Guernica: Testimony of War

It is modern art's most powerful antiwar statement created by the twentieth century's most well-known and least understood artist. But the mural called Guernica is not at all what Pablo Picasso has in mind when he agrees to paint the centerpiece for the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 World's Fair.

For three months, Picasso has been searching for inspiration for the mural, but the artist is in a sullen mood, frustrated by a decade of turmoil in his personal life and dissatisfaction with his work. The politics of his native homeland are also troubling him, as a brutal civil war ravages Spain. Republican forces, loyal to the newly elected government, are under attack from a fascist coup led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Franco promises prosperity and stability to the people of Spain. Yet he delivers only death and destruction.

Hoping for a bold visual protest to Franco's treachery from Spain's most eminent artist, colleagues and representatives of the democratic government have come to Picasso's home in Paris to ask him to paint the mural. Though his sympathies clearly lie with the new Republic, Picasso generally avoids politics - and disdains overtly political art.

Probably Picasso's most famous work, Guernica is certainly the his most powerful political statement, painted as an immediate reaction to the Nazi's devastating casual bombing practice on the Basque town of Guernica during Spanish Civil War.

Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace. On completion Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed. This tour helped bring the Spanish Civil War to the world's attention.

This work is seen as an amalgmation of pastoral and epic styles. The discarding of color intensifis the drama, producing a reportage quality as in a photographic record. Guernica is blue, black and white, 3.5 metre (11 ft) tall and 7.8 metre (25.6 ft) wide, a mural-size canvas painted in oil. This painting can be seen in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.

Interpretations of Guernica vary widely and contradict one another. This extends, for example, to the mural's two dominant elements: the bull and the horse. Art historian Patricia Failing said, "The bull and the horse are important characters in Spanish culture. Picasso himself certainly used these characters to play many different roles over time. This has made the task of interpreting the specific meaning of the bull and the horse very tough. Their relationship is a kind of ballet that was conceived in a variety of ways throughout Picasso's career."

Some critics warn against trusting the polital message in Guernica. For instance the rampaging bull, a major motif of destruction here, has previouse figured, whether as a bull or Minotaur, as Picasso' ego. However, in this instance the bull probably represents the onslaught of Fascism. Picasso said it meant brutality and darkness, presumably reminiscent of his prophetic. He also stated that the horse represented the people of Guernica.

Artist's Mother

Have you ever watched the 1997 feature film based on the television series Mr. Bean which stars Rowan Atkinson in the title role and Peter MacNicol, Bean: The Movie? The movie featured a famous painting; the portrait Whistler's Mother. Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, famous under its colloquial name Whistler's Mother, is an 1871 oil-on-canvas painting by American-born painter James McNeill Whistler. The painting is 56.81 by 63.94 inches (144.3 cm × 162.4 cm), displayed in a frame of Whistler's own design in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, having been bought by the French state in 1891. It is now one of the most famous works by an American artist outside the United States. It has been variously described as an American icon.

In the movie Bean, the Grierson Art Gallery is given a donation of $50 million dollars by General Newton to buy the painting. Mr. Bean sneezes on the painting and when trying to remove it with a napkin, he discovers that he had a broken pen in his pocket, and covered the face with blue ink. In panic, he takes the painting down and tries to clean it, but knocks it out of its frame, and steps on it.. He runs to the janitor's closet and applies lacquer thinner on the face. He is relieved, as the blue ink disappears from the painting, and he happily puts away the lacquer thinner. However, when he turns around and sees the painting again, he'd added the wrong type of paint thinner, causing bubbles in the paint. In shock (again) he desperately tries to remove the bubbles from the painting, but instead he rubs all the paint off from the face. Not knowing what to do, he draws a cartoony, childish-looking face on the white spot and quickly takes the painting back to the room where it was being kept before.

He quickly locks the door because someone is trying to come in, and for safety reasons he pulls a big plant in front of the door to prevent it from opening. Instead, David Langley, his colleague, enters from the other door, which Bean hadn't noticed. He sees the painting is not on the wall and Bean shows him what he's done, horrifying David, who thinks he'll be fired and sued for this. The painting is put back and David and Bean leave. 

In the same night, Mr. Bean breaks into the museum, distracts the security guard by mixing an entire bottle of laxative into his cup of coffee and changing the men's room key with another key, to keep him out of the security office to buy time, so he won't be seen on the cameras. He then swaps the painting with a poster of it, sticking it onto the frame with chewing gum, and proceeds to cover the poster with raw egg yolk and heating it with a hairdryer, making it look like a real painting. Mr. Bean kept the actual painting for himself, and later took back his home in London, where he hung it on his bedroom wall.

This shows that the painting is so important. Popularly known as “Whistler’s Mother,” this painting appeared radical in its time for its spare, unsentimental, and unflattering portrayal of the painter’s mother. As noted in the quote above, Whistler insisted that the sitter’s identity was secondary to the painting’s aesthetic purpose: to organize shape and color in a pleasing manner.

While some understood Whistler’s goals, many wanted to derive some sentimentality from the portrait. More than one critic suggested that Whistler had depicted his mother “after her death.” Another complained that the work was the "experiment of an eccentric.” Nevertheless, the painting was shown in several European venues, receiving mixed reactions along the way. A critic wrote in the London Times in 1872: “An artist who could deal with large masses so grandly might have shown a little less severity, and thrown in a few details of interest without offence.” A Parisian critic wrote in 1884: “It was disturbing, mysterious, of a different colour from those we are accustomed to seeing. Also the canvas was scarcely covered, its grain almost invisible; the compatibility of the grey and the truly inky black was a joy to the eye, surprised by these unusual harmonies.”

