1914 World War I

1916Easter Rising . Catholic Repubblicans rebel against British rule in Ireland.

1917 USA enters war against Germany.Russian Revolution.
The treaty of Versailles drawn up between Germany and the Allied powers.
1919-22 In India Gandhi initiates a policy on non-violent protest against the British
government.
1921The Irish Free State is created (Ulster excluded).
1936 Spanish Civil War breaks out.
1939World War II begins.
 Modernism is a literary and cultural
international movement which flourished in
the first decades of the 20th century. It
reflects a sense of cultural crisis putting into
question any previously accepted . Modernism
is marked by experimentation, particularly
manipulation of form, and by the realization
that knowledge is not absolute.
• Modernism was built on a sense of lost
community and civilization and embodied a
series of contradictions and paradoxes,
• Revolution and conservatism
• Loss of a sense of tradition
• Increasing dominance of technology
• distortion of shapes
• Attention on form rather than meaning
• Destruction down of limitation of space and time
• Dislocation of meaning and sense from its normal
context
• Importance of the unconscious mind
• Interest in the primitive and non-western cultures
• Impossibility of an absolute interpretation of
reality
 Cultural Influences
Sigmun Freud
Man’s conscious behaviour is
governed by irrational
unconscious drives which are
established very early
life.Man’s percepetion of
reality is subjective he
organizes the information
through the principle of Free
association of ideas.
C. Gustav Jung
He added the concept of
“collective unconscious”.A sort
of cultural memory containng
the universal myths and beliefs
of the human race,which
operates on a symbolic level.
William James
Man’s mind record every
single experience as a
continuos flow of the
“already” into “not
yet”stream of
consciousness:
Consciousness is something
fluid which “flows” like a
“stream”
Albert Einstein
Space and time are subjective
dimensions.With the theory of
Relativity he caused a
revolution in science,art ad
literature.
Henry Bergson
Time is a duration and not
a series of poits.
-Historical time
-Psychological time
Time is not linear.We
experience a mixture of
past,present and future in
the same moment.
Friedrich
Nietzsche
He substitued Christian
morality with a belief in
human power and
perfectibility
“God is dead”
 Ferdinand De Saussure
(1857-1913)

Swiss linguist
widely considered as the 'father' of 20th-century
linguistics. Main work Course in General
Linguistics. Its central notion is that language may
be analyzed as a formal system of differential
elements
– linguistic sign
– signifier
– signified
– referent
Features:
• Dissonance/distorted music effects
• Rejection of rules of harmony and
composition
• Serial system of composition
• Lack of traditional chronological narrative
(discontinuous narrative)
• Fragmentation
• A number of different narrators (multiple
narrative points of view)
• meta-narrative)
• Use of indirect and direct monologue technique
• Use of the stream of consciousness method
• Focus on a character's consciousness and
subconscious
• First abstract art style
• Used simple shapes
• Ignored color in beginning
• Lacks elements of light, atmosphere, and space
• Overlapping Fragments
• Disregard physical laws of nature.
• Based on intellect • Less intricate
• Monochromatic color • More color
palette • More appealing
• Reduce object to basic • Collage
geometric shapes • Objects less
• Linear construction recognizable
• Less shading
• Added substance to
paint
Artists aimed at making their works easier to be understood,
so that they included some elements that would be
identified such as musical instruments. During this period
some realist elements appeared too, as printing
characters, numbers, newspaper pieces, or labels. They
wanted to transmit the idea of a combination of different
materials by imitating wood or marble.
• Born in Spain
• Known as the most famous artist of the 20th
century
• Lived from 1881-1973
• Pablo Picasso is considered a Modernist in
terms of art history
• Picasso was a Spaniard with strong populist
beliefs
• Commissioned by the Spanish Republican
Government to create a mural for the
international exhibition in Paris at the Spanish
pavilion in 1937.
• The Spanish Civil War broke out July 18, 1937
• The massacre of the village Guernica became the
image for the mural
• In 1937 Europe was in a state of extreme unease.
Adolph Hitler had steered Germany into a state of
intense nationalism
• In Spain, the Civil War engulfed the country.
• The two opposing sides were the Nationalists, led
by General Francisco Franco, and The
Republicans, who were a mixture of liberal,
communist and anarchist factions
• Germany and Italy supported the fascist Franco,
The Soviet Union and Mexico supported the
Republicans.
 The painting is crammed with symbolism and they wouldn’t be put there haphazardly as Picasso may suggest.
He did hundreds of sketches before making this painting. Picasso had many famous quotes...one of them being,
“Art is to be looked at. Not talked about.”, so he was pretty tight lipped about explaining his mindset. Some
symbols are pretty constant with historical paintings and previous Picasso paintings.

