How Art Interprets War
by Ian MacPhersonSpring 2019 | Modern Art, 1900-1945 | Professor Kristin Schroeder
Psychotraumatic acts of geopolitical violence defined the Modernist period, charging artists with the job of articulating society’s reactions and directing their attitudes. Franz Marc and Pablo Picasso rose to the artistic challenge presented by the catastrophe of the explosive conflicts leading up to the World Wars, respectively the Balkan Wars leading up to World War I and the machine-gunning and bombing of civilians in Guernica in the context of the Spanish Civil War and, more broadly, World War II. The artists take on the voices of the intellectual communities contemporary to each conflict, which sit in stark opposition to one another across time.
Marc was a member of the expressionist artistic social circle, and he spoke for the nationalistic German expressionists as an idealist anticipating rebirth out of annihilation. The Balkan Wars stripped the Ottoman empire of almost all of its territorial possessions in Europe, remembered in Turkey as the “Balkan Disaster.” Yet as the Ottomans sensed subconsciously that their empire was in its death throes, Marc and other German expressionists and intellectuals, informed by the writings of Nietzsche and Germanic texts from antiquity like the Eddas, viewed this step toward the collapse of the world order as part of a larger supernatural scheme to banish corrupt, antiquarian society from the earth and start anew.
Picasso, on the other hand, was commissioned by the Spanish Republican government directly to deliver a propagandistic art piece condemning the rise of Fascism. The aftermath of Guernica was altogether different than the “Balkan Disaster”. The first bombing of civilian targets on European soil rocked the international community to its core, not only attacking the idea of innocence and guilt in a conflict zone, but more terrifyingly introducing a new dimension of total war. Rather than focusing on the ideal, Picasso gave voice both to a bleeding Spain and a horrified international community as spectator.
Cubist and Futurist Responses
The artistic modes and movements contemporary to each of the works embody the crises of national identity rocking Europe at the time of each painting’s creation. Before the outbreak of World War I in imperialist Europe, Balkanization was driven by a new fixation on the construction of ethnic states. Empires were threatening to fracture and a vaccum was opening. In this context, Marc synthesizes attitudes— catastrophizing anguish from German expressionism with optimism about the regenerative power chaos from Futurism. Later, in the prelude to World War II, Basque Nationalists fought for independence in an increasingly fascist Europe. Picasso’s painting signifies an outcry against this abstracted idea of regenerative chaos by merging perceptions of society as alien and profane, a characteristic of Surrealism, with a form of visual communication derived from Cubism and, more broadly, abstraction. The essential difference in these responses is the following: whereas Fate of the Animals is an abstract, pantheistic identification of human anguish and dread viewed through animals, which recognizes and espouses the inevitability and necessity of destruction to generate purity, Guernica is an abstracted, outraged surrealist composition calling attention to the surreality of modern technology’s power to enable injustice against innocents.
Icons: Animals and Religious Figures
Both paintings are iconographic, relying on semiologically charged images to stand as metonyms for broader thematic types. Helpless animals stand in for arcane society. Incendiary natural forces like fire and lightning stand in for the unstoppable forces of the universe in the case of Marc, and the bull against geometric fragments in the case of Picasso. At the same time, there is a distinction to be made between the ways in which each artist’s use of animals affects their mode of working, and ultimately impacts their messaging. Marc works in a mode of symbolist zoomorphism, placing himself in a tradition of fables, relying exclusively on animals and nature to tell a story of the world’s demise. Picasso, instead, draws from the artistic canon, including the contemporary Spanish motifs of the horse and the bull, to resonate on both an emotional and historical level with informed audiences. Just as two red wolves in the bottom left corner of “Fate of the Animals” resignedly wait to be consumed by flames, a figure lying trampled on the ground in “Guernica” holds a broken sword, no longer willing or able to fight for the Republican cause.
In much the same way that the central figure of “Fate of the Animals” (a blue deer set against the primordial Yggdrasil tree of Norse sagas) looks heavenward in anticipation of the apocalypse that will birth a world anew, so too does the grieving mother in “Guernica” (an abstracted Pieta) gaze at the sky while holding her dead son in her hands. From this commonality, the vignettes diverge. The deer’s neck follows the trajectory of, and appears to be in the process of blending in with, Yggdrasil. Instead of submitting to the abyss, the grieving mother weeps and stares at the sky, appealing to God for a reason for this scene of wanton destruction.
In both pieces, one animal or grouping is set aside to play the role of spectator in the composition. In “Fate of the Animals,” it is the four deer in the bottom right corner of the piece, sheltered behind the tree under a sky clear of geometric fragments. In “Guernica,” it is the bull, facing the audience in ¾ profile with an expression not of pain or anguish, but of confusion, or even perverse interest, standing in for Nationalist Spain.
