when words fail
picasso's guernica defies words, and that is why so many attempts to analyze it flounder. picasso himself rightly refused to comment at any length about it -- "it isn't up to the painter to define the symbols," he says, and one hears a tone of exasperation, "otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words!" guernica makes a wordless statement. when I look at it I feel as though he had captured the exact moment when the jaw slackens and the brow creases, when anguish unfurls in a soul shrinking before the sounds of devastation; but he has elongated this moment, stretched it out along a 26-foot long canvas and into history and posterity -- this terrifying, awesome indictment of humanity and its attendant iniquities ... and so what we are left with is a protracted sense of unease, a great confusion as our eyes dart about the piece in instinctive attempts to make sense of it all. they must be symbols, allegories, we say; we nod vigorously and think, the bull and the horse represent the Spanish nationalists and the loyalists, the horse is feminine force, the bull is the Minotaur, the bull is the fascists, the bull is picasso himself -- ah, I understand now. and the lightbulb above the horse's head, that represents technology and its destructive potential; it represents hope; no, it is a halo. then we have understood the guernica, we nod in satisfaction & think, now I understand war, isn't it brutal and terrible etc.?
no. and that is what the guernica is -- a quiet, enormous refusal to Make Sense. one can only look upon it, and walk away from it, in silence.
indeed, when I saw a version of it in approximation of its actual dimensions for the first time, that is exactly what I did -- although, as you may appreciate from the picture below, for entirely different reasons.
the most incongruous use of the guernica, ever.
[ps] away in the Lake District for a few days with these guys. don't wait up!