Pablo Picasso- Guernica, 1937
Artists who live and work with spiritual values cannot and should not remain indifferent to a conflict in which the highest values of humanity and civilization are at stake.
–Pablo Picasso
I always worry about alienating people who come to this blog to read about art and are greeted with my opinions and beliefs on the world. But reading the words above from Pablo Picasso this morning reminds me that my art is a product of all that I am and all that I witness in this world. I like to think that my work is about the human spirit and emotion. As such, I can’t remain indifferent or ignore those things that set off my emotional alarms nor those that eat away at what I see as the collective human spirit that we all share.
I am sharing this today because it feels like we are once again in a time when the highest values of humanity and civilization are at stake. In the coming months I will not doubt express my opinions and observations on what is taking place here. I will try to refrain from it becoming excessive. However, these things that are taking place ultimately affect my work and as such will elicit thoughts from time to time on what I am witnessing.
It might not seem connected to my work on the surface, but it is there. You’ve been warned.
The first paragraph above was written four years ago in relation to a post from a couple of years before that which featured some other words from Picasso as well the painting above, his masterpiece Guernica which depicted the bombing of the Basque village of Guernica by Nazi and Fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War. It is considered the most powerful anti-war painting in history. The post itself was concerned with how artists use fabrication to reveal truth.
Here it is:
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Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.
—Pablo Picasso
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Many of my favorite artists worked in the first half of the 2oth century, producing their greatest works in times when the world was under great stress. All experienced two World Wars only decades apart and– in the case of Picasso– the Spanish Civil War in between. Here, we had the Great Depression and times of social transformation and spiritual upheaval. Even when the work didn’t overtly deal with the events of the day, much of the work reflected on the collective consciousness of that time.
I think that is so because art is, just as Picasso so succinctly states, a lie that makes us realize the truth.
Artists fabricate, often creating work that is on its surface pure fantasy with little relation to the world as others might observe it. But their fabrication is made up from everything that impacts them– their knowledge, their observations, their opinions and emotions, and all that they come in contact with.
Artists take in the world to create work that is often pure fabrication.
Some might call it a lie.
But what seems the lie often proves to be built of ultimate truths, just constructed in a manner that allows others to see this truth clearly.
I don’t know that we artists always succeed. I certainly don’t feel that I do as often as I would like. But when a piece succeeds and shows us something far beyond what its surface represents, it is a true revelation.
Believing that, so long as we feel deeply and continue to create our lies, we will at some point reveal a truth.
Got to get to work now. Those lies don’t just tell themselves.
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