More than a decade after the painting was first shown, the French government purchased it to be displayed at the Luxembourg Museum. Whistler was ecstatic about his vindication. He said, “Just think—to go and look at one’s own picture hanging on the walls of Luxembourg—remembering how it was treated in England—to be met everywhere with deference and treated with respect…and to know that all this is…a tremendous slap in the face to the Academy and the rest! Really it is like a dream.” (December 1884) The honor of having his work displayed in such a prestigious institution helped the artist attract and secure wealthy American patrons and elevated his reputation in Europe as a bold, dynamic painter.

Who Was Whistler’s Mother?
Anna McNeill Whistler was a model woman according to the Victorian standards of her day: she was pious, submissive, and her life centered on domestic issues. She lived in three countries, witnessed the United States Civil War, often served as her son’s art agent and, later in life, was fascinated by the eclectic group of individuals that formed her son’s artistic circle.

She suffered great tragedy at an early age, losing her husband and three of her children to illness while the family lived in Russia. In 1863 she moved to London and lived on and off with James and her other children. She was very involved in James’s life, and was familiar with his fellow artists, students, patrons and collectors. She wrote that the: “artistic circle in which he is only too popular, is visionary and unreal tho so fascinating.”

As was customary for a woman of her social class, Anna Whistler kept in touch with her family and friends through letters. Today, her correspondence is used by historians seeking to understand the social issues of the day, and by art historians who find her descriptions of her son’s work and life an invaluable resource. Following is an excerpt from a letter to her sister where she discusses sitting for her portrait: “I was not as well then as I am now, but never distress Jemie [James] by complaints, so I stood bravely, two or three days, whenever he was in the mood for studying me as his pictures are studies, and I so interested stood as a statue! But realized it to be too great an effort, so my dear patient Artist who is gently patient as he is never wearying in his perseverance concluding to paint me sitting perfectly at my ease.”

Mother of Gods

Coatlicue was the Aztec “Mother of Gods,” associated with the earth and the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. The compact, monumental stone effigy. It depicts the goddess as symbol of creation and destruction (the earth gives but also takes away). She wears a skirt of carved serpents, representing fertility, and a necklace of severed hands, hearts, and skulls.

Some read it as Coatlicue’s head, composed of the heads of two facing snakes, whose eyes and fangs become her own. Others have said that the sculpture portrays a decapitated Coatlicue in which snakes coil out of her severed neck. This interpretation more directly references one of two myths, in which one of Coatlicue’s 400 children called upon her siblings to kill their mother. The ferocity of the imagery, which is incised and carved in relief, though shocking, was typical of preColumbian societies.

In Aztec mythology Coatlicue was actually a priestess whose job was to maintain the shrine on the top of the legendary sacred mountain Coatepec. One day, as she was sweeping, a ball of feathers descended from the heavens and when she tucked it into her belt it miraculously impregnated her. 

The resulting child was none other than the powerful Aztec god of warHuitzilopochtli. However, Coatlicue's other offspring, her daughter Coyolxauhqui, herself a powerful goddess, and her sons the Centzon Huitznahua were outraged at this shameful episode and they stormed Mt. Coatepec with the intention of killing their dishonoured mother. The plot came unstuck, though, when one of the Huiztnaua lost heart and decided to warn the still unborn Huitzilopochtli. Rising to his mother's defence the god sprang from the womb fully-grown and fully-armed as an invincible warrior. In another version the god springs from his mother's severed neck but either way, with his formidable weapon, the xiuhcoatl which was actually a ray of the sun, the warrior-god swiftly butchered his unruly siblings and chopping up Coyolxauhqui into several large chunks he lobbed the pieces down the mountainside. The myth may also symbolise the daily victory of the Sun over the Moon and stars.

This battle would be commemorated with the setting up of the Templo Mayor at the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. The giant pyramid was covered in snake sculpture and even the shadows cast by its steps were designed to reference Mt. Coatepec. A further link to the myth was the large stone placed at the base of the pyramid which has a relief carving of the dismembered Coyolxauhqui.

In another myth involving the goddess she warned the Mexica of their future demise. The Aztec ruler Motecuhzoma II had sent a party of 60 magicians to visit Coatlicue in the mythical ancestral home of the Mexica, Aztlan, in a quest for supreme knowledge. However, overburdened with gifts, these hapless magicians got bogged down in a sand hill and the goddess revealed that the Aztec cities would fall one by one. Then, and only then, would her son Huitzilopochtli return to her side.

In art Coatlicue is most famously represented in the colossal basalt statue found at Tenochtitlan which now resides in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. The figure is 3.5 m high, 1.5 m broad and depicts the goddess in her most terrible form with a severed head replaced by two coral snakes, representing flowing blood. She wears a necklace of severed human hands and hearts with a large skull pendant. She also wears her typical skirt of entwined snakes whilst her hands and feet have the large claws which she uses to rip up human corpses before she eats them. This may reference the connection between Coatlicue and the star demons known as the tzitzimime, who the Aztecs believed would devour the human population if the sun should ever fail to rise. At her back her hair hangs down in 13 tresses symbolic of the 13 months and 13 heavens of Aztec religion. 

Interestingly, the base of the statue is carved with an earth monster, even though it would never be seen. The statue was discovered in 1790 CE but was thought so terrifying that it was immediately reburied.