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.
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.
When you’re totally not a useless infiltrated organization so you criticize your own member for making a now-famous anti-imperialist painting.
i too remember reading of the massacre by the U.S. 108th Cyborg Tesla Rifle Brigade in Inchon
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?”
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.
