Publicizing atrocity and legitimizing outrage: Picasso’s Guernica

Public Relations Review xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Public Relations Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pubrev Full Length Article Publicizing atrocity and legitimizing outrage: Picasso’s Guernica ⁎ Jordi Xifraa, , Robert L. Heathb, a b ⁎ Department of Communication, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain University of Houston, United States AR TI CLE I NF O AB S T R A CT Keywords: Pablo Picasso Guernica Public relations Art Propaganda Spanish Civil War Picasso created his most famous painting, Guernica, in just over three weeks in 1937 after the bombing of the little town of Guernica, located in the Basque region, during the Spanish Civil War. Thousands of innocent people were injured or killed. In its sharp lines, its confusion and its distorted shapes, Guernica shows the suffering and pain of war. Rather than using color, especially vivid reds, Picasso used only black and white paint as symbols of death, mourning and tragedy. He believed that brighter colors might distract the viewer from the agony of the scene. In Guernica, most of the figures have open mouths; hear them shouting, groaning or screaming. The aim of this paper and its relevance to public relations is to examine whether and how visual communication can publicize and frame a military event, the character of military leaders, and warfare as a generic aspect of democratic self-governance. This paper proposes that rhetorical, discursive art can contribute impact to public relations efforts, by focusing attention, making issues public, and making informative, framing, and democratizing statements. Even more important is the ability of art to express moral outrage, especially when giving voice to muted interests. “Picasso knew well, I shall argue, that for a work of art to retain a political impact beyond the flash of mere propaganda, any notion of politics had to be located as much if not more in the act of representation itself in a specific context” (Greeley, 2006, p. 156). “Guernica blinds us, it stuns us (…). We do not know where to look, where to direct our attention (…) Picasso breaks here with the traditional idea of contemplation of the work of art (…) Guernica deafens us. The visual impression, followed by an aural impression of collapse (…) Picasso does not want us to contemplate. He wants us to understand what is happening (Palau i Fabre, 1979, pp. 40–41). 1. Introduction Public relations and politics, long intertwined, have become a sub-discipline (Stromback & Kiousis, 2011). Typically, research topics address the problematic of self-governance and interrelatedness; these need further development. To that end, this paper uses the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), especially the atrocity of the bombing of Guernica, and Picasso’s iconic painting to address how an established government employs public relations to support its defense against a coup/revolution and seek the quality of relatedness that aligns interests to support its defense. The mural-sized painting, Guernica, helped publicize the civil war by featuring an atrocity and employing the rhetoric of identification. In that regard, however much the painting helped assign blame for the atrocity ⁎ Corresponding authors. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Xifra), [email protected] (R.L. Heath). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2017.10.006 Received 15 September 2017; Accepted 31 October 2017 0363-8111/ © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Xifra, J., Public Relations Review (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2017.10.006 Public Relations Review xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx J. Xifra, R.L. Heath on the Francoists, it certainly expressed moral outrage that resounded around the world. ‘Publicity involves the use of communication to make an entity publicly known,’ wrote Hallahan (2010). Hallahan’s insightful discussion emphasized the universal importance of calling attention to some matter, and in doing so, helping to frame that matter as a call to action. In the case of Guernica, it called attention, made public, for an atrocity and expressed moral condemnation so as to legitimatize the Republican cause. That discussion parallels Hiebert’s (1991) conclusion: “Public relations today is an essential part of modern warfare” (p. 107). During times of military conflict, public relations supports democratic processes by getting valued information to citizens so they can make enlightened choices whether to support or oppose causes and actions. To shoulder its institutional responsibility, Hiebert reasoned, a government needs “to inform, influence, change, or are least neutralize public opinion” (p. 108). Government should explain how military action serves the public interest. Emphasizing how polyvocal warfare discussions are, Hiebert (2003) compared public relations and propaganda, as companions and competitors in public discourse. His critical analysis judged how well communicative practice, based on rubrics of effectiveness, form, and means, can accomplish dialogue, symmetry, and transparency. Framing is needed to interpret events and facts (and values, policies, and identifications) about events. Frames use metaphor. Relevant to the case in point, Guernica became a visual metaphor that framed and condemned Francoism. Communicator (roles), purpose, meaning, and responsive discourse is challenged to address rhetorical problems. Ihlen’s (2010) exploration of the interdependence of rhetorical theory and public relations theory emphasizes the need to understand citizens’ (and governments’) ability to strategically interpret, confront and respond to rhetorical problems in ways that strengthen societies as collective endeavors. A rhetorical problem arises from natural events (a hurricane), human events (atrocities) or statements (for instance media reports) to demand enlightened decision making. In 1937, the Republican government of Spain was resisting a coup/revolution. It used classic strategies and tactics of public relations, such as publicity, media relations, events, and moral outrage to seek supporters for its cause, to raise funds, to align interests against the coup, and to legitimatize resistance. In this cause, Picasso’s mural-sized oil painting, Guernica, played a strategically metaphorical and tactically visual role by condemning the atrocity of aerial bombing the village of Guernica by German warplanes on April 26, 1937. 