3 Subjects ... 2 Assignmens

HUM 106: Experience of Modern Art

Week 4 Discussion Question

PART 1:

Preparation

Your assignment due in Week 6 requires you to examine a contemporary social movement of your choosing and the art associated with it to determine its effect on you and others.

This discussion prompt will give you practice in completing this type of exercise. In Chapter 11 of your text:

Read “Guernica and Related Works,” page 257. (See below)

Guernica and Related Works

Picasso’s major painting of the 1930s and one of the most recognizable works of the twentieth century is Guernica (fig. 11.21). Executed in 1937, it was inspired by the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War—specifically, the destruction of the Basque town of Guernica by German bombers in the service of the Spanish fascists. In January 1937, Picasso, who supported the Republicans in their fight against the fascist General Francisco Franco, created two etchings, each composed of a number of episodes, and accompanied by a poem, Dream and Lie of Franco. General Franco is shown as a turnip-headed monster, and the bull as the symbol of resurgent Spain. The grief-stricken woman in the painting who shrieks over the body of her dead child first appeared in this etching. In May and June 1937 Picasso painted Guernica for the Spanish Republican Pavilion of the Paris World’s Fair. It is a huge painting in black, white, and gray, a scene of terror and devastation. Although Picasso used motifs such as the screaming horse or agonized figures derived from his Surrealist distortions of the 1920s, the structure is based on the Cubist grid and returns to the more stringent palette of Analytic Cubism (see fig. 7.17). With the exception of the fallen warrior at the lower left, the human protagonists are women, but the central victim is the speared horse from Minotauromachy. Guernica is Picasso’s most powerfully expressionist application of Cubism and one of the most searing indictments of war ever painted.

View Picasso’s Guernica, above, and in Figure 11.21 on page 257. (below)

Created in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, Guernica conveyed Picasso’s anti-war sentiment.

*Please respond to the following in a post of 150 to 200 words:

-Describe what you see in Guernica and your personal response to it

-Summarize the message you believe Picasso hoped to convey about war.

-Explain your view concerning the role of art in social movements.

Note: Completing this discussion post will help you prepare for the assignment due in Week 6.

In a post of 60 to 75 words, please respond to at least one other post. Choose to respond to those who have few or no responses.

Part 2: Student Response

Lexis Grayson

RE: Easy Monday Question

Hey class,

I think my choice would be a painting, of everything in one, how covid, war on terror, and racism, how it all hurts us all, how in this time, all we can do is stick together as a country and fight for peace and unity. everything that is bresking our country down, I never though that we would be going through times life this were the parents are becoming the teachers, and people are scared to teach or stand beside one another. Its a time that we all will never forget.