The Elegant Variation: ON GUERNICA

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December 02, 2004

ON GUERNICA

Gijs van Hensbergen's Guernica, The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon (Bloomsbury) sounds very interesting, at least on the basis of its review in the Chronicle.

I've done a fair amount of reading about Picasso in general, and about Guernica in particular (I was briefing toying with writing a screenplay about it.), and I wanted to direct you to a another excellent book on the subject. Rudolf Arnheim's Genesis of a Painting: Picasso's Guernica is a meticulous, stage-by-stage study of the development of the painting, enhanced by Dora Maar's remarkable series of photographs detailing its evolution. It's striking how little really changed from Picasso's initial pencil sketches to the finished painting.

I do have a quibble with the Chronicle review, although it's hard to know if it's the reviewer's assertion or the author's:

"Guernica" was an unambiguous assault on Franco, but ultimately an ineffectual one.

Well, not exactly. There's no doubt that paint is a cry of rage over the slaughter of the peaceful Basque town. But, as has been noted elsewhere, the painting is deeply rooted in Picasso's personal iconography - the Bull, for example, often interpreted as representing the Fascists, is a recurrent motif in his painting. As with most of Picasso's work, it ultimately looks inward not outward, and thus this personal obscurity has led its effectiveness to be criticized. (Picasso was typically cryptic about the images. As he famously remarked, "...this bull is a bull and this horse is a horse..." Although admittedly it's never a good idea to take his pronouncements at face value.) "Ineffectual," however, is probably right. As Robert Hughes noted in The Shock of the New, the painting didn't shorten the Franco regime by a single day.

I have two personal memories of the painting. The first from 1980, when I saw it in New York, where I lived at the time, as part of the now legendary Picasso retrospective. Even as a dumb 15-year-old more interested in the Beatles and girls, I was stunned and speechless as I stood before the canvas, whose dimensions are about 11 feet x 25 feet. It's awfully corny to talk about life-changing moments, but that surely was one of them, the first time that the power of painting broke through the noise to be heard by me.

My second memory is my visit to Picasso's studio on Rue des Grands Augustins shortly after the invasion of Iraq. The studio was open to the public for the first time. Phone appointments were necessary and I managed to make one in my then-halting French. I'd admired the studio from outside many times before but it was an unforgettable experience to walk through the same space where Picasso created this canvas. I was surprised by how small the space seemed but a ghostly image of Guernica was projected against the far wall to give visitors a feel for the scale. (I was also moved by the appreciation expressed by the proprietors of the space, that there were Americans who still loved Paris and France and were determined to reach out past the belligerent posturing.)

On my remaing short list of things I must do is a visit to the Reina Sofia in Madrid, where I can see this marvel one more time.

Posted at 09:30 AM | Permalink

Comments

I saw it hanging in the Reina Sofia a few years back as was just amazed - I'd had no idea it was that big. A powerful work of art.

Posted by: Justin | December 02, 2004 at 12:26 PM

Re: life-changing moments. Did you see Dan Green's post about the Waggish piece on Galen Strasen's essay "A Fallacy of our Age" (in the TLS)? There's some interesting stuff about how individuals differ in whether they perceive life -- whether as lived, or in stories -- as either episodic or narrative.

Posted by: Karen | December 02, 2004 at 02:46 PM

the pic is coool

Posted by: erin wwwww | January 27, 2009 at 09:47 AM

I am actually looking at this painting in relation to Faith Ringgold's "Die" from "The American Peoples Series", and am very pleased with your photo. It is hard to find photos on the net that give an idea of the scale of the work. Ringgold's painting is very similar in size and I think there is a direct connection there (as well as in other areas of the painting). Your account of "Guernica" was also very helpful. thnx.

Posted by: Melodie | November 12, 2009 at 03:24 PM

just great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by: gianluca | August 18, 2010 at 05:25 PM

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

December 02, 2004

ON GUERNICA

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
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SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

December 02, 2004

ON GUERNICA

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism