Buried Hope in a Hellish Place: The True Nature of Tragedy If there is one idea to glean from Pablo Picasso’s unique and influential modern art style, it would be the brutal honesty of his works. Picasso’s artwork reflected exactly what he saw in the world, and he was not afraid to make ugly and harsh depictions, because sometimes the world is ugly and harsh. Pablo Picasso’s brutal honesty is most clearly exemplified in his depiction of the cruel and unnecessary bombing of Guernica, Spain, 1937. Picasso painted this disgusting tragedy of war exactly as he saw it: hopeless. The genius painter conveys a feeling of hopelessness in Guernica by making symbols of hope seem insignificant, and by making the prominent source of light appear as an evil
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One way would be to look at it as a whole, large image, and another way is to look at it as a collection of different images. Of the many smaller images that make up Guernica, a large portion exemplify complete despair. In the bottom left of the painting is a decapitated man with a ghastly, surprised look on his face. The broken sword held in his detached arm towards the bottom center of the scene identifies him as a soldier or fighter of some sort (Picasso). The broken sword in his hand is an example of a symbol that could very well indicate that he lost his fight against the enemy valiantly and hopefully. However, if this was the case, where is the other half of the broken sword? Picasso’s cubism is identified by fragmented images, but Picasso is too ingenious to paint symbols like this on accident. It is more probable that the sword was broken to begin with, meaning that the warrior was fighting a battle he could never have won. Just like the sword, the idea of fighting back against the enemy is a broken notion. In his The Power of Art documentary about Picasso, narrator Simon Schama points out that, in drafts of the painting, “[t]he fallen warrior originally was grander, stronger, his head helmeted like a classical hero”, and that in the final, he appears “helpless.” Picasso changed this aspect to further show how fighting back is just one of the useless and hopeless facets of this shameful tragedy. …show more content…
Picasso purposefully and artfully hides this potential symbol of hope to show how darkness consumes even the smallest and most innocent of creatures. The small bird blends almost entirely into the background, with the exception of about a third of the bird’s torso painted white, suggesting that Picasso started painting the bird white and stopped part of the way through. Also, the bird is flying upwards, with an open mouth, as if it were gracefully escaping the scene or ascending to the heavens. If the bird were painted completely white, the bird could be interpreted as a dove: a symbol of hope. Picasso leaves the bird with nothing but outline and a partially painted body to indicate to his audience that hope is not a prominent feature of tragedy, and that terror and woe is. This is why the bird, and the other, aforementioned symbols of hope are miniscule and are hidden in the negative space-- to show that the bombing in the town of Guernica was a truly hopeless and malicious
One way would be to look at it as a whole, large image, and another way is to look at it as a collection of different images. Of the many smaller images that make up Guernica, a large portion exemplify complete despair. In the bottom left of the painting is a decapitated man with a ghastly, surprised look on his face. The broken sword held in his detached arm towards the bottom center of the scene identifies him as a soldier or fighter of some sort (Picasso). The broken sword in his hand is an example of a symbol that could very well indicate that he lost his fight against the enemy valiantly and hopefully. However, if this was the case, where is the other half of the broken sword? Picasso’s cubism is identified by fragmented images, but Picasso is too ingenious to paint symbols like this on accident. It is more probable that the sword was broken to begin with, meaning that the warrior was fighting a battle he could never have won. Just like the sword, the idea of fighting back against the enemy is a broken notion. In his The Power of Art documentary about Picasso, narrator Simon Schama points out that, in drafts of the painting, “[t]he fallen warrior originally was grander, stronger, his head helmeted like a classical hero”, and that in the final, he appears “helpless.” Picasso changed this aspect to further show how fighting back is just one of the useless and hopeless facets of this shameful tragedy. …show more content…
Picasso purposefully and artfully hides this potential symbol of hope to show how darkness consumes even the smallest and most innocent of creatures. The small bird blends almost entirely into the background, with the exception of about a third of the bird’s torso painted white, suggesting that Picasso started painting the bird white and stopped part of the way through. Also, the bird is flying upwards, with an open mouth, as if it were gracefully escaping the scene or ascending to the heavens. If the bird were painted completely white, the bird could be interpreted as a dove: a symbol of hope. Picasso leaves the bird with nothing but outline and a partially painted body to indicate to his audience that hope is not a prominent feature of tragedy, and that terror and woe is. This is why the bird, and the other, aforementioned symbols of hope are miniscule and are hidden in the negative space-- to show that the bombing in the town of Guernica was a truly hopeless and malicious