One wonders if Dali’s sucking up to Franco was genuine or simply a means of self-preservation. He wouldn’t have been the first European artist to blindly support autocrats, or to feign such support, whichever the case may be. Would be interesting to find post-Franco interviews of Dali. Too bad Picasso didn’t outlive the Generalissimo.

Not especially shocking to see a member of the European intelligentsia supporting bad political causes, especially in a country where at the time there weren’t any good ones (with any real measure of power, anyway).

(Dali flirted with Marxism in his youth, but then so did David Horowitz.)

Actually I was thinking of The Persistence of Memory as a replacement for Pollack. Gotta wonder why Pollock and Guernica belong on the same list.

(Political implication? Consulting Wikipedia…Ah, I see that Dali belonged to and was expelled from a Marxist group. Guess I won’t suggest adding Frida Kahlo.)

Recall that I attacked Guernica as art. It was defended on this blog on the basis of its historic subject matter, not on its own merits.

If one composes a must-visit list on the basis of cultural influence, Guernica would certainly belong, along with the Dali and Leonardo’s Mona Lisa.

I asked in comment 23 why people consider him a great artist, and nobody attempted an answer. Maybe such an answer is not possible. With regard to this medium, greatness tends to be self-evident. Someone who is not partial to Dali or Titian can see the skill present in their works. Pollock’s “pour” method (yes, I read the Wikipedia article) defies the historical method for appreciating portrait artwork; explaining its appeal as great art may simply be impossible to put into words.

Since the list has several non-paintings, let’s see if I can come up with a piece of modern art to add. One comes to mind right off bat:

The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali (1931), Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Yeah, pretty much. But seriously, the topic of this discussion is “20 Paintings to See Before You Die” so I think it’s fair to assume your arguments were addressed to the question of whether you (or anyone else) should go and see Guernica. That’s assuming that you weren’t just trying to hijack this thread to use it as a platform for your “deflationary” views of modern art. But you wouldn’t do that, would you?

I never said anything about planning to go to Spain, much less Guernica, so your comment is just empty snark. Anything wrong with being an art critic?

#50,

I haven’t trashed anyone besides Picasso (his “mutant” genre, anyway – not, say, this) and Pollock, so you don’t know my general reaction to art. I like to admire art that looks cool. I like history, too, so reading a little historical background on a painting would be entertaining, too.

My criticism of Guernica focused mainly on its content; the ugliness of its style is a side issue. Because the painting commemorates a piece of history, I believe that it should give the average viewer a sense of what that history was, and I do not believe Guernica accomplishes this. Picasso is an acquired taste acquired by a large minority of humans; for the many who have not, his bizarre style distracts from the general message he wished to convey.

About Pollock…

Art can be divided into two categories, which I will call representative (actually represents something) and ornamental (conveys no message, just sits there and looks cool as the artist defines “cool”).

Up until the 20th century, paintings have always been representative art – people, places, events. Representative art ranges between the realistic and the abstract, and between light and heavy (and common and arcane) symbolism. Surrealism is representative art because it seeks to portray thought.

And then there are the purely ornamental paintings of recent decades. Most people expect paintings to mean something, and are taken aback by a work such as Pollock’s. They also expect paintings to reflect some degree of skill, and a canvas full of splatter doesn’t require much artistic skill.

I see I’m not the only one who used the wallpaper analogy; the Wikipedia article on Pollock states:

Other critics, such as Craig Brown, have been astonished that decorative ‘wallpaper’, essentially brainless, could gain such a position in art history alongside Giotto, Titian and Velazquez.

#51,

Heh, a memorial to the fallen in a Fascist vs. Communist conflict. Since both sides attacked civilians, the appropriate response to visiting that site would be to grieve the civilian victims of the fallen soldiers.

As for symbolism – we have a sculpture of a fallen person, which fits, and a giant cross, which is waaaay out of place at a memorial concerning a war where evil triumphed over evil.

Now a triumphal arch commemorating the end of fascist rule in Spain would be worthwhile.

Oh-kay. Perhaps the Valley of the Fallen is more your style? Plenty of symbolism there.

My point was about the use of symbolism in monuments. There are two types of war memorials – victory and loss – and the principle applies to both. Guerinica is in that latter class, along with the Arizona memorial and various Holocaust exhibits.

A mural will have maximum effect if it does not confuse the hell out of people. The mutant bull **, floating head, eye in the sky and the kneeling woman distract from the parts of the painting that can actually be interpreted. Guerinica says more about Picasso’s lunacy than about the attack on Guernica.

(**Yeah, I know that referring to any creature in a Picasso painting as “mutant” is redundant.)

(And no, if I ever designed a victory memorial I wouldn’t depict the winning side as naked youths.)

Bad art doesn’t bring tears to my eyes. I do grieve, but for different reasons…

At least it wasn’t painted by Jackson Pollock.