Tragedy in Art: Picasso's Guernica and Hume's Theory

Introduction: Tragedy in Art and Hume's Framework

Newspapers perpetually invoke the word "tragedy." It usually signals a death or deaths associated with a catastrophic event. Surprisingly, this usage aligns with Aristotle's definition of tragedy — that it should evoke the emotions of pity and fear in the presence of an action of a certain magnitude. Pablo Picasso's 1937 mural Guernica: Testimony of War is the epitome of tragedy in art as described by David Hume in his essay "Of Tragedy."

Hume expresses the belief that tragedy may be perceived within art through the experience of passion, spirit, uneasiness, and a certain pleasure brought about by an understanding of the symbolic aesthetic. He states: "The whole art of the poet is employed in rousing and supporting the compassion and indignation, the anxiety and resentment of his audience. They are pleased in proportion as they are afflicted, and never are so happy as when they employ tears, sobs, and cries to give vent to their sorrow, and relieve their heart, swollen with the tenderest sympathy and compassion" (Hume).

Historical Context: The Bombing of Guernica

The mural is based on an incident that occurred in 1937. Hitler had come to the aid of Francisco Franco by sending planes to destroy the non-military village of Guernica in Spain's Basque region. The entire town was decimated by the three-hour siege. As Russell Martin writes, "Picasso found himself interested not so much in what the bombing and burning of Guernica meant politically, but rather what they meant in metaphor, what they meant in the context of individual human lives. He wanted to address emotively the destruction of his beloved country, and he already possessed a personal visual language with which to do so, one anchored in the violence, suffering, and passion of the bullring, as well as in the centuries-old Spanish belief in the essential tragedy of life, one embodied by the figure of a grieving woman, La Llorona" (Martin 38).

Guernica is considered "lively" in its execution, composition, and emotional impact. As Martin observes, "Guernica's visual imagery — a screaming horse which had fallen, pierced by a lance; a wailing woman holding a dead child in her arms; another woman, her clothes on fire, attempting to escape from a burning building; the severed head of a soldier — spoke not specifically to a terrible day in Spain. Rather, it spoke to the horrors that humans have visited on each other for millennia, and because of this the painting began to symbolize the reality of every war remarkably soon after its creation" (Martin 38). The visual representation, executed in an abstract style, draws the viewer into the action of the painting. Upon the body of a man tread all manner of figures — some with the face of man, others of animals. The man at the bottom holds a chipped knife, suggesting it has been used, though no blood is visible.

Visual Analysis: Liveliness, Imagery, and Composition

A bull stands to the left (from the viewer's perspective), nostrils extended and eyes distended. One eye looks toward the carnage and the mourners while the other stares directly at — and perhaps past — the viewer. The head of a horse rages, an extra horn resembling a unicorn's protruding from its mouth. An eye-shaped form contains a light bulb, its light extending only a short distance into the surrounding space.

Hooves and feet congregate toward the foreground. Bodies and fragments of bodies — animal and human — are massed together in the middle, while floating faces enter from the right. In front of the bull, a mother holds her dead child, her mouth open in a scream.

Light participates in the portrayal of action to the right, while the darkness of the bull's body provides a backdrop for the mother and child. The texture generated by such graphic imagery is two-dimensional only if the transition to the mind's eye is excluded. The viewer becomes fully involved, even to the point of distress. The work is altogether "disagreeable, afflicting, melancholy, disordered," as Hume suggests is necessary (Hume).

Conclusion: Guernica as the Fulfillment of Tragic Art

All of Picasso's work was significant; however, during the years in which the entire world was involved in war — World War I and World War II — Picasso fervently attempted to bring whatever meaning he found in life onto the canvas. The mural of Guernica stands among those works. Picasso's art is individualistic, ahead of its time, and the kind of work that elicits a strong emotional response. In this painting, it is as though Picasso tried to provide an abstract rendition of the many views and viewpoints available to him regarding what happened and how people responded. Many of his images are distorted in a fashion that lends itself to interpretations of evil and allusions to monstrosity.