An Inconvenient Masterpiece: When Art Took on Fascism
By: Steven Gambardella
Tags: Art, Culture, History, Creativity

The bull and minotaur are dark and monstrous. The horse, often depicted as white, is almost always the victim of a bull attack. The light bearing child — always a girl — never seems in harm’s way despite being close to danger, they witness.

The combination of the mythological and photo-like black, white and grey colour scheme holds a peculiar power over the viewer. Had the painting been in full colour it perhaps would have been viewed as too aloof, too removed from the atrocity. The black and white has the effect of grounding the mythmemes into a newsprint-like reality that is actually underscored, and not betrayed, by the twisting and fracture of their forms.

Atrocity Exhibition

In July 1937 the painting was put on display in the Spanish Pavillion at the International Exhibition. The theme of the exhibition — technology — was completely ignored by the Spanish government, whose exhibits focused on the civil war and the attack on democracy by Franco’s nationalists.

Ferrer de Morgado’s Madrid 1937 (Black Aeroplanes) was also on display and preferred by government officials for its more realistic portrayal of civilian victims of the Civil War. (Fair use. Source: Wikipedia)

For many, Picasso’s avant-gardist treatment of the subject was unpalatable. The painting was criticised by leftists as not really revealing much of the truth of the Civil War. Some of the Spanish delegation criticised its modern and child-like forms, they preferred another painting on display, Ferrer de Morgado’s Madrid 1937 (Black Aeroplanes), which depicted a similar scene with more naturalism.

Le Corbusier commented that Guernica “only saw the backs of visitors.” The German guide to the World’s Fair supposedly echoed the often-used criticism of Picasso’s art that “any four-year-old could have painted [it].” But Picasso was always dismissive of traditionalist criticisms. Later declaring:

“I am only concerned with putting as much humanity as possible into my paintings. Too bad if this offends a few worshipers of the traditional human figure […] What is a face in the end? Its photo. Its makeup. What is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn’t everyone see it in their own way? I have always painted what I’ve seen, felt.” (Picasso in Arts de France number 6, 1947)

“Felt” is the key word here. The art historian John Berger praised the way Picasso’s neo-cubist style allowed him to convey pain and suffering in the very forms of the painting. We “see” pain in the twisted and deformed limbs of the victims, their dagger-like tongues, their flat, wide eyes.

Moreover shard-like waves convulse through the painting’s forms. These can only be described as traces, since they intersect the bodies and the scene, complicating the relationship between figures and ground. In another earlier post I describe how Picasso further developed cubism to convey that which cannot be shown. These traces are of immense suffering.

Picasso intended to gift the mural to the Basque people upon the closure of the International Exhibition, but to Picasso’s dismay it was rejected by officials. The painting instead went on a tour of Scandinavia and England in 1938 arranged by Picasso’s dealer, Paul Rosenberg, where it was exhibited to raise awareness of (and money for) the struggle in Spain.

In 1939, when Franco had won the civil war, the mural traveled to America where it toured until it was finally entrusted to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

A victorious General Franco arrives in San Sebastian, a Basque city, to fascist salutes in 1939 (Source: Wikipedia). Picasso entrusted Guernica to the Museum of Modern Art in New York until liberty and democracy was returned to Spain. (Public domain. Source: Wikipedia)

Picasso allowed MoMA the mural for safekeeping until liberty and democracy is returned to Spain.

An Inconvenient Masterpiece

It was during its safekeeping on display at the Museum of Modern Art that Guernica took on a profound significance as the definitive anti-war image of our time. It was of course a document of history and a recognised masterpiece of modern art, but the war in Vietnam gave the painting a new kind of meaning.

Members of the Art Workers Coalition protest in front of Guernica holding up images of women and children massacred by American troops in Vietnam (Source: Wikipedia)

In early 1970, the Art Workers Coalition staged an anti-war protest in front of Guernica. The participants held up pictures of women and children massacred at the village of My Lai in 1968 to embarrass MoMA’s board. Nelson Rockefeller and William S. Paley, two trustees of the museum, were staunch supporters of the war in Vietnam and board members allegedly profiteered from the conflict. The protestors’ point was simple, but activated a new life in Guernica as a kind of scabbed wound — half dead, half living — that could be picked at.

In the subsequent decades the mural became a frequent site of protest. Tony Shafrazi, an Iranian-American artist, daubed “Kill Lies All” over the mural in red paint, claiming his vandalism was an act of creative collaboration.

His action was likely inspired by the release of lieutenant William Calley who had admitted to murdering women and children at My Lai. “I wanted to bring the art absolutely up to date, to retrieve it from art history and give it life,” he told a magazine in 1980.

As famous as the Mona Lisa, copies, quotations and parodies of Guernica have appeared across the globe. (Fair use. Source: Wikipedia)

He didn’t need to. Guernica is alive in all the copies, quotations, allusions or even parodies to its terrible, suffocating grandeur across murals, banners, postage stamps, placards, badges and artworks.

Guernica is as instantly recognisable as Barber’s Adagio for Strings (written a year before Guernica) and its life is in the use made of it. Like Barber’s Adagio, Guernica is “performed” over and over again.

Nelson Rockefeller had wanted to buy the painting but Picasso refused to sell, instead insisting that, like him, the mural was an exile. Guernica would return to Spain, where it belonged, Picasso had further stipulated, when the Republic was once again established.

Franco died in November 1975 and his autocratic state crumbled. In 1978 Spain emerged as a democracy, albeit one with a constitutional monarchy. On the basis of the latter fact, the Museum of Modern Art disputed its return to Spain.

The painting did return, originally protected by a blast-proof screen. It turns out the screen was never needed, Guernica had survived the trauma of the Vietnam War and found peace in Spain.

Having been denied the painting, Rockefeller commissioned a life-size tapestry which he eventually donated to the United Nations in New York. The tapestry hangs in a corridor outside the Security Council’s meeting room, where it is intended to inspire the conscience of those entering the chamber.

On 5 February 2003 Colin Powell and John Negroponte addressed the UN outside the Security Council chamber to legitimise military action against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The argument was made on the basis that the dictator had weapons of mass destruction and was a financial backer of Al Qaeda.

Guernica was covered for the event by a blue curtain, apparently to make the television pictures of the briefing clearer. Whether it was an act of censorship or not, the shrouding of the mural caused people to make the connection between the bombing of Guernica and the attack on Iraq. So famous is the paintings imagery, so implanted in the imagination that it’s very covering made it all the more visible.

Had the US delegation left Guernica as it was, the painting perhaps would not have been associated with the coming attack on Iraq, its covering revealed an awkward truth.