The elements of Picasso’s Guernica include: As viewed the scene appears to be inside a room. To the left there is an end, its open and a bull with a wide eye is standing above a woman carrying a dead child. She seems to be grieving. At the center, is horse which falls in pain with a large wound on its side. A hidden human skull overlying the horse and a bull appearing that gores the horse from below appear hidden in the art and are formed by the horse. A soldier is seen beneath the horse. He is dismembered and holds a shuttered sword. A flower is growing from the sword. A stigma is seen on the soldier’s palm. It symbolizes martyrdom. The martyrdom is from the Christ’s stigmata. Over the horses’ head, is a bulb that lights of a shape similar to that from the eye of an evil person. The light bulb is a symbol of the destruction of technology to the world. The top right of the horse is a female witnessing the events that are taking place, and seems to have flown through the window into this room. She holds a lamp lit by flames, next to the light bulb and symbolizes hope as its light clashes the light fro the bulb. A woman appearing to be staggering from right side of the article to left side underneath the floating female looking blankly into the light bulb. The bulls’ tongues, the horse and the grieving woman, are replaced by daggers suggesting screaming. At the back of the bull is a bird, which stands on a shelf in panic. Far right of the artwork is a figure showing raised arms probably in terror. Fire entraps the figure from both the top and at the bottom. The wall is dark and the door is open. Both define the mural’s right end.
As a protest against war, the Guernica shows strategies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, in particular innocent civilians. This artwork is a perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war, anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace.
According to Picasso, “Painting is not done to decorate apartments, it is an instrument of war”. Painting, despite of its beauty is also used by the artists to communicate with the world. The elements used in paintings symbolize certain events in the real world. In case of the Guernica, for example, the different elements in the painting symbolize different events that took place during the war. An example of another artwork that supports this viewpoint is the American Progress by John Gast. The artwork is an allegorical representation of the new west. In it, Columbia personifies the United States and leads civilization westward into American settlers and strings telegraph wire as she sweeps west. On her hand she holds as school book. The different stages of economic activities of pioneers are highlighted and, especially, the changing forms of transportation. According to Fredrick Merk (n.d), “Manifest destiny, is a concept born out of a sense of mission to redeem the old world by high example generated by the potentialities of a new earth for building a new heaven”
Art can influence the way people think or act. Art work has a way of sticking in peoples minds and since they are permanent and usually displayed out in the open e.g hang on walls, people constantly come across them and this way it gets into the peoples ideas and thoughts. Thoughts on the other hand determine peoples’ actions.
References
Guernica (Painting), Retrieved from http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(painting)
Manifest Destiny Retrieved from, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny
Warnke C-P (1937), Pablo Picasso: War, Art and “Guernica” 1937 Retrieved from
http://www.all-art.org/art_20th_century/picasso11.html
