Genesis of a Painting: Picasso's Guernica - Essay Example

Describing the stages of the history of art of the twentieth century, many scholars have identified the era of the interwar decades, falling during the period from 1917 to 1945. At this time it is, as perhaps in no other period, the shock is the strongest, the fractures of the basic ontological concepts involved in the rapidly successive dramatic events of political life. The social movements of those years produce revolutionary currents of artistic creativity. National movements stimulate new ideas and art forms. Highly developed artistic culture is facing the elementary ideologism and blatant populism. The formation of totalitarian systems and the beginning of nationalism and fascism provoke the protest against this situation in the artistic groups. The relationship of artistic and political principles is especially important in the creative and it should be mentioned that the greatest part of artists in the mid-twentieth century as a form of protest chose the style of avant-garde, with which they embody their own socio-political views in an artistic form. Avant-garde is the fruit of relentless pursuit of the intelligentsia, dreaming of freedom, the activities of a group of people, creating certain objects - paintings and statues, reflecting their unusual concept of understanding the world and existence. Developing unevenly, experiencing the ups and downs, escaping from the prophesied death avant-garde is hard to understand, in many ways, precisely because it is programmed to misunderstanding. However, this does not prevent it from functioning in society, because lack of understanding of what a person pushes on the reflection on this, the search for truth, therefore understanding of the world. In his paintings, artists drew the attention to the real facts of life relating generally to political acts. It is this trend in the works of many artists of that time, among which Pablo Picasso occupies a special place. The democratic sentiments or beliefs of artists, a sense of drama of social life, its historical movement are embodied in art. The concept of life and opinions about the reaction to the specific facts of the master is expressed in the picture, but indirectly, embodied in works of art topic, containing a conceivable, created, aesthetically created world of imagery. The works by Picasso open the image of the suffering human. One of the works that have become a reaction to what was happening is a monumental panel by Picasso “Guernica”. It is one of the most expressive works of the artist in the era of the interwar decades, where the author tries to create the concept of understanding the modern world and a terrible show of their understanding of being. So, what historical events have led the author to create this work? In 1937 in the midst of the Spanish Civil War bomber aircraft Legion Condor destroyed the town of Guernica - the historical capital of the Basques in northern Spain. The first terrorist bombing of civilians, raid, which affected thousands of innocent people, once called the worldwide indignation. The bombing of Guernica was a shameless use of a huge military power of the Nazis against the defenseless civilian population. Picasso’s reaction to it was a moral response. To express their protest against this, Picasso is drawn to art.(Beevor, 2006) So which way elected Picasso to depict the tragedy? First of all, the plot and the composition of the painting are not based on the development of real events, and the associative connections of artistic images. All construction and rhythm of this huge canvas meet its internal semantic movement. All images of painting handed simplistic generalizing strokes. Drawn, only that without which one can not do that directly enters the content of the picture - everything else is discarded. The faces of mothers and men, facing the viewer, leaving only the wide-open mouth in a scream, visible holes nostrils, slipped off somewhere above the forehead eyes. No individuality, but more details would be superfluous here, and could shatter and thereby narrow the general idea. The tragic sense of death and destruction of Pablo Picasso created the agony of the most artistic form, which breaks the objects into hundreds of small fragments. Four years before “Guernica” he developed his own highly personal Mediterranean mythology that centers on the figure of the Minotaur, which was certainly Picasso. He used this mythological creature to tell the euphemistically many secrets of his personal and spiritual life, to express their outlook. One of the problems encountered when working with Picasso’s “Guernica” was the elimination of those characters that are used to form the basis of his artistic language. By now descend again to the simple forms as a direct approach to nature and more civic and meaningful response to the tragedy which he intended to show. (Arnheim, 1981) However, we can not say that the characters of the past withdraw entirely from the consciousness of the artist. Now the center of the world is Minotaur, once