These are the images presented to us in Picasso's Guernica, a mural created to protest the bombing of the so-named small Spanish town during the Spanish civil war. The emotions conveyed are obvious; the expressions on the villager's faces are as clear as any photograph, even if lacking a photo-realistic style. The meaning is evident; the horrors of war are presented to the viewer, in the expectation that the actions portrayed will be judged and condemned by the audience and the modern world in general.
What also makes the painting of interest is the lack of color. It is a piece in black and white; a bloody, horrific image rendered in nothing but the absence of light on a blank canvas. Picasso set out to prove that color was not essential to the structure of a painting, the emotion provoked in the viewer proves that he was right.
The critic Susan Sontag would enjoy the painting, for its technical aspects and the vivid imagery it presents. She likes transparence, "experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are."1 Form has immense importance for Sontag; the "sensory experience of the work of art" (Sontag 764) is considerable. What is not significant in a work is the "true meaning - the latent content - beneath" (Sontag 758). In her essay brazenly titled "Against Interpretation," we are told that to take a work of the humanities and place it under meticulous scrutiny and analysis "violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories" (Sontag 761). In the eyes of Sontag, interpretation can be "reactionary, impertinent, cowardly, stifling" (Sontag 758). An artist may object to such handling of his work, resulting in the creation of art that could be "understood as motivated by a flight from interpretation. To avoid interpretation, art may become parody. Or it may become abstract" (Sontag 761). From these origins one can trace the development of cubism, an artistic movement of which Picasso is a prominent figure. The emphasis in the work shifts from the overall content to the structure and composition of the painting. Form and function are strong and prominent aspects of Guernica, and from Sontag's perspective there is much to appreciate about this mural.
It is widely known why this painting was created, and what it represents. It is an image of the tragedy of war, told through a collection of abstract images. The nature of abstract, in both definition and artistic merit is not to be direct in meaning or understanding. Guernica should be interpreted; otherwise its purpose is lost. Sontag wrote about how people should look past content and also enjoy a painting on physical merits, but with Guernica this action is nearly impossible.
There are many individuals who have been lucky enough to never experience the horrors of war. For them, this painting would take on a different meaning than its base intention; they may extrapolate a different interpretation from the piece. The horror is still present, but the experience is not that of bloody horrific battle. When Kristen E. Hughes looks at Guernica, and stares at the bull presented on the far left, she does not see the German Luftwaffe that destroyed the original town. The meaning has changed for her; the bull is instead an image of "the seductive power of virility." 2 In "I Will Be My Own Hero" there is a conflict of beliefs raging in Hughes' head based on her past experiences. The way her father centered his hopes on her brother, always talking about the great prospects that lay ahead of his son, never once considering the destiny of his daughter. The story of her friend Tammy, whose father brutally beat his wife, the mother of his children. Her brother's practice of burning small insects with a glass in the hot summer sun. These horrific acts, both physical and psychological, are attacks on Hughes' consciousness. Even she is not above her own ideals, as she once drowned a set of baby gerbils, because their existence was an unwanted nuisance. All these experiences have "changed the way I thought about heroism" (Hughes 110). The bull is representative of these new beliefs about the negative nature of heroism; it is both strong and confident, while distant and uncaring for the plight of the villagers. Hughes has built a connection between her situation and that in the mural. This connection has brought her closer to the work than any sensory experience could.
Sontag fails to see the importance of content when dealing with individual emotions. The sensory experience is simply not enough to create a lasting impression on a viewer. Human memory is based on building mental connections. Relating one instance to another, one experience to another in the past, as Hughes does. We remember something because it reminds us of something else.
However, it is not solely the duty of the audience to make connections. The artist must also place an emotional and intellectual investment in the work. Salman Rushdie is of the belief that writers must get involved with the world that they write about, the world to which they present their work. According to his essay "Outside the Whale," they must "make a fuss, as noisy a complaint about the world as is humanly possible."3 He is bothered by Western depictions of India, the way outsiders have chosen to view the world he knows so intimately through heritage. Those movies and literature are false portraits whose purpose is to "provide moral, cultural and artistic justification for imperialism and for its underpinning ideology, that of the racial superiority of the Caucasian over the Asiatic" (Rushdie 89). He acknowledges that art can convey a message, and influence those it reaches. By placing himself "Outside the Whale," his metaphor of the world beyond, he means to change opinions, to influence the collective consciousness. Art must not back down from inducing emotion, "we must find it possible to laugh and wonder as well as rage and weep" (Rushdie 100). Art must influence an individual on an intellectual level, from where objections and understandings can influence one's emotions. Emotion and intellect are interconnected; one cannot be ignored at the expense of the other.
Sontag scoffs at the role of intellect in the enjoyment of art. She renders interpretation as "the revenge of intellect upon the world" (Sontag 758). She wants us to believe that there is more to art than simply its subtext, an experience that lies beyond the roles of intellectual and emotional stimulation. Its liberating value is the sensory experience it provides, how it allows us to "see more, to hear more, to feel more" (Sontag 765). But for the emotional connectivity hinted at here, there is a failure on her part to see the connection between emotion and intellect.
The images portrayed in Picasso's Guernica are unpleasant enough to force the viewer to think about what they are seeing, and why the feelings created are negative and upsetting. Here Guernica proves successful in linking emotion and intellect. The two are functions of the mind, connected in thought processes, a complex chain of contemplation and consideration. Art is a tool that links them together, uniting our mind in function and form. We cannot help but think when we consider a work of art, and out of this intellectual stimulation emotion emerges. We have always considered emotion to be a defining human characteristic. If art is a window into emotion, it is then a mirror of our own humanity.