Guernica

Beau monde des masures
De la nuit et des champs

Visages bons au feu visages bons au froid
Aux refus à la nuit aux injures aux coups

Visages bons à tout
Voici le vide qui vous fixe
Votre mort va servir d’exemple

La mort cœur renversé

***

It is an unfortunate fact that throughout the history, one of the strongest stimulations to the greatest minds of art, science, technology, philosophy... had been the strongest destruction mankind ever created: war. It nurtured the industrial revolution, it nurtured scientific researches, it nurtured paintings, cinema, theatre.. The most impressive and striking images of photography has been those taken in times of war, such as that of My Lai Massacre; Q: And Babies, A: And Babies. The cinema has been dealing with the World War II for years, even today. And one of the greatest works of Picasso is no exception, Guernica, depicting the bombing of the Spanish village during the Spanish civil war, killing hundreds of civilians in about 3 hours, razing the village to the ground.


Guernica is a navy blue, black and white mural painting 3.5 m tall and 7.8 m wide that Picasso created in 1937, right after the Guernica bombing. It had first been exhibited in Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (1937) in Paris, traveled extensively between 1939 and 1952 in the United States, and between 1953 and 1956, throughout many cities of Europe, and Brazil. It finally came back to MOMA and stayed there in a private room where it is surrounded by some other paintings of the artist, when finally in 1981, it returned back to Spain.

The painting shows suffering people, animals and buildings wrenched by violence and chaos. There is darkness, fear, pain and panic, however, there is also hope for the future. The overall scene is within a room with an open end on the left. At one point in the image, Picasso intended to signify the destructing effect that technology may have on society; there is a light bulb in the shape of an evil eye over a suffering horse's head, and the Spanish word for lightbulb is 'bombilla', making an allusion to 'bomb'. While working on the painting, Picasso expressed;

'...The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death? ... In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death..'

In her article titled "Analyzing Political Art to Get at Historical Fact: Guernica and the Spanish Civil War", Beverly Ray lists the following interpretations of the painting:

- The shape and posture of the bodies express protest.
- Picasso uses black, white, and grey paint to set a somber mood and express pain and chaos.
- Flaming buildings and crumbling walls not only express the destruction of Guernica, but reflect the destructive power of civil war.
- The newspaper print used in the painting reflects how Picasso learned of the massacre.
- The light bulb in the painting represents the sun.
- The broken sword near the bottom of the painting symbolizes the defeat of the people at the hand of their tormentors. (Berger 1980; Chipp 1988)

While living in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II, Picasso had been harassed by Gestapo; seeing a photo of the painting in his apartment, an officer had asked him, "Did you do that?", and Picasso replied, "No, you did."

Since it was first exhibited, Guernica has been the subject of many protests against war and massacre, becoming an icon. Its enormous influence could be seen especially during some recent occasions in United Nations building in New York. Since 1955, a tapestry copy of the painting is displayed on the wall at the entrance of the Security Council room. A large blue curtain was placed to cover it, on February 5, 2003, in order not to be visible in the background while Colin Powell and John Negroponte were giving a press conference. It was claimed that the reason why the curtain was placed there was that the news crews had asked for it, in order to get rid of screaming and sharp figures making a bad background, however, according to some diplomats, it was the Bush administration who pressured UN officials to cover the tapestry, not to have it in the background while Powell and other US diplomats were arguing for war on Iraq.

Guernica has also been subject of other artistic works, such as an early short movie by Alain Resnais and Robert Hessens in 1950. The 13-minutes movie shows some of the works by Picasso, focusing mostly on Guernica, by showing parts of the painting, while in the background Maria Casares Jacques Pruvost narrate the historical fact of Guernica bombing and the poem La Victoire de Guernica by Paul Eluard. The same poem also accompanied the painting in the 1937 Paris exhibition where it was first displayed.

Guernica is the scream of the people massacred in 1937. What we are left with, today, is an admiration for this artwork and a feeling of pain for those that lost their lives. However, no matter how many paintings are created, or how many photos are taken, the destruction, against each other, still goes on today, even now; and it will take probably an infinite number of paintings to finally realize the reality, or to feel completely numb.