Kristi V. Shanahan
Pablo Picasso was to figure prominently in the saga that was to tell of the artists in occupied France. He was, of course, Spanish, though he had emigrated to France as a very young man, at the age of 18. Picasso had always rejected the more traditional approaches to art, and was forever searching for the new, the untried, what seemed more real to him. For him, art was not merely a reflection of life; it had a life of its own. Picasso brought to art a real sense of freedom and had an unpredictable character, possessed of a new expression, as reflected in every new style he pursued.
He was living in Paris in 1936 when the Spanish civil war broke out. General Franco was the leader of the Spanish Fascists, and was waging a bloody war against the newly elected Republican government of Spain. Nazi Germany supported this Fascist group, and in 1937 German airplanes bombed and destroyed the tiny village, cherished by the Basques, of Guernica in northeastern Spain. The devastation was enormous, and timed to coincide with an hour when many people would be in the streets. All of Europe, at least all of free Europe, was shocked by the carnage. Pictures circulated in newspapers and accounts of the cruelty wreaked upon the villagers inundated the free press throughout Europe and America. Needless to say, the Republicans lost the civil war to the Fascists. Picasso never was to return to Spain, and his work was banned from all expositions there until the end of the Franco regime. At this time, Picasso had been commissioned to paint a mural for the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Although he had been working feverishly trying to create the perfect painting, the events in Spain in 1936 gave him the inspiration he needed for his mural. The painting is over 20 feet wide; Picasso had to rent a special studio just to accommodate its size. And, whereas formerly war had been depicted in a glorious fashion, Picasso’s
Guernica
told the truth. (Guernica)xxiv. His painting literally screams with the horror and brutality of the event. Faces in torment, looking up as if to ask for help or beg for mercy, watching as death reins down upon them from the sky; a mother, holding a dead child turns her head upward in a cry of agony; noble horses and bulls -- perhaps mythological symbols of suffering and brute force - crying out in pain suggest that all of life has been victimized; broken bodies and broken spirits combine to give the overall effect of terror and hopelessness. The garish lighted bulb at the top of the canvas, perhaps alluding to the light of the bombs, seems to blot out the light of the candle -- the one, the only image of hope. Picasso’s great masterpiece of war, carrying with it an indictment of man’s cruelty to man “…is the mirror-image of a world of atrocity and bestiality from which it is man’s duty to emerge.”xxv Picasso was careful to make his intentions completely obvious to the viewer. He said, “The war in Spain is the battle of reaction against the people, against liberty. My whole career has been one continual struggle against reaction and the death of art. In …
Guernica,
…I am very clearly expressing my horror at the military caste which has plunged Spain into a sea of suffering and death.”xxvi The mural was placed in the Spanish pavilion at the Exposition, ironically not far from that of the Nazi pavilion, a tribute to modern technology and weaponry. Once, during the Exposition, a German officer approached him at the pavilion. He asked Picasso “Did you do this?” to which Picasso replied, “No, you did.”xxvii Picasso painted the mural in a wash of brown hues, black and white, emphasizing the starkness of the message portrayed. This painting was to be one of the first the artist painted showing or alluding to the reality and terror of war. And, it was to prefigure his paintings throughout the period of Occupation in France. Picasso was often visited -- harassed -- by the Gestapo in Paris. His paintings were slashed or kicked in an attempt to demoralize or terrorize the painter. He had friends in the French police, however, who protected him, even though they were then working for the Gestapo.
In his
Weeping Woman
, www.homestead.com/hsconline/Kristihtml,xxviii Picasso honors the woman in
Guernica
who holds her dead child. This portrait recurs in Picasso’s work several times. He must have been drawn, fascinated by the heart-rending grief that he expressed so profoundly with his brush. Many feel that this painting of the
Weeping Woman
captures the mood of apocalyptic catastrophe shown in
Guernica
. She bites into a white handkerchief as if to hold herself together, to, somehow, fend off the pain of what she must be seeing. The fact this cameo portrait is in vibrant, clashing colors (all complementary colors) makes it all the more dramatic and emotion-filled.
Here, I would like to analyze this painting in depth, using a method developed by Jules Prown, professor emeritus at Yale University. This method will be included as a lesson plan for use by teachers that will help students gain a clear understanding of any work of art, in any classroom, for any age. The methodology he uses to get at this understanding, to find the information in a given “objet d’art” follows a progression through three separate steps: description, deduction and speculation. The description should include what the viewer sees. The deduction asks the viewer to come to obvious conclusions about the evidence that s/he sees. In the speculation, the observer should be able to form certain hypotheses about what the artist
intends
us to see and know. I include this here to show just how this process evolves, and how we can better see and understand a painting. Students, as well as adults, tend to see a work of art and immediately make an emotional judgement about it: “I hate this,” or, “I could have painted this, myself,” are casual but powerful indictments of any work of art. Similarly, we say that we “love” a work of art -- which is wonderful -- but, how much better it is when we can become a part of the creative process by understanding exactly what was meant or what the artist hoped to achieved by his or her art. Students can only gain from the ability to analyze or critique a work of art, because what is apparent, what is seen, then lives in the viewer’s eye. In addition, the following process will teach students to distinguish between different analytical processes, thus enhancing their writing skills across the curriculum. The following is an example of this process.