I
am in Madrid with my eldest daughter, Daisy, who is fifteen and a
half. It is early August, around six weeks after the disastrous
Brexit vote, and it's very hot. The heat assaults us every time we
step out of the hotel lobby. We haven't been here long, but we're
already feeling a little aggrieved by the Metro system. Every time we
arrive on a platform a train is just leaving, it seems, and there is
invariably a wait of around five minutes for the next one. One of the
lines which serves our nearest station is closed for the summer, so
it's already a little harder to get around than it ought to be. But
the city has charmed us, proving to be cleaner and quieter than we
were warned we might expect it to be. This afternoon we're following
my itinerary, which will place us in front of Guernica
and some of the highlights of the Prado.
We
emerge at street level in the neighbourhood of Lavapiés, where the
streets seem to smell of last night's barbecue, and walk down towards
the Museo Reina Sofia. Closer to the museum locals and tourists are
lunching in great numbers on shaded pavements, and I am baffled again
by the instinct of so many of my countrymen, which urges them to be
more remote from civilisation (exemplified here by the cosmopolitan
mix of diners talking at sensible volume over food and drink consumed
in a spirit of leisure) rather than closer to it. No-one at the
ticket booth is in any rush to assist us, and it becomes clear,
eventually, that this is not to do with any native indolence, but
rather because admission is free after 1.00pm. Now, I was aware that
the Prado offers free admission after five, but this is a bonus. At
least I think it is.
Guernica
is hemmed in by smaller galleries displaying Picasso's preparatory
sketches and the room in which the painting itself is hung is long
but reasonably shallow. It is also extremely crowded, so you feel a
little like you're at the back of a crowd waiting for a parade to
pass, rather than experiencing one of the Twentieth Century's great
expressions of artistic energy. The painting itself is huge, but not
surprisingly so, as some pieces already familiar in reproduction are
when you first see them. It is as if the reputation of Guernica
has outstripped even its expansive dimensions. Perhaps one's
impression of the painting suffers as a result of its overfamiliarity
(though I did not find this to be the case with Las
Meninas,
an earlier masterpiece which I saw later in the day and found
immensely moving, in spite of my still greater familiarity with the
image.) Perhaps it is necessary to imagine seeing the work during or
in the immediate aftermath of the war whose effects it seems to
depict, although I had just flown to Madrid from a nation which
seemed to be turning against itself, informed by a wider
reinvigoration of fascism that threatens to poison the whole
continent. Anyway I found myself focusing more on what troubled me
about the painting rather than enjoying what Picasso had achieved.
I
have an idea about what Picasso was trying to accomplish in making
the surface of the canvas so resolutely matt (apparently he
commissioned special oil paint in order to create this effect). It
seems that the painting is in some way supposed to resemble a black
and white photo reproduced in a newspaper. To me though, this
flatness deprived the picture of some energy, as if he hadn't really
progressed from the drawings through to the finished work. The
contrast between flat blacks, greys and whites is not as dramatic as
it would have been had conventional oils been used. The components of
the image are more harmoniously placed than they appear in the
claustrophobic reproductions I was used to seeing, so that what I had
expected to be chaotic seemed overly ordered. At the same time I
found that the execution of the painting was almost sloppy, though I
am also aware that this may be part of an intended aesthetic, that
Picasso may have been attempting to create a tension between
composition and realisation, that the canvas, in parts, was supposed
to appear scruffy and unfinished. Nevertheless I felt a sense of
wavering conviction, as if the artist had understood, too late, that
the finished work would not live up to what was originally conceived.
What
bothered me most about Guernica,
I think, was its very consideredness. The tortured figures were too
neatly balanced, the cartoonish limbs and digits too mannered. It is
of course possible, laudable even, to investigate the insanity of war
in a calm and measured fashion, but this is not what Picasso was at,
if I understand his masterpiece correctly. He wanted Guernica
to be a vast, mad yelp of a painting, a cry from the heart echoing
the pain and horror of conflict, but for me, standing in front of it
with a hundred or so other people, it seemed a bit too sane, too
self-conscious and too public. I would only have to wait a couple of
hours to find a more convincing and intimate argument about the
senselessness of violence. One which wouldn't seem sane at all.
