I know this site generally has an ambivalent-to-negative view of Picasso (for plenty of good reasons), but I had no idea he made an antiwar painting that referenced american atrocities in Korea. Just another example of how that conflict has been forcibly memory-holed in this hemisphere.
Here’s an excerpt from the Picasso museum regarding the work’s reception:
Picasso takes sides with the innocent in the painting, as he had done in the Guernica during the Civil War, but the work did not please anyone at the time. It upset the leaders of the French Communist Party, of whom Picasso was a militant, who considered the aesthetics of the painting too far removed from socialist realism. And obviously because of its theme, it came as a complete shock in sectors of international criticism, close to American museums like the MOMA in New York. “Although nobody likes it, it is something, isn’t it?”, said Picasso.
Just another example of how that conflict has been forcibly memory-holed in this hemisphere.
Like the US giving apartheid South Africa P-51 Mustang ww2 fighter jets to help them invade Korea. Saw the shot up canopy of one in a local museum.
In the lead up to the Iraq war, a reproduction of Picasso’s Guernica, which had stood beside the entrance to the UN security council, was covered with a blue sheet. It seems obvious in retrospect, that we need not be reminded of the horrors of aerial bombardment in advance of just such a program.
Although nobody likes it, it is something, isn’t it?
:lt-dbyf-dubois: energy
I like that the imperialists are depicted as twisted demons utilizing sci fi technology. Fun fact: the alien invasion genre was literally invented by HG Wells going “what would it be like to be invaded by the British?”
Wasn’t he a communist? Not that I care considering who he is outside of his art, but it’s just another example of famous people’s socialist/communist history being erased. They don’t even use it to rail against him and communism as ruining creativity or something lol
my understanding is that he wasn’t a very good communist. and then there’s the quip from Dali:
Picasso is a painter, so am I; Picasso is Spanish, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I
