The provocative ideals of the Avant Garde movments of the twentieth century seem somewhat misplaced amidst the violent power hungry politics of their time. And yet with the benefit of perspective we can see that Art responds to the historical context in which it finds itself. Their intense and burning desire to discard the artistic conventions of the preceeding centuries was no doubt complementary to the downfall of Aristocratic governence, and Aristocratic ideals with them. Atleast these are my conclusions as I am stare dumbstruck at Picasso´s towering ´Guernica´ at the Museu de Art de Reina Sofia which has a remarkable collection of Spanish Art from the late 19th Century until the present Day including extensive works of Picasso, Dali and Miro.
´Guernica´ is a grotesque masterpiece of daunting size. It is a startling recollection of the bombing of the northern Spanish village called Guernica during the Spanish Civil War in which several civillians and livestock were killed. But more so it is a brief and horrendous moment of destruction which encapsualtes the first half of the 20th century. Infact with current waging wars in Iraq it is an image which has striking relevance even today.
The first time that I ever encountered this image is on the cover a borrowed copy of my father´s ´Iron in the soul´ by Jean Paul Sartre. However, up close there is detail that was not apparent before - the obvious tear shaped eyes, the knife shaped tongues and paint dripping from the teeth of a horse. The collection contains several of Picasso later works, most of which are in Paris. There is also a portrait of his sister looking out the window which my brother once bought me a print of when he was in Spain two years before. I looked at it for a long time, in fond nostalgia.
On the other side of the same floor is a hall dedicated to the surrealist painters Salivador Dali and Joan Miro. I sit, with sore muscles on a bench looking at Dali´s famed, ´The Masturbator´an intriguing montage of his sexuality. He described himself as a crazy man whose insanity was exalted by his knowledge of being, and that genius is a resultant force between the two competing components of our mentality - analytical intelligence and the effusive irrational sub-concious. Ofcourse, in which the latter tends to govern the mode of expression hece the state of the Artist.
I have been lucky enough in the Past to see a temporary exhinition of Magrite in Paris that included all of his most renowned work. The surrealists intrigue me. They managed to discard pre-occupations with moral concerns and visual aestheitc and focus on psych-automatism and without comprimising the visual complexity of their work. Magrite often created meaning through contradiction and Dali and Miro it seems try to perceive meaning theough the sub-concious. It is for me as if they are trying to trace the very root of meaning in the mind.
Cubism and later contemporary art applies the same intentions but aims to deconstruct form itself which can at times feel meaningless. Not meaningless in the semiotic sense, because a red line on a blank canvass has obvious meaning as a statement, but for me it tends to lack emotional impact. There will much more art to come as I leave in a few days and head to Barcelona and the Malaga, Picasso´s birthplace.
