Guernica

Guernica by Pablo Picasso

 Welcome to my nightmare.  It's now 5am and I've been up since 3am.  I think Madrid and jetlag have caught up with me.  I was so dead by 8pm that I just crashed.

If that isn't a first world problem, I don't know what is.

Today, or was it yesterday?  At 5am the days kinda melt into one another.  We went to the Reina Sofia Museum. The museum was opened in 1992 to hold 20^th Century art.  We went to this museum before and were not terribly impressed.  We walked through most of building with anticipation for the gem of the collection, Guernica.  This time around, we skipped the temporary exhibits on the top floors and instead focused our energy on the heart of the collection.  We were pleasantly surprised to actually enjoy the collection this go 'round.

Guernica is Picasso's political statement in black and white on a massive canvas in response to the bombing of the Basque city of Guernica around 4:30 pm on Monday, 26 April 1937 by the Nazis and fascist Italians at the behest of the Nationalists led by Franco. The town of Guernica was located in the heart of the Republican resistance in the North. From France, Picasso recounted the atrocity in paint to bring attention to the Spanish Civil War and the senseless bombing of the city.

The first time I saw/heard about Guernica was in second grade.  I remember a brief overview of the Spanish symbolism in the painting in a small black and white image. Even in an art history course in college, the painting was printed in black and white.  Since the painting is entirely in black, white, and shades of grey, I guess cost is always a consideration.  Unfortunately, black and white photos do not do it justice.  The picture has a seemingly infinite number of shades of grey.  The painting is hosted in its own room due to its large size. It is massive measuring about 11 feet tall by 25 feet long.  It was well guarded by two old ladies and a tow line of about 5 feet.  Don't cross abuela.  I am quite clear she doesn't need a chancla to take your butt out. (A chancla is a flip-flop that instills fear in all New Mexican children.  It can be flipped off and used for efficient discipline.). It is always a balancing act between protecting the painting and letting you get close enough to catch details.  Too many pieces of art have been damaged for reasons from the political to the loco.

When we entered the room, everyone was standing at a distance to take the entire painting in at once.  I recall thinking, I remember this feeling more impressive.  I then moved closer.  It was not the same painting.  I was drawn into the horror of mothers with dead babies, the desperate and contorted figures as well as tortured animals including the symbol of Spain, the bull.   You know when you see this painting, it is something you should see before you die even if you don't get Picasso.  Personally, I'm not a huge fam of Picasso, but he was so prolific, there is something for everyone and Guernica is something to behold like the Eiffel Tower, the Terracotta Warriors, or the Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona. <Insert your own awe-inspiring object here.)

In the next room were sketches for Guernica.  They were in color and were not as abstract.  I asked Stu the exact date of bombing.  It was 26 April.  The sketches were dated the 8^th, 9^th, 12^th, and 28^th of May.  The rage was clearly still as fresh as the dust.  The sketches were in color, but black and white seem to capture the senseless.

There were other interesting works on display.

EarlyDali

There was a huge retrospective on a German communist, JörgImmendorff, who lived in West Berlin. He was critical of the GDR which made for a weird combination of thought between East and West Germany.  I think the exhibit would have made more sense if some of the political ranting on the canvasses were in English. The works did eloquently show the evolution of a man grappling with life, theology, and trying to figure out this thing called the moment.  Near the end of his life he was afflicted with ALS.  He continued to paint but with his other hand as long as he could until his death. He just had more to say, and he knew time was running out.  The collection took on a new meaning, what does a life look like?

Great Propoganda Postcards

 The Reina Sofia had some other surprises.  There were early works from artist like Miro and Dali when they were still trying to figure it all out.  I often hear, well, hell, I could draw *that*.  1) You didn’t think of it first and 2) Even those artists we perceive as hacks could actually produce amazing sofa painting at starving artist prices, but why bother?  Dali before Surrealism still had a magical shimmering quality to his canvases and Miro could also work a brush.  Miro's tangent was deconstructing painting to the point of not being a painting, whatever the hell that means. I'm left with well that blotch is pretty. 

Early Miro

 

As children we learn that art is pretty or for learned refined people.  Both are bullshit.  Art is about expressing humanity.  Are you left inspired? horrified?  Delighted? Called to action? Or perhaps at peace. Occasionally, you just don't understand what the hell you are looking at.  I remember being in Paris with Stu seeing a head of lettuce atop a stump of marble.  It was part of show called something like Man.  The art was part of an exhibit called inane.  Yes, lettuce on marble, hold the wry, is inane.