Guernica

In Madrid, I spent a day just seeing art.  I imagine I could have spent a week there seeing art and not have seen it all, like I could in Paris.  The best seeing, in my opinion, is to be had at the Reina Sofia, which houses modern and contemporary art. Its most famous resident work of art is without a doubt Picasso’s Guernica.

Guernica is a piece of art with a big bad rep.  I’m not a huge fan of Picasso and I don’t think seeing Guernica really changes that.  However I cannot pretend that seeing it was not surprisingly emotional. 

First of all, the painting packs a punch because it is enormous.  Second of all, it gave me the chills.  Maybe that was because I know its history, maybe not.  When I looked at pictures of Guernica, I felt like the painting was committing violence against me, but in person, it was the painting and not me that was the victim: the world was covered in ash; color was dead, killed along with sunlight and gentle touches.  

Perhaps what I’m about to say is silly, because after all Picasso does have a habit of abstracting reality so an abstract image is nothing new, but there’s half a woman engulfed in flames, reaching up in pain on the far right of the painting, and when I thought, “Where’s the rest of her body?” it almost made me cry.

I had to leave the museum after that and go sit in the sun.

A witness,

Maria