The artists’ difference in attitude— Marc’s academic, fableistic romanticization of cataclysm and human suffering against Picasso’s condemnation of the injustice of political violence on a cataclysmic scale— has its roots in the artist’s treatments of abstraction and formalism. Marc’s reliance on color theory and phenomenal transparency distances him from the visceral on-the-ground horrors of war and catastrophe; in effect, he abstracts human suffering itself. Picasso instead renders the abstract formal qualities of the piece subservient to the political message it seeks to advance by giving the figures agency to speak of their own accord. In “Fate of the Animals”, clashing oblique trajectories draw the eye across the piece and engage as active participants in the scene, meaning that every line is phenomenally transparent, blurring the line between pure abstraction and figuration. An elongated frustum slices across the composition and also embodies a tree receding into the distance, menacingly towering above an imperiled blue deer at the center of the composition. A gold line, at once lightning and a self-conscious line of paint on the canvas, pierces the throat of the deer. Picasso’s lines are, on the other hand, mere demarcations for discrete objects. They construct the stage— the framework within which expression happens— but they are not themselves expressive. Lines radiate out from the lightbulb in the top of the composition to show how light moves through the space, but they do not in and of themselves express emotion; rather, the starkness of the jagged light emitting from the light fixture saps the warmth from the painting and contributes to the scene’s heavy overtones of grief.
Marc’s expressive, vibrant color, those formal qualities inherent to the composition and the figures, is the primary vehicle for the emotional content of the piece. He employs complementarity and phenomenal transparency in tandem to set up oppositional pairs of destructive forces of nature and victimized figures. An angry red bolt of lightning strikes green animals, engulfing the pristine green landscape within which they are set in red flames. At the same time, the lightning appears reminiscent of dripping blood, and the flames a coursing river of blood. In contrast, Picasso’s reduction to a grayscale produces a landscape replete of distraction from which poignant emotional expression can leap forth. By refraining from color that draws attention to itself, such as the chromatically pure palette Marc employs in “Fate of the Animals,” Picasso communicates through the actions of the figures rather than through their inherent qualities. The anguish of the crying mother in the Pieta vignette comes across through her tears; her head, thrown back in a wail; and her hand, splayed in a grieving gesture. The plight of the horse explodes from its eyes and mouth opened wide in an agonized scream; the despondent figures seeking refuge confront Death, their bodies dragging like catenaries as they sweep in through the open door.
Speaking even more clearly to the divergent agendas of the artists is their treatment of space, because it is here that the artists reveal their degree of removal or emotional investment in the catastrophic tragedies they depict. Marc does not work in terms of space and atmosphere, but rather in shapes that overlap to create a hierarchical ordering. His painting works facturally on the surface of the canvas in that it seeks to make a composition through which modernity can shine. This differs from Picasso’s decision to craft an immersive space — flattened and distorted to the extreme — but nonetheless a space. His painting remains rooted in realism in that it seeks to create a stage set from which his condemnation of Fascism, and support for the Republican cause, can shine.
In moments of tragedy on a historical scale, art made purely for its own sake will always fail to overcome the impulse to romanticize mass trauma. An artist has to actually care. Only art that unflinchingly confronts crises, determined above all else to disseminate its message, can speak honestly and effectively to the contemporary moment.
Context
Marc was a member of the expressionist artistic social circle, and he spoke for the nationalistic German expressionists as an idealist anticipating rebirth out of annihilation. The Balkan Wars stripped the Ottoman empire of almost all of its territorial possessions in Europe, remembered in Turkey as the “Balkan Disaster.” Yet as the Ottomans sensed subconsciously that their empire was in its death throes, Marc and other German expressionists and intellectuals, informed by the writings of Nietzsche and Germanic texts from antiquity like the Eddas, viewed this step toward the collapse of the world order as part of a larger supernatural scheme to banish corrupt, antiquarian society from the earth and start anew.
Picasso, on the other hand, was commissioned by the Spanish Republican government directly to deliver a propagandistic art piece condemning the rise of Fascism. The aftermath of Guernica was altogether different than the “Balkan Disaster”. The first bombing of civilian targets on European soil rocked the international community to its core, not only attacking the idea of innocence and guilt in a conflict zone, but more terrifyingly introducing a new dimension of total war. Rather than focusing on the ideal, Picasso gave voice both to a bleeding Spain and a horrified international community as spectator.
Cubist and Futurist Responses
The artistic modes and movements contemporary to each of the works embody the crises of national identity rocking Europe at the time of each painting’s creation. Before the outbreak of World War I in imperialist Europe, Balkanization was driven by a new fixation on the construction of ethnic states. Empires were threatening to fracture and a vaccum was opening. In this context, Marc synthesizes attitudes— catastrophizing anguish from German expressionism with optimism about the regenerative power chaos from Futurism. Later, in the prelude to World War II, Basque Nationalists fought for independence in an increasingly fascist Europe. Picasso’s painting signifies an outcry against this abstracted idea of regenerative chaos by merging perceptions of society as alien and profane, a characteristic of Surrealism, with a form of visual communication derived from Cubism and, more broadly, abstraction. The essential difference in these responses is the following: whereas Fate of the Animals is an abstract, pantheistic identification of human anguish and dread viewed through animals, which recognizes and espouses the inevitability and necessity of destruction to generate purity, Guernica is an abstracted, outraged surrealist composition calling attention to the surreality of modern technology’s power to enable injustice against innocents.