7
11
2 8
3 6
1 10

4
5
• Here we go... From right to left we have 1. a woman clutching a dead child and looking up and wailing at
the bull. 2. the bull 3 a duck freaking out 4. a dead guy with a 5. broken sword. 6. the horse 7 A light
illuminates part of the painting from above the horses head.
• 8. a figure enters the painting through a window holding a lantern to the horse. Below that figure 9. is a
woman gazing at the light. Behind her 10.shows a man, arms out being burnt by the flames above and
below him. Above him is an window and 11 on his right is an open door.
 , symbolizing the
death of innocence

1
• massive and brutal, a beast witnessing the
carnage and may symbolize Franco.
• In most traditions, birds have a predominantly positive connotation.
• "Birds symbolize the power that helps people to speak reflectively and leads
them to think out many things in advance before they take action. Just as
birds are lifted up into the air by their feathers and can remain wherever
they wish, the soul in the body is elevated by thought and spreads its wings
everywhere." They represent the human desire to escape gravity, to reach
the level of the angel. The bird is often the disembodied human soul, free of
its physical constrictions.
 The broken soldier

• broken soldier, - brittle and hollow, the

warrior is vulnerable and empty
 The flower

• Perhaps these flowers are a sign of the idealism that this war
was all about. It seems as if those flowers represent the last
hope of the man, the last beautiful thing he will see, and, by
holding on to them in death, they seem to tell people that,
even to the end, this man believed in the war he was fighting.
 6

• Dying horse- [perhaps] symbolizes the

pain of Spain using the national sport of a
picador’s horse as a metaphor.
• The ceiling-light: Republican party; since its rays are stronger,
brighter, and more powerful than those rays of the nearby
flame, it signifies that the "good" Republicans are going to win
the war.
• The iconography shows senseless death, chaos and terror.
• The flame in the woman’s hand may represent the
bombs and the light-bearer represents the warplanes
and Franco’s regime.
 8-9-10-11

• Guernica is a monumental outcry of human grief. At

the right, there are three women. One falls from a
burning house. The other woman runs in “mindless
flight” The third is represented only by a hand and
arm, carrying a lamp.
 Analyzing a Work of Art
1. The use of black, white, and grey served to focus our attention
on the ‘newspaper’ quality of ‘news’. There are no other colors
in the painting.
2. The overall composition is based on a pyramid with the lamp
(illuminating the scene) being the apex and the hand of the
fallen soldier and the foot of the victimized woman forming its
base.
3. Jagged shapes (overhead light fixture, mouth of the horse,
broken sword) contribute to an expression of raw anguish.
4. Texture is used on the horse and it is meant to remind us of the
newspaper which delivered the news of Guernica to the world.

5. Linear elements bisect the entire composition, both unifying

and dissecting images.
 – Thin lines
– Mechanical Lines
Lines – Organic lines
– Fine point instrument
– Asymmetrical
– Horizontal, vertical, and curved lines
• Triangles
• Ovals
• Rectangles
• Square
• Circles
• The figures are flat and one-dimensional with a an indication of space in
the perspective lines found in the upper corners of the painting .
– Some objects appear smooth, no brush strokes or
scratch marks
– Some objects appear rough
• Somber tones of gray
• Charcoal
• Black
• White
• Pain and despair
• Abandonment of hope
• Cubist in origin
 Critical Interpretation by Scholars
• There is no hope depicted in the colors, figures, and
complex symbolism
• Bull is brutality and darkness
• Horse represents the innocence of the civilian victims
• The weeping woman is Picasso’s mistress, Dora
• The painting became a timely and prophetic vision of the
Second World War and is now recognised as an
international icon for peace.
• Experts," now agree that Picasso practised a form of art-
magic, linked to this was Picasso's Harlequin.
• Picasso's Harlequin recognised as an underworld character, a
master of disguise associated with the occult. Picasso
identified with Harlequin whom he also associated with Christ
due to the character's mystical power over death. He has
invoked a number of unseen Harlequins to overcome the
forces of death represented in the painting.
• This is the largest Harlequin,
which is cleverly hidden behind
the surface imagery.
• The outline of the face can be
seen in the lines and
background tones of the
composition, the eyes and the
tuft of hair to the right of the
face are clearly visible.
• The Harlequin appears to be
crying a diamond tear for the
victims of the bombing. The
diamond is one of the
Harlequin's symbols and in
Picasso's work it is a personal
signature.
• The next Harlequin is easily
recognisable as the painting is rotated
90 degrees to the right.

• From this viewpoint, Harlequin's hat

becomes obvious as the figure
appears to look upwards at the sky as
if in reference to the bombing.
• This is another Harlequin, seen by rotating the
painting 90 degrees to the left.
• This fourth Harlequin has been concealed by
inversion, which is a common technique of
encryption in Hermetic magic.

• The Crocodile and the Harlequin are common

characters in Punch and Judy shows, their
inclusion in Guernica stems from Picasso's love
of puppetry .The figure falling across the
Harlequin's face which is often assumed to be a
woman, in fact bears a strong resemblance to
Picasso, who appears to be identifying with the
victims of the bombing.
• In the centre of the painting is a hidden skull.
The skull has been overlaid onto the body of
the horse, which is also a death symbol.
 Below the dying horse in the centre of the
painting is a concealed bull's head . Its
location infers that that it is plunging its horns
into the horse's belly from below.
• “Abhorrence of the military caste
which has sunk Spain in an ocean
of pain and death…The bull is not
fascism, but it is brutality and
darkness…the horse represents
the people ”