2. Context and rhetorical problem Spanish Civil War began after the insurrection of the army against the Government of the Second Republic. In its defense, the Republican government in Spain used strategies and tactics to make supporters (and potential supporters) aware of their cause, able to morally judge the war, and willing to support the Republic. In this cause, artists and writers, both near and far, employed new artistic methods to document and inform others about the war, and to express moral outrage (Martin, 2014; Greeley, 2006). Their work coincided with the 1937 Paris International Exposition. The Spanish government wanted to promote the cause of the Republic abroad; it approached specific Spanish artists to create works of art to be displayed at the Spanish Pavilion at the Exposition. The purpose of the art on display at the Spanish Pavilion was to condemn the war and call to people from other countries to support the Republican cause. During the Spanish Civil War, journalists employed new techniques of communication, such as photography and film. Although few journalists went to Spain (Preston, 2016), those who did made a big impact. Journalists were critical to the Republican cause when they denounced Francisco Franco and the fascists who denied responsibility for the destruction, devastation and censorship of cultural activities such as art. In the analysis of such dramatic occasions, critics of public relations become less bound to functional concepts such as directionality, symmetry, and mutuality. Instead judgment focuses on the ability of voices to inform, frame, redefine, and refocus thoughts, values, facts, policies, and identifications on the side of humanity. Among the many means available, art and artists are traditionally keenly engaged in politics, as they were in the design of WWI propaganda posters and posters used during the Russian Revolution. Analysis can be directed to the artist as participant, as engaged to address rhetorical problems regarding the justness of war, the strategies and tactics used to wage war, and the character of those engaged in warfare. Thus, the classic Guernica, whether viewed as one-way or two-way, was polyvocal, not only part of a dialogue, but it expressed aesthetically the voices of universal anguish. Viewed in this way, artistic expression examines organizational legitimacy, legitimacy writ large, as means and rationale for self-governance, for aligning interests that make society more fully functioning. Warfare creates events, and events define warfare. Guernica, a town in the Basque region of Spain, came to symbolize the atrocity of war in general and in specific the cynical slaughter of humans and animals in the name of “seeking peace.” The symbolic importance of Guernica, thus the reason for targeting it for bombing, was its status as the meeting place of the Biscayne assembly and a symbol of traditional freedom of Basque people. The Germans attacked to support the efforts of the Spanish General Francisco Franco who was waging civil war to overturn the democratically-elected Spanish Republican government. Franco, in his efforts to achieve a coup, conspired with Hitler to use the town to test aerial warfare tactics to intimidate the Republicans. Guernica, the name of a famous painting by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, depicted the bombing of Guernica. Picasso was asked by the Spanish Republican government to create a painting to decorate the Spanish Pavilion during the 1937 Paris International Exposition. In response, he created a painting that condemned the tragic destruction of Guernica. Picasso's Guernica depicts people, animals, and buildings exposed to the violence and chaos of the unexpected attack. This large canvas, expressed in shades of black, white and grey, embodies the inhumanity, atrocity and hopelessness of war and the cruelty of bombing civilians. After the Fair, when the Spanish Republican government had been defeated by Franco’s forces, Picasso refused to allow this 2 Public Relations Review xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx J. Xifra, R.L. Heath painting, one of his most famous, to be displayed in Spain until after the end of the Franco regime. Guernica spent years at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City before being repatriated after Franco's death in 1975. Today, it is exhibited in the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. The exact location was controversial in Spain, since Picasso's will stated that it should be at the Prado Museum. However, in the late 20th century the Prado moved all of its collections of art later than the early 19th century to nearby buildings in the city for reasons of space; today the Reina Sofía Museum houses the capital's national collection of 20th century art. A special gallery was constructed there to display Picasso's masterpiece to best advantage. In this context, Guernica became not just a masterpiece of contemporary art, but was perhaps the most influence art work of the 20th century to condemn the atrocity and outrage of war. From this standpoint, Guernica is paradigmatic of the role played by visual aesthetics in public relations. The field has not paid enough attention to aesthetics, especially its implicit attention to ethics and identification. Guernica and other works of activist artists against wars are a good example of how important aesthetics is for social change. The Spanish Civil War was an era in which this activist role of artists was evident; artists were activists. 