[QUOTE=Nava]
I was coming to indicate a general allergy to Picasso and Miró, but that particular post touches on one of my specific problems with the Guernica.
It’s not a painting. It’s a printing plank. The fact that people insist in treating it as a painting means that it’s actually unfinished, since nobody has ever done an actual printing run for fear of damaging it. That’s like marrying a porn star and never having sex.
Being a printing plank, it’s a negative. I’ve heard critics say that “one of the sources of its strength is that it has movement from right to left instead of the usual occidental convention, from left to right.” No, dumbass, and when you say things like that you’re a dumbass no matter how much you get paid for saying them: you’re looking at it the wrong way! If anybody ever actually finished it, the figures would move from left to right.
And of course, once printed the light and dark areas would look totally different.
[/QUOTE]
At the risk of flogging a dead horse ( 
), I have to add my request for a “cite!” to those of Struan, panamajack, and pulykamell. If what you say here is true, it’s one of the most bizarre coverups in modern art history – and I can scarcely fault the art critics that you denigrate!.
I know that you grew up around 100km from the town of Guernica, Nava, and have probably had access to stories and sources that no other Doper has, but the “canonical” process of the creation of Guernica has been documented such as was the case for very few other paintings, and if it’s really “the wrong way round” then Picasso only had himself to blame (or was creating a massive sick joke that would only have been funny to himself).
Background here (and, frankly, every other web or print source I’ve ever seen):
[ul]
[li]Picasso was commissioned to paint a large mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exposition. He already knew the space involved, and had a definite timeline in which to paint it.[/li][li]He started off with a series of smaller works (The Dream and Lie of Franco), then…[/li][li]April 26, 1937, Nazi planes (allied with Franco in the ongoing Spanish Civil War) devastated Guernica in one of the world’s first aerial bombardments of an urban area.[/li][li]May 1, 1937, Picasso made his first sketches for Guernica. The overall process was photographed and otherwise documented by his lover Dora Maar, and other artists came and viewed the work in progress. [/li][li]July 12, 1937, the Spanish Pavilion was officially opened, and Guernica, an oil painting on a large canvas (over 25ft x 11ft), was first seen by the public in the location and at the time that were both known at its conception.[/li][li]After the Exposition, it traveled around Europe and the Americas (but not to Spain until after Picasso – and Franco! – were both dead), ending up in MOMA in New York until 1981, when it was “repatriated” (!) to the Prado in Madrid, then in 1991 to the Museo Reina Sofía.[/li][li]In the nearly 36 years between Guernica’s creation and Picasso’s death in 1973, he became wealthy, influential, and possibly the world’s most famous living artist. He had ample opportunity to right any wrong, and to correct his critics in their analyses.[/li][/ul]
If Guernica had been created in total privacy, using printing-friendly materials, and he’d died before revealing it to another artist, I suppose the “reverse image” idea might make some bizarre sense. But, given the canonical story and the number of people who saw the work in development, Occam’s razor must surely lead us to assume that the work that we see today is as Picasso intended.
[Or, was he just too embarrassed to tell everyone that his most famous work was backwards, and that he’d chosen stupid materials for his “printing plank” but ran out of time before the deadline?]
[I’ve always been moved by Guernica, and when I finally saw it in Madrid I was stunned afresh. That thing is huge!]
