In his (2004) devoted to Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, Gijs van Hensbergen has overstepped the borders of analyzing a painting itself and touches on some general ideas about art. They have impressed me very much, and I would like to express my understanding of one of them which says that understanding art requires “exercise and hard work” (p. 199).
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child” (Penrose, p. 307), said Pablo Picasso when some viewers accused him of the poor technique of painting. Indeed, Picasso was an outstanding painter who was able to work perfectly in a realistic manner; however, he has chosen his own style, distorted and primitive. In my opinion, understanding the reason for such a choice is one of the perfect examples for Van Hensbergen’s quote mentioned above. Not accidentally, the author provides a quote by Picasso in the very beginning of a book, “… even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art” (van Hensbergen, p. 1). An artist has a right to express what he feels, and our task is to “train muscles” to be able to understand his “own world of art”.
In my opinion, we should study every work of art in two dimensions, which are the idea that an artist wants to deliver, and the techniques he uses to reach this effect. These two components are an artist’s main tools to express his point of view, and I think that they often influence each other. After reading van Hensbergen’s research, I would also like to provide my understanding of this painting and explain how the idea and the artist’s devices work together.
For example, I think that Picasso chooses stylization because he wants to highlight the direction of movements and to show the figures’ suffering: the necks are thin and stretched; the fingers are spread wide apart very unnaturally. If the author made the figures realistic, they would not be so expressive. As well, the figures sometimes mix up, and you cannot separate them from each other: I think that it shows that all the citizens were united in their suffering and embarrassment.
“Those who seek to explain a picture most often go astray”, said Pablo Picasso answering numerous attempts to analyze the hidden messages in his works (Schapiro, p. 153). However, this does not keep us from trying to study his visual symbols and to find a hidden message in his works. I think that art always provides the viewer with the opportunity to use imagination and to find something new for him. “Guernica has… the capacity to speak intimately to the individual while also remaining a universal symbol that is understood by all”, says van Hensbergen (p. 7). In other words, critics may find some common opinion about a painting’s idea, but an ordinary viewer has a right to understand it as he wants. He just needs to train his “muscles” and to work hard to grow mentally.
References
- Penrose, Roland. Picasso, His Life and Work. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Print.
- Schapiro, Meyer. The Unity of Picasso’s Art. New York: George Braziller, 2000. Print.
- Van Hensbergen, Gijs. Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon. London: Bloomsbury, 2004. Print.