Why I think Picasso failed
The word “Guernica” may not mean much to you. But it should. Everything old is new again and that includes humankind’s drug of choice, civilian slaughter from the skies.
On April 26, 1937, German warplanes pounced on Guernica, a small peaceful Basque town in northern Spain. It was market day, a beautiful spring afternoon.
After three and a half hours of bombing and machine-gunning from the air, the town lay in ruins, on fire, splashed with blood and corpses, cut to pieces. A third of the population, 1,600 people, was dead or injured.
Hitler, partnered with Mussolini, was backing fascist Gen. Francisco Franco in overthrowing a democratic Spanish government, testing his planes, learning to terrorize.
It has been called the first aerial saturation bombing of civilians in history. One of its most vicious aspects was how personal it was; as they ran from death, villagers could see the faces of Nazi pilots strafing them from their low-flying planes.
The Spanish painter Pablo Picasso was in his Paris studio when he heard about the attack. A disinformation campaign followed, with Franco, Germany and Italy calling it fake news, as the phrase now goes.
Must be Stalin’s fault.
But the evidence was there, broken and wet. Picasso began sketches of a huge painting he would call “Guernica,” a portrait of a massacre, of the horror of deliberate human extermination. It became one of the most famous paintings in modern history, done in shades of black, white and grey because a more accurate portrait would have demanded a solid scarlet wash.
It is a massive 3.5-by-7.8-metre blast of agony. We see men, women and babies with their eyes to the sky, mouths open, faces in anguish, a horse grimacing as it’s cut to pieces, onlookers frozen in horror, women screaming as they hold their babies freshly dead, all horizontals and jagged angles like broken teeth, pure chaos, a Spanish bull disjointed, severed human limbs, bones and flesh, dark and light.
Study the details closely. It is a vision of hell.
According to journalist Russell Martin in his book “Picasso’s War,” during the Paris occupation a Nazi officer is said to have visited Picasso’s studio.
“Did you do that?” he asked Picasso about a sketch of “Guernica” pinned to a wall. “No,” Picasso replied, “you did.”
In1939, “Guernica” was shipped to New York for safety. A tapestry copy was eventually hung at the UN to remind member nations of the horror of war and war crimes.
In 2003, it was curtained over so as not to embarrass the U.S. making a mendacious case for overreacting to 9/11 terror by invading Iraq and creating an awesome self-wound.
A few years ago, I saw the original painting at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid where it now lives. It was shocking and vivid in a gallery quiet enough for contemplation.
I habitually cannot admire things I am told to admire, but this was an exception. We were silent and sad.
Yet here we are, watching Gazans just like Guernicans, crushed, cut up, orphaned, helpless, dying by the tens of thousands as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military commits a festival of war crimes.
Not to write about this causes moral injury. I no longer find “Guernica” inspiring. I find it tedious. My heart empties.
For the Israeli invasion of Gaza is Guernica multiplied, more than 30,000 Palestinians dead, mostly women and their gorgeous cleareyed children. Their photographs look like Picasso’s jagged pain forms.
Do you see why I think “Guernica” is a failure? Art changed nothing.
Men love war. All child slaughter seems the same, in Spain, Palestine, Israel, Sudan and Myanmar. “Guernica” looks like a mere postcard now, part of a grisly collection.
Perhaps one day we will understand what these Guernicas mean.