a symbol of the author, presented to us in “Guernica” in some other capacity. The head of a bull in the upper left corner of the picture is without a doubt the embodiment of the mythological creatures. Only if earlier Minotaur by Picasso represented themselves rather as harmless animals, now the image of the bull embodies evil and destruction. It does not occupy a central place in the composition of the work, but still claims to be dominated: its face is not only suffering, still crying faces towards it as if in mute appeal. Picasso passionately denounces the dark, bestial in human, he disrupts all of the mask. But even with greater fury, he attacks the evil that threatens a human outside, tormenting him. Picasso paints a terrible picture of the world, located on the border of the Apocalypse. The relentless strain of human bodies, so confuses many other works of Picasso, here are just appropriate - they allowed a convincing, physically, almost physically feel the horror of human beings, nightmarish absurdity of the idea of murder. This is not a demonstrative story about the bombing and murder of women and children, but tremendous force documents which summarized the tragic experience of humanity, to express all the cruelty, bloodlust. Fascism, distorted life, all living nature, gave birth to the world war and fascism, brought the world to the brink of global catastrophe. (Arnheim, 1981) Looking at the picture it is possible to note that in the center of the composition, which is constructed as a frieze of cubistically-surreal elements that are depicted by traveling woman, wounded a horse and fallen soldiers. In the hand of the defeated there is a broken sword, a sign of defeat, a number of flowers that grow by themselves on the graves of the martyrs, the birds fly up to heaven symbolize the winged soul. Alone, with rays - eyelashes, the lantern illuminates the whole scene, it is a natural witness of the tragedy. Each actor of the painting literally falls into the surrounding on all sides by a terrible world. Picasso shows the process of separation, spraying, Cubist laying of the holistic forms of human, the decomposition. The author goes deep into human nature, he seems to be looking for basic forms of which is composed any living creature. We can say that from this point of view, in Picasso’s “Guernica” there is some conflict of modernity and traditions of antiquity, where the world and man himself is seen as holistic and self-reliant. On the other hand, the central part of the picture is built like an ancient pediment with individual iconographic elements. This method of confrontation and, at the same time, the coherence of ontological views of the ancient and modern world makes “Guernica” a timeless piece of art. (Arnheim, 1981) The direct support of evil in the picture is not personified but it is the dictator Franco and Hitler. Built on the events in Spain, “Guernica” went beyond the specific historical and time-frame, anticipating events, which did not even have names. Subsequently, the personification of fascism began to see in the image of a bull, the dying horse that draws its death curse. Vain appeals to him and the genius of the world: bull did not answer anything and everything is ready to trample on its way. From another point of view perhaps the bull is not the carrier of ill will, but only ignorance, misunderstanding, deafness and blindness. The world of picture is the past and present, and future. This is - an all-encompassing effect of any generation. As the chorus in ancient drama, against the background of the main theme there are additional. Thus, the character of a weeping woman with a dead child is in the left side of the picture. In analyzing this element of “Guernica”, it is possible to find a link to iconography or biblical subjects. In the same character of weeping woman over the body of the child, it is possible to see the parallel to the image of the Pieta - the Virgin mourning the dead body of Christ. Both have different interpretation of the images weeping mother tempting looking at the picture on the thought of the modern world as irreversibly destroy the structure. The generation that was supposed to live was killed. Now there are no more successors to the human race. All is doomed to destruction. The composition is crowned by the figures of women (on the right side panel), one of which was in flames and with uplifted hands to heaven praying for the salvation of the world, the other, bearing in her long arm lamp is also a symbol of fire, global fire death. Of course, it is impossible with certainty to indicate the specific value of each character of “Guernica”, but the overall totality of the product is clear and understandable - Apocalypse. (Arnheim, 1981) Looking at “Guernica” from the point of view of plastic art, it is possible to notice that the picture is closed from below, bounded on the sides and opened up. The distribution of the composition on the space panel creates a lot of voids and spaces open up: the horns and tail of the bull, the woman’s hand, enveloped in flames, head