I said earlier that I
would go back to the Prado and look at the works of El Greco. I said
I wanted to explore the link between El Greco and Picasso. I didn't
make it back to the Prado, but I was right about the Greco/Picasso
connection. Actually, it's something that Picasso himself
acknowledged in his painting. Since I don't have any training in art,
I'm quite proud of myself for finding the connection on my own.
Unlike my trip to the
Prado, in the Reina Sofia I focused on one area—Cubism, especially
“Guernica.” I never really understood Cubism, but I've become
interested in the movement since I took a new focus on composition in
my photography. Maybe that needs some explaining.
In my photography, I focus
on composition, especially the orientation of basic elements. The
subjects don't matter as much to me as how their shapes relate to one
another. When I look at my photos, I don't see happy couples or
ancient ruins or nature scenes. I see parallel verticals,
intersecting diagonals, attention-drawing points and implied shapes.
One philosophy of cubism is to reduce subjects to their most basic
geometric elements. Faces become two circles and a triangle. People
become boxes and vertical lines. Baroque architecture becomes, well,
cubes. The same elements that I look for in my photos are the only
elements that the cubists put into their paintings.
So off to the Reina Sofia
I went. The museum houses Picasso's greatest work, “Guernica.”
The work depicts a massacre of civilians by Nationalist forces during
the Spanish Civil War. I'd seen it before, but I never really “got”
it. At a glance, it looks like a badly-drawn cartoon. It has no
depth, almost no shading, hardly any color at all. I didn't see what
was so special about it Maybe seeing the original work would help me
understand.
The Reina Sofia has not
just one, but two full halls dedicated to “Guernica.” One room
shows that painting itself. Before you get to that, you pass through
a hall of Picasso's preliminary works and sketches. This hall is like
an education in modernist art.
Like the Expressionists,
Picasso wanted his viewers, not to see what he saw, but to feel what
he felt. He was more interested in emotion than image. The faces in
“Guernica” are grotesque cartoons that barely resemble human
beings. They are the emotions that human faces can't express.
Faces of hurt people, at
the moment of tragedy, don't have expressions—they have reactions.
Look at the photos coming out of Afghanistan or Haiti. Look at the
faces of mothers who come upon the bodies of their dead sons.
Later--at the funerals--their faces will communicate. They'll show
sadness or guilt or even relief. But at the moment of tragedy, there
is no expression, no attempt at communication.
Every muscle in the body
tenses and contracts. The hands clamp down on whatever they're
holding. The legs brace as if they might need to flee. The head pulls
back, the mouth flies open, and the lips pull back from the teeth.
The cheeks and eyebrows bunch up so tightly that the eyes are almost
shut. And from a tightened stomach and chest they scream so loudly it
hurts their own ears. It's not any shout of grief or sorrow. It's
just the tense hard breath through a throat so tight it can't relax.
Those screams and that look aren't any attempt at communication.
They're the expression of the human animal, filled with pain and
ready at any moment to fight or flee.
The body isn't strong
enough show all of this pain. If the muscles could contract further;
if their faces could somehow contort even more than they have, they
would. And then they would look like “Guernica.”
With that understanding,
“Guernica” comes to life. A painting that looks like a
badly-drawn cartoon becomes an expression of terror. As I walked
through the first hall, I saw Picasso's sketches and studies, “Hand
Grasping a Sword,” “Bull with a Human Face.” When I finally saw
the whole painting, it left an impression. It was disturbing,
difficult to look at. I looked at the screaming mother and then back
to the whole image. The dying horse trampling a dead body and then
back to the whole image. The witness coming out of her house, and
then back to the whole image. After a few minutes, it made such an
impact that I had to leave.
The rest of the “Guernica”
hall has two parts: paintings and sculptures that Picasso made around
the same time and a photographic retrospective of the Spanish Civil
War. The photography, of course, interested me more. I was
surprised—though maybe I shouldn't have been—that the photos
presented the Republicans in such a positive light and dealt heavily
with Nationalist massacres. “Guernica” was commissioned by the
Spanish Republic, and it was based on Nationalist (Nazi) bombing of
civilians. But the Republicans did their share of killing as well.
Nobody was innocent in Spanish Civil War, and any exhibition on the
war should reflect that.
History is sometimes
written by the losers,. After Franco's death there's an
understandable reluctance to portray his enemies as anything other
than noble martyrs. That was the theme of this retrospective.
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