didn't want to take pictures in front of this image.
- -Well traditionally, the press sessions are in front of
- a tapestry that was donated to the UN.
- -It's a copy of this image.
- And you're right, he did not want to be seen
- in front of that.
- -Right, because he was making a case for war.
- And here we have this very, you know -
- -Stark reminder of the price of war.
- -Right, and I think it's really important to say
- that this is represented in a sort of abstract,
- Cubist kind of representation that, I think,
- makes it more powerful.
- I think if this had looked photographic,
- I don't think it would have the power that it does.
- I think the ways that the forms are exaggerated,
- the hands moving up, and across, and all of the ways
- that we have a kind of exaggeration here
- are there to serve the emotional point of the image,
- of the horrors of war.
- -And because was brilliant, I think at doing that.
- - That formal language of expressing those emotions.
- - Yeah, but it form that is used, that is folded into such a powerful political
- and sort of humanistic message.
- - Yeah, and it's interesting also because so much of the history of the 20th century
- and of art history is really looking at art in a way that is very separate
- from the political arena.
- - A sanitized formalism.
- In fact, much of Picasso's other work is really dealing with the way vision
- can be represented in a very, very kind of formal way.
- And it's so interesting to see such a powerful statement.
- I mean, there were other examples of Picasso's work, but here is sort of the great example of the 20th century,
- of a deeply political painting from an artist who spent a good deal of his career, you're absolutely right,
- really focusing on the way we see and the way we represent what we see.
- And art historians have written art history very much in that way for much of the 20th century.
- - So here is a really successful marriage that does not separate ...
- - Art that is engaged, right?
- - In the world, in the most direct way.
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