Guernica
Cubism
We see a rectangular table in perspective ― that is, as a trapezium; our side of the table looks more important than the other side. But we know the table to be a pure rectangle.
The camera sees only one side of our face, but we know it to be in profile and en face at the same time.
Picasso and Braque quit visual reality and start to paint the environing objects as they know they are. The table top becomes a rectangle again, and the human face is rendered from the side and front again. This decisive act we call Cubism.
About 1500 the artists of the Renaissance invented the perspective we are still accustomed to : the artist sat down on his chair, looked at the scene from one definite angle, and tried to fix it to his panel accordingly.
Now after four hundred years the painter rises from his chair, starts moving around his object, and tries to render the totality. He changes his point of view [or to points of view].
(WJHB Sandberg, 1960, 'Picasso's Guernica', Dædalus, Winter Issue)
1937 ― GUERNICA
Then, on 23 April, Guernica, the holy city of the Basques, is destroyed in an air raid. Men, women, children, and cattle die miserably amid smoking ruins.
On 1 May, Picasso begins with four sketches for the composition and two studies for the horse. On 2 May, only three sketches. For five days : nothing ...
Evidently during these days the big canvas, 11 feet 6 inches by 25 feet 8 inches, is being prepared. Then, from 8 May, the work goes on without interruption : compositional sketches, and studies for the bull, the horse, and the weeping woman.
On 11 May, the canvas is ready, and immediately the composition is laid down as a linear structure that covers the whole surface. Work on the mural is accompanied by more than thirty studies for the details. The rough plan exists from the beginning, but it takes three weeks before the picture takes its final form.
The bull's head remains where it was first put, but the body is turned around to the left. On 20 May the horse lifted its head. The body of the soldier stretched on the floor from left to right changes position on 4 June, then head and hand take on their finished shape.
At the last moment the artist makes one decisive adjustment : the drama first took place on a street with burning houses in the background. Now, suddenly, the diagonals are accentuated, and thereby space becomes ambiguous, unreal, inside and outside at the same time. The lamp is hung over the horse's head, looking on a dreadful scene like a wide-open eye ... In the hand of the dying soldier, Picasso puts a little flower of hope.
The picture was finished about mid-June ...
(Sandberg 1960, as above)
PAINTING ATROCITY
'In its sharp lines, its confusion and its distorted shapes, Guernica shows the suffering and pain of war ... In Guernica, most of the figures have open mouths; hear them shouting, groaning or screaming.' [Jordi Xifra, 2017]
"Guernica blinds us, it stuns us ... We do not know where to look, where to direct our attention ...
Picasso breaks here with the traditional idea of contemplation of the work of art ... Guernica deafens us. The visual impression, followed by an aural impression of collapse ... Picasso does not want us to contemplate. He wants us to understand what is happening."
[Palau i Fabre, 1979]
'If peace wins in the world, the war I have painted will be a thing of the past ... The only blood that flows will be before a fine drawing, a beautiful picture. People will get too close to it, and when they scratch it a drop of blood will form, showing that the work is truly alive.'
[Pablo Picasso, n.d.]
DECONSTRUCTING THE NARRATIVE
'Guernica indicted the atrocity committed by the Nationalists (who are signaled by the bull). The heroic, defiant Republicans are represented by the mutilated horse's upturned head, slain warrior, and anguished women ...
This meaning was narratively enacted through three main visual elements : the use of black and white, the terror of the horse and other victims, and the bull's indifference.'
'Deeply engaged in the Spanish Civil War, Largo Cabarello, President of the Council of Ministers, saw the Spanish Pavilion for Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne of Paris in 1937, as an opportunity to gain economic and political support beyond Spain's borders ... in January 1937 Josep Renau, Director General of Bellas Artes, and Josep Luis Sert commissioned Picasso to help create the Spanish Exhibition. The intention was to persuade. Those who commissioned the painting had a voice in its ultimate presentation. The painting was scheduled for the opening of the exhibition in April 1937 ...
Changes in the content of the painting were made after Renau and Sert visited Picasso's studio. Documenting the visit, Renau's letter appears to be addressed to Jose Luis Sert and Luis Lascasas as the Pavilion's architects ... It describes one version of the mural as covered in colour and visually incoherent. Renau wrote that he had never seen so much shit in his lifetime ... "And I tell you that it seems there was clutter everywhere and colours and charcoal used on the mural. But we did not say anything. Then all of a sudden he had changed everything that had been attached to the mural and removed everything, all colour on it. When we saw this we all applauded simultaneously."
