The Art of Politics and the Politics of
Art in Madrid
An intense guided art tour to
Madrid, Segovia and Toledo ends fittingly with the contemplation of Picasso’s Guernica in the Reina Sofia Museum. This
painting is on one level rawly simple – basically a long scream far more
visceral than, say, the existentialist and easily parodied howl of Munch. But
the Guernica scream or, rather,
screams are emitted by and among implacable and anguished images that draw on
deliberately oblique and fragmented references to Spanish art and Spanish
history through art.
I am not equipped to decipher
much, if any, of this. I merely report the effect it has for me. On one level the
painting is a waving placard, shouting “Don’t
bomb XXX” (where XXX is a war-torn anywhere in the modern world); and on
another, a most complex meditation on brutality, grief and the loss of hope.
I note that Guernica is also very “political”
(although transcending its contemporary politics). Picasso was commissioned by
the Spanish Republican Government to paint “something” for the Paris Exhibition
of 1937 (in the first year of the Civil War). The Government considered that to
showcase a “something” by Picasso would be a great propaganda coup.
Picasso, it is related, was
at a loss for a subject – until in April 1937, German Nazi warplanes, flying in
support of the Francoist uprising, carried out a “blitz” bombing raid at
Guernica. “Something” became the great painting we now see.
Today Guernica is the centrepiece of galleries in the Reina Sofia devoted
to the Spanish Civil War. There is definitely a pro-Republican slant in these
galleries, judging by the art, posters and newsreels displayed. This something
of an anomaly in modern Spain, where “forgetting” the unfortunate near past is
a founding principle of the post-Franco political settlement (with certain
large exceptions, as discussed below). However, the greatness and reputation of
Guernica cannot be ignored, and so it
is permitted to cast a Republican aura on the nearby Galleries.
Guernica is,
therefore, a political painting. Its message is contingently anti-Fascist (it
was their side which bombed Guernica) but universally against war waged
against, or at the cost of, the lives of the innocent and unprotected.
In general, the politics of
art in Madrid and the Castile region are subtler. Something which became
apparent to me on tour is that many of the principals of the art world -
curators, collectors, owners of private galleries and chapels and so forth –
are from aristocratic or upper class families, especially the ones that can
provided the Holy Grail of any art tour – special access. The Spanish upper
classes were, at most, active supporters of Franco or, at least, were
relatively untouched by, and perhaps flourished under, his regime. (Franco
never let the radical fascist policies of the Falangist parties achieve much political
dominance.)
There is therefore something
of a Nationalist tinge in the backgrounds of many of those who are the
custodians of traditional art – something that is revealed occasionally in
their anecdotal asides.
In recent times I have been a
frequent visitor to Andalusia (and have written about its Civil War history and
legacy in other blogs). Andalusia was largely Republican, and with the
exception of Granada, which fell to an immediate coup at the beginning of the
uprising, had to be conquered by the Nationalists by bitter force of arms.
Consequently there is little remembrance of Franco and his era in the public
square (privately may be another matter).
So I found it discomforting
to pass, on the way to Segovia, the Valley of the Fallen, the huge monument to
Franco’s army and the site of his tomb. It was even more discomforting to note
that the Romanesque Church we visited in a small village is sited at the end of
the “Avenida Generalissimo Franco”. (I was told by one of our guides that
Francoist public signage is still common in this part of Spain, although that
is gradually changing.)
To link recent history with
history further back: in the Treasury of the great cathedral of Toledo, placed
discreetly at the back of a display cabinet at knee level, there is a
ceremonial sword presented to Franco in 1926 by the elite Spanish Legion, of
which he was a senior officer. (This unit, which served Franco well in the
Civil War, is still the elite formation of today’s Spanish army.)
The sword reminds one that the
Church supported Franco (at great cost in the lives of clergy murdered in
pogroms which took place in Republican areas, but not in the main sponsored by
Republican authorities) and that, generally, the Spanish church was
historically a major stratum of the bedrock on which autocratic government was
securely built.
In Toledo cathedral it struck
me as never before how crushing the power of the Church once was. I use
“crushing” almost literally; for the vastness, the number and ornateness of the
chapels, the colossal and glorious paintings, stone and iron works, and
woodcarvings, really might squeeze out any incipient thought or feeling that
what all this bears witness to could be otherwise than the True Faith. Power, and
intolerance and cruelty in measure, allied with a great religious artistic
tradition, created their own objective reality – as do today societies with
similar institutions. It required both great courage and a considerable
capacity for intellectual scepticism to question and resist such forces.
It is perhaps no wonder that
the Reformation made scant headway in Spain. But it is also perhaps no wonder
that anti-clericalism, when it has broken out, has been so violent. There was
nothing mild about the Spanish Church and nothing mild about the reactions to
it when secular ideologies got a purchase.
To return to the sombre theme
of Guernica. When in the Prado, our
group looked at Goya’s two paintings from the Peninsular War, the 2nd May 1808 and the 3rd May 1808. A column of Napoleon’s
soldiers entered Madrid and was attacked by an armed mob of citizens (2nd May). Many of the French
troops were killed. The next day, reprisals followed. Many citizens were
summarily executed by firing squads (3rd
May).
While Picasso’s painting
shows the horror of indiscriminate bombing, Goya’s are about men killing men at
close quarters. Both show terrified victims at the point of suffering death and
show their killers at the point of inflicting death. In the first painting
horsemen are being slashed and stabbed in a frenzied melee; in the second
cowering and terrified men are being shot in cold blood, in measured military
tempo, by impersonal and faceless executioners.
There are perhaps two
quotations from the Goya paintings in the Picasso. In the foreground of 2nd May a man stabs a
trooper’s horse in the flank, so that its rider can be grabbed and killed; in Guernica a horse stands with a huge gash
in its flank. In 3rd May,
the figure in the forefront of the batch of the condemned,, who are about to be
shot next, flings his hands upwards as stares at the muskets levelled in his
face. In Guernica a figure similarly
throws its hands upwards, but in this case towards unseen planes and bombs.
Death may come in many guises, but the physicality of suffering and destruction
is always the same.
December 2015
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