Responses To A National Tragedy Continue To Emerge

By Shannon Hicks

On April 27, 1937, the Spanish town of Guernica found itself under attack by forces led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco during the early stages of what would become World War II. The little northern village in northern Spain was chosen for bombing practice using a technique called saturation bombing. The hamlet was pounded by Hitler’s war machine with highly explosive and incendiary bombs for over three hours. When it was over, 1,600 civilians had been killed or wounded.

The Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso generally avoided politics, but when news of the attack on Guernica reached Paris on May 1, 1937, the artist was no longer able to remain neutral. He began painting, improvising as he went along, and quickly produced one of the most scrutinized works of his life, a mural named after the Spanish town that had been targeted by foreigners without provocation.

Newtown High School art teacher Joyce Hannah saw immediate similarities between the events in Guernica just over six decades years ago and what happened in the United States six weeks ago. Students in her Drawing I classes quickly saw the parallels as well, and rose to a challenge issued by their teacher.

Three weeks after the attacks on Washington, D.C., and New York City, Mrs Hannah gave her students the project of creating an image that would use symbolic language in showing their response to what happened on September 11.

Paintings, drawings, and collages by the Newtown High School artists are currently on view in the main lobby of the high school. Students not only created visual works of art, but have also been working on written statements of their concepts and strategies for communicating these symbols. The first step in the project was to study and understand the similarities between their assignment and Picasso’s mural.

“Guernica,” which measures 11’6” by 25’8”, is loaded with symbolism executed in Cubist style. The mother and dead child were descendants of the Pietà (an Italian word derived from the Latin pietas, the root word for both “pity” and “piety”), which represented in its original artistic state the Virgin grieving over the dead Christ. The woman with the lamp recalls the Statue of Liberty. The dead fighter’s hand, still clutching a broken sword, is, according to Janson’s History of Art, “a familiar emblem of heroic resistance.”

Picasso chose from the beginning to not present the horror of Guernica in realist or romantic themes. He used a number of additional key symbolic figures: a woman with outstretched arms, the recurring bull seen in numerous Picasso works, and an agonized horse.

“These figures,” Janson’s book continues, “owe their terrifying eloquence to what they are, not what they mean; the anatomical dislocations, fragmentations and metamorphoses … express a stark reality, the reality of unbearable pain.”

The majority of the art by the high school students offer looks of hope, freedom, and rebuilding. Katie Mackay’s stark charcoal drawing depicts the intensity of what happened in lower Manhattan last month, while an American eagle is seen pushing its way out from the rubble.

“I’m very happy with the fact I was able to show how dark everything was, yet the eagle in the bottom symbolizes hope,” Katie said. “Even though we’ve been hurt, I see hope.”

Anthony Summo said he went through three ideas before he finally decided to improvise his final drawing. (Whether Anothony knew it or not, Picasso himself once said “A painting is not thought out and settled in advance. While it is being done, it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it’s finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it.”) Anthony’s drawing included graffiti, which is something, he said, that symbolizes a concept America can fight for.

“Graffiti is a rebellion, but it also shows our freedom of expression,” he explained.

One student answered with what Mrs Hannah called “a taboo thought,” that the bombing was not a wake-up call to the United States but perhaps the beginning of the end of capitalism.

Eileen Honan said many Americans, in the back of their minds, are thinking, “Is this the beginning of the end?” Her work at first glance is a wave of patriotism — a red and white swirl is dotted with two blue stars.

Below the color wash, however, is a depiction of the Arch of Titus in Rome. Eileen adapted the inscription on the original architectural marvel to correspond with her homeland. Instead of being a devotional line to one of the most exalted leaders of ancient Rome, the arch in Eileen’s drawing reads In God We Trust and on a second line, E Pluribus Unum.

“I definitely wanted to do something that wouldn’t offend people,” Eileen explained, “but this was one of my first thoughts, that this could be the beginning of the end of American society.”