of a horse, and woman with a torch. As a result, the picture gets the second center of gravity - beyond the canvas, from where, as we know, everything that happened is located, the invisible planes fly, sowing death and destruction, which creates an even clearer picture of nightmarish, terrifying modern world. With its powerful dynamism and severe immobility picture is a conceived composition, its pathos is not transferred to the brink, where the madness begins. Its silence gives rise to an angry scream into the void. Information in the composition of these opposites gives an eerie impression of tension. It turns out that in the drama of the Spanish town of Guernica, destroyed by fascist bombers, Picasso saw more than one of the acts of barbarism, namely, the symbol of death, in which the Nazis plunges all of humanity. In his picture, he does not play the event; in general, this work does not contain an image of something visual and definite, and stood as a kind of artistic symbol of world catastrophe. The pictorial forms of painting are symbolic. All space is filled with fragments, pieces of real and fantastic, recognizable and deformed, visual and abstract motifs of cultivated and wild, living and inanimate nature, which are destroyed, confusion, and monstrous whirlpool. These fragments are linked by kind kaleidoscopic compositions that fall randomly shifting, intersecting with each other form is strictly to their seats in perfectly calibrated manner. Of course “Guernica” is a composite picture, containing its own laws, the artistic world, as is typical of easel painting. However, it is black and white of this painting, combinations of angular lines and flat spots characteristic sharp targeting the expression of which is thrown out of the canvas, just as happens in campaigning schedule. The enormous size and grandiose feeling of the pressure of “Guernica” cause the Monumental structure of peculiar shape. Large pictorial forms are perceived from a distance, their influence permeates the environment, so the picture becomes has the twofold effect. This is a painting on canvas, designed for contemplation and deepening in her inner world, and a kind of wide-open gate through which rushes to the audience the horror of falling immense catastrophe, the collapse of the entire planet. (Arnheim, 1981) In one of his comments to “Guernica” Picasso remarked that we should fight for piece. The light in the picture is the peace that every living creature will always strive, to which all will stretch and endeavor to achieve, regardless of the complexity of the situation. It turns out that “Guernica” by Picasso paints a pessimistic picture of not only being in his world can find faith in the best and hope to win the cosmos over chaos. We see that in the world of Pablo Picasso, there is something glorifies over all earthly passions. So, as we see in his picture of Pablo Picasso paints a terrible picture of the world disasters of the twentieth century. In the work, which can be called monumental graphics created by pictorial means the author carries out a synthesis of several kinds of creativity, making his own art solutions to the political functions of art in which the two intersect - interaesthetic and socio-effective which are the response to the shocks of life. Seamless and unusually capacious nature of Picasso himself had included in both beginning, which at different periods of his creative act in different interactions. On the eve of the Second World War, the artist turns to the main problem of the twentieth century - a conflict of reality, in which the fate of the century. Reflecting the in “Guernica” his views on the fascist attacks on civilians, Picasso gives us to understand what is the basis of his ontological views, idea about the world. In 1937 “Guernica” was exhibited in the Spanish pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris, and the crowds once flocked here. However, this work was confusing and caused a variety of disputes. The reaction of many was not at all on what Picasso expected. However, not only common visitors of the exhibition were not prepared to accept the picture, in this peculiar form of telling about the horrors of war. Not all professionals have adopted “Guernica”: some critics denied the painting as not artistic, calling the painting “advocacy document”, while others attempted to restrict the content of the picture transcends specific events and saw it as a picture of the tragedy of Basque people. And although the “Guernica” by Picasso is silent, as silent and frozen in front of its people still think that could be heard shouting, moaning, crack, the whistle of falling bombs and the deafening roar of explosions. For the Spanish Republicans painting was a symbol of pain, anger and revenge. And they went into battle, carrying with them like a banner, a reproduction of “Guernica”. Works cited Beevor, Antony. The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. Penguin, 2006 Arnheim, Rudolf. Genesis of a Painting : Picassos Guernica. University of California Press, 1981 Read More