Picasso is reported in this letter to have said "Tienes razon Espana no se puede pintar mas que en el blanco y negro verdad", which means "You are right, one cannot paint Spain in anything more than black and white truth. This extremely revealing letter shows the power the commissioners had on the ultimate shape of the mural ... An earlier version, sketched with the horse's head turned down, seemed to indicate that the Republic was defeated ― a message rejected by those who commissioned the painting.'
'Animals in Guernica symbolise the massacre in Guernica. The impaled horse with a massive laceration on its belly signifies the unjustified slaughter that took place. The injured horse alludes to the thousands of people who died and the hundreds who were devastatingly hurt. A large portion of the horse's body is painted with what seems to be newsprint. Picasso used this technique to show that he learned of Guernica's bombing through news reports ...
['Journalists and photojournalists provided lexical and pictorial text ... The telegraph titled "The Tragedy of Guernica" by British journalist George I Steer, correspondent for The Times, helped spread the word about what had happened in this little known, isolated Basque town. Many newspapers published Steer's eye-witness account. Stories and pictures carried by newspapers had considerable impact during the Spanish Civil War ... As early as April 28, George Steer claimed that German aviators (20 Condor Legion aircraft) had razed Guernica. According to Steer, a systematic three-and-a quarter hour bombing took place, employing some 3,000 shells and incendiary bombs; 70% of the buildings in the city were affected ... Picasso's friend and fellow surrealist movement member, Louis Aragon, was at the time of the event director of Ce Soir and afterwards of L'Humanite, the newspaper financed by the Spanish embassy in Paris that enthusiastically defended the cause of the Republic. The first journalistic report arrived in Paris on April 27 in Ce Soir based on little more than a simple telegram sent by the correspondent of the newspaper in Bilbao ... L'Humanite of April 28 announced : "The most horrible bombardment since the beginning of the Spanish war: a thousand incendiary bombs launched by the planes of Hitler and Mussolini reduce to ashes the city of Guernica". Picasso read L'Humanite daily.'] ...
Among Picasso's numerous sketches to paint Guernica are those of horses. The suffering horse was an obsession for Picasso and it became the central image of the painting. It screams and shrieks from pain. For Picasso, the horse represents the passive victim in bullfighting. It embodies suffering. Its lacerated and torn body ...Its skin ... represented by short parallel lines that energise the centre of the picture. Spasmodic animal, monster mad with pain, muzzle open, scream of anguish, bristling with knives in the wind that twists the neck ... the horse is a tormented animal. It is dying.'
'In contrast to the screaming horse is the passive bull ....
"According to ... Picasso said that the bull represented barbarism ...
"In 1945, Picasso told ... 'The bull is not fascism, it is brutality, darkness' ...
Through Guernica, Picasso asked on behalf of the Republican government, with whom do you identify? Two anguished women, the broken warrior, and the screaming horse, or the passive bull.'
(J Xifra & RL Heath, 2017, 'Publicizing atrocity and legitimizing outrage: Picasso's Guernica', Public Relations Review, <http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2017.10.006>)
Elements of Pain and Panic
'Rather than a compelling antagonist, the indifferent and distant bull, the focus is on the protagonist, the people, the populace. The scene represents gesticulations of pain, of panic.'
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| Detail : the screaming horse |
The horse is both in profile and viewed from above and in front. Despite the power of the people, their mass and vigour portrayed in the strong buttocks and muscular chest of the horse, they are deeply wounded by the spear that has pierced right through the body, causing the great beast to stumble to one knee.
The combatants too are victims, slain and mutilated on the floor of the battlefield. Once the proud defenders of the people, their sword is broken and their body parts, presented in profile and in sideview, lie around like discarded joints of meat.
This shocking image of a mother, screaming with rage and grief, and her dead child, is achieved with an uncompromisingly flat, two-dimensional style. All planes of the scene are presented face-on and palms-out. The woman's head is in profile, her body turned towards us, with lactating breasts and the limbs of her child hanging lifelessly ― 'she does not protect, but rather shows' ― the unspeakable obscenity of what has been done to her. The long vulnerability of her neck is defiled by the bull's testicles in shadow behind it.
The shock and terror of the bombing is strangely expressed in the blank faces of the refugees. The hair streaming behind them depicts their flight from the flames, the grotesquely large hands and feet betraying their peasant roots (hard work, constant routines). Crouched body shapes and sharply angled shards of monochrome stress urgency and haste. The new reality is incomprehensible, their sole focus is on getting away.
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