Pablo Picasso Guernica and Anti-war Messages

Artists powerfully interpret their contemporary time and culture to create artworks of how they perceive the world around them. The Chapman brothers have created ‘sum of all evil’; their diagram of hell through juxtaposing pre industrial culture to modern day consumerism and globalism to make a comment on the society of the time we live in. Pablo Picasso has similarly taken the topic of the Spanish civil war and used dark humour and symbolism to appropriate culture and comment on society in his painting Guernica. The function of their artworks is to perceive the word we live in and by using Religious symbols and pop culture to bridge the gap between old cultures and modern day.

The time and place an artist is surrounded by heavily impacts the way they create their artworks and how we perceive them. This helps to shape the way the audience understands culture and the way the world around them works. Guernica was created during time of Spanish civil war and Guernica bombing in Spain. Guernica was painted as an immediate reaction to the Nazi's devastating casual bombing practice on the Basque town of Guernica during Spanish Civil War. Picasso was inspired by the death and suffering of mostly innocent woman and children to create his artwork and raise awareness. Prior to the artwork Spanish civil war was not widely published or considered a worldwide problem but through the creation and publicity of his artwork Picasso brought worldwide attention to the horrors of the war. Thus creating Guernica as a universal and powerful symbol warning humanity against suffering and devastation of war. Sum of all evil is the Chapman Brother’s provocative interpretation of the holocaust juxtaposing modern day consumerism through a confronting horrific diorama. This artwork reflects on the reality of the Nazis power over the Jewish represented as the power of MacDonald’s over modern society. The brothers created an exhibition of iconoclastic artworks, full of violence and aggression, anti-consumerist messages, and images of sexual debauchery to make their comment on society. The brothers were influenced by their culture to reflect on how past examples of power contrast to modern examples. The brothers used the most pathetic way of representing the thing that has most exorcised western civilization. By making their judgment they influence nations to understand their view of how they present Macdonald’s as more murderous than the Nazis towards the Jewish to highlight the corruption of consumerism in modern day society. Sum of all evil is an example of how the Chapman brothers are renowned for exploring and articulating a spectrum of beauty and pain, humour and horror in ways that jolt the viewer into contemplation.

Bother artists have effectively used symbols to depict how culture has influenced them to create the artworks. By doing this they have made the audience question their responses and actions to worldwide problems. Picasso has used symbols of mythological figures such as the horse and the to represent the Loyalists and Nationalists fighting against each other in the Spanish Civil War. The horse and bull who feature in Guernica are both totemic animals of Spain’s stands for Spanish people. Since both animals are in a state of extreme pain and suffering, they present how both sides are not benefiting from the pointless war or suffering. The war is a fatuous act of unnecessary violence; the horror and injustice caused do not aid any political party in any way. The chaos caused by Europe's political instability is highlighted in Guernica's composition, with humans and animals jumbled together into a background of broken hard-edged geometric shapes. Picasso is renowned for using bright colours in his artworks although in Guernica he has used a mostly monochromatic painting with the predominant "color" being mostly black, reminiscent of death of war itself. Thus, in conclusion, Guernica is a painting with numerous symbols to depict strong anti-war sentiments.

The Chapman brothers have created the Nazis being put into their own systematic genocide. The Nazis practiced genocide on everyone they thought was inferior. What the Chapman Brothers have done is mirror that: the Nazis are being recycled within their own mechanism by skeletons, mutants and aliens. The artwork is represented as a giant swastika and this is not always realized until after physically viewing the art. This represents how everyone was involved in the holocaust no matter if they didn’t realize at the time. This similarly contrasts to modern day consumerism of MacDonald’s as everyone is involved and everyone can make a change. When viewing the dioramas every time you think you've got the measure of it you notice a new ludicrous yet fearsome, throwaway yet lovingly rendered detail of life in the abyss. The work unabashedly fuses sensitive events with mass branding and symbols of the global fast food chain, McDonald’s. In one vitrine, the instantly recognizable, creepy character of Ronald McDonald is depicted as a melancholic fisherman on a crumbling jetty, his legs peacefully dangling over a lake thickly tangled with dead bodies. In another, a burnt out McDonald’s restaurant appears like a relic of contemporary consumerism, a ghostly reminder of its once ubiquitous global presence. The artwork is designed to shock the audience into realizing how controlling and overpowering McDonalds is by juxtaposing it to the holocaust.

Both artworks successfully shocked their audiences into questioning their daily society through the confronting ideas and features of their artworks. Initially Picasso’s artwork received negative reactions; it was dismissed as a jumble of body parts with no meaning that a toddler could paint. After it was featured in 1937 exhibition in Paris it became came world famous touring exhibition was used to raise funds for Spanish war relief. Speculations as to the exact meaning of the jumble of tortured images are as numerous as the people who have viewed the painting. Guernica challenges the audience’s notions of warfare as heroic and exposes it as a brutal act of self-destruction. It is a hallmark of Picasso's art that any symbol can hold many, often contradictory meanings, and the precise significance of the imagery in Guernica remains ambiguous. The artwork has since become a universal and powerful symbol warning humanity against suffering and devastation of war. The exploitation of the detailed primitive artworks shocks and confronts the audience to think about how they react to the world around them. The ideas expressed through the artworks influence viewers to realize the power of MacDonald’s and how although it has a shiny exterior and is easy to access it is really a killing machine with no intention to stop. Both artists challenged ideas about what art is by creating their work using influences of the society and culture of their times.

Through the use of symbolisms and references to context and culture both the Chapman Brothers and Picasso have powerfully responded to the world around them. Both artists have juxtaposed reference to the past and present and made commentary to challenge ideas about how we, as an audience, react to the culture and society of our world.