Icons: Animals and Religious Figures
Both paintings are iconographic, relying on semiologically charged images to stand as metonyms for broader thematic types. Helpless animals stand in for arcane society. Incendiary natural forces like fire and lightning stand in for the unstoppable forces of the universe in the case of Marc, and the bull against geometric fragments in the case of Picasso. At the same time, there is a distinction to be made between the ways in which each artist’s use of animals affects their mode of working, and ultimately impacts their messaging. Marc works in a mode of symbolist zoomorphism, placing himself in a tradition of fables, relying exclusively on animals and nature to tell a story of the world’s demise. Picasso, instead, draws from the artistic canon, including the contemporary Spanish motifs of the horse and the bull, to resonate on both an emotional and historical level with informed audiences. Just as two red wolves in the bottom left corner of “Fate of the Animals” resignedly wait to be consumed by flames, a figure lying trampled on the ground in “Guernica” holds a broken sword, no longer willing or able to fight for the Republican cause.
In much the same way that the central figure of “Fate of the Animals” (a blue deer set against the primordial Yggdrasil tree of Norse sagas) looks heavenward in anticipation of the apocalypse that will birth a world anew, so too does the grieving mother in “Guernica” (an abstracted Pieta) gaze at the sky while holding her dead son in her hands. From this commonality, the vignettes diverge. The deer’s neck follows the trajectory of, and appears to be in the process of blending in with, Yggdrasil. Instead of submitting to the abyss, the grieving mother weeps and stares at the sky, appealing to God for a reason for this scene of wanton destruction.
In both pieces, one animal or grouping is set aside to play the role of spectator in the composition. In “Fate of the Animals,” it is the four deer in the bottom right corner of the piece, sheltered behind the tree under a sky clear of geometric fragments. In “Guernica,” it is the bull, facing the audience in ¾ profile with an expression not of pain or anguish, but of confusion, or even perverse interest, standing in for Nationalist Spain.
Rhetorical Techniques
The artists’ difference in attitude— Marc’s academic, fableistic romanticization of cataclysm and human suffering against Picasso’s condemnation of the injustice of political violence on a cataclysmic scale— has its roots in the artist’s treatments of abstraction and formalism. Marc’s reliance on color theory and phenomenal transparency distances him from the visceral on-the-ground horrors of war and catastrophe; in effect, he abstracts human suffering itself. Picasso instead renders the abstract formal qualities of the piece subservient to the political message it seeks to advance by giving the figures agency to speak of their own accord. In “Fate of the Animals”, clashing oblique trajectories draw the eye across the piece and engage as active participants in the scene, meaning that every line is phenomenally transparent, blurring the line between pure abstraction and figuration. An elongated frustum slices across the composition and also embodies a tree receding into the distance, menacingly towering above an imperiled blue deer at the center of the composition. A gold line, at once lightning and a self-conscious line of paint on the canvas, pierces the throat of the deer. Picasso’s lines are, on the other hand, mere demarcations for discrete objects. They construct the stage— the framework within which expression happens— but they are not themselves expressive. Lines radiate out from the lightbulb in the top of the composition to show how light moves through the space, but they do not in and of themselves express emotion; rather, the starkness of the jagged light emitting from the light fixture saps the warmth from the painting and contributes to the scene’s heavy overtones of grief.
Color and Emotional Immediacy
Marc’s expressive, vibrant color, those formal qualities inherent to the composition and the figures, is the primary vehicle for the emotional content of the piece. He employs complementarity and phenomenal transparency in tandem to set up oppositional pairs of destructive forces of nature and victimized figures. An angry red bolt of lightning strikes green animals, engulfing the pristine green landscape within which they are set in red flames. At the same time, the lightning appears reminiscent of dripping blood, and the flames a coursing river of blood. In contrast, Picasso’s reduction to a grayscale produces a landscape replete of distraction from which poignant emotional expression can leap forth. By refraining from color that draws attention to itself, such as the chromatically pure palette Marc employs in “Fate of the Animals,” Picasso communicates through the actions of the figures rather than through their inherent qualities. The anguish of the crying mother in the Pieta vignette comes across through her tears; her head, thrown back in a wail; and her hand, splayed in a grieving gesture. The plight of the horse explodes from its eyes and mouth opened wide in an agonized scream; the despondent figures seeking refuge confront Death, their bodies dragging like catenaries as they sweep in through the open door.
Stances on War
Speaking even more clearly to the divergent agendas of the artists is their treatment of space, because it is here that the artists reveal their degree of removal or emotional investment in the catastrophic tragedies they depict. Marc does not work in terms of space and atmosphere, but rather in shapes that overlap to create a hierarchical ordering. His painting works facturally on the surface of the canvas in that it seeks to make a composition through which modernity can shine. This differs from Picasso’s decision to craft an immersive space — flattened and distorted to the extreme — but nonetheless a space. His painting remains rooted in realism in that it seeks to create a stage set from which his condemnation of Fascism, and support for the Republican cause, can shine.
In moments of tragedy on a historical scale, art made purely for its own sake will always fail to overcome the impulse to romanticize mass trauma. An artist has to actually care. Only art that unflinchingly confronts crises, determined above all else to disseminate its message, can speak honestly and effectively to the contemporary moment.