3. Public relations communicators: artists and journalists The role of aesthetics is complicated by the fact that schools of art come into fashion and are often viewed as merely a matter of taste and reflection. However, as set against, for instance, classical realism, Guernica allows those interested in aesthetic expression for political purposes to muse as to whether Surrealism might be rhetorically more powerful than realism. Living in Paris with a network of creative peers, Picasso came under the influence of the Surrealists, who were the presiding avant-gardes in the 1930s. For Picasso, it was a period of introspection, and according to Clark (2013), his most emotionally tumultuous. From early on, André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, claimed Picasso as one his own, saying that “[it is] Picasso to whom together with Picabia and Duchamp we owe the most” (Breton, 1978, p. 27). In 1934, Breton (1978) proclaimed that while “Sade is surrealist in Sadism, and Baudelaire is surrealist in morals, Picasso is surrealist in Cubism” (pp. 164–165). According to Breton, cubist abstraction made a frontal attack on the external object, in other words, the cubist deconstruction of the world of appearances radically redefined reality, plunging it into the shadowy realm of the imagination. This attack on verisimilitude in Western art dislodged the image from its anchor in the real world facilitating instead irrational abstractions of the mind (Tsai, 2014). In Breton’s viewpoint, this was at least partially due to the inextricable nature of his art and emotional life: Picasso’s inner turmoil was exorcised on the canvas for all to see, a spectacular example of surrealist automatism (Baldassari, 2006). Cubism influenced surrealism on a social level. The collage in cubist works brought high art into contact with everyday life. By using wallpaper and newsprint, and drawing on subjects related to 20th century middle-class existence, Picasso and Braque rejected the traditions of art bound to religious or aristocratic patronage in favor of art that communicated with the masses (Tsai, 2014). This artistic context combined with another important factor: advances in technology. Indeed, due to this development, many new forms of communication and expression were open to artists and writers. In the 1930’s photography and film were “new” while painting and journalism were both established art forms; however, artists and writers were experimenting with new ways of representing the world (Palombo, 2015). Paintings provided prime facie evidence of events and character. Journalists and photojournalists provided lexical and pictorial text of the cultural background for the Civil War in ways that gave greater understanding of the state of affairs. The telegraph titled “The Tragedy of Guernica” by British journalist George L. Steer, correspondent for The Times, helped to spread the word about what had happened in the little known, isolated Basque town. Many newspapers published Steer’s eyewitness account. Stories and pictures carried by newspapers had a significant impact during the Spanish Civil War in the United States and other countries because people were able to know what was going on during the war sooner as a result of advanced technology such as the telegram. Before the bombing of Guernica, people in the United States had not concerned themselves seriously with the Spanish Civil War because they were preoccupied with the lingering effects of the First World War. After George Steer’s article appeared, people began to fear the rising fascism (Chipp, 1988; Martin, 2002; Palombo, 2015). 4. Covering Guernica: denial, lies, truths Until Monday, April 26, 1937, the Basque town of Guernica was famous only because it housed the Centenary Tree, symbol of the identity of the Basque people. In the afternoon of that market day, some 20 German Legion Condor aircraft bombarded the town for more than three hours. The worst part of the attack fell on the new part of the town, thereby saving both the famous tree and the House of the Basque Parliament. Immediately, a self-serving public debate started as to whether the town had been bombed, or burned, and if bombed, by whom. However much Picasso was aware of the controversy, his painting added little in detail, but it captured the anguish, chaotic event, and moral outrage. Prior to the Condor Legion raid, the town had not been directly involved in the fighting, although Republican forces were in the area; 23 battalions of Basque army troops were at the front, east of Guernica. The town housed two Basque army battalions, although it had no static air defenses. Local authorities thought that no air attack could be expected due to recent losses of the Republican Air Force (Thomas, 1961). Although the basic facts were clear (the city of Guernica had been destroyed), the Francoists argued with Republicans regarding who had destroyed the town (Southworth, 1977). After the attack, Franco refused to acknowledge the destruction of the city and produced a long polemic denial (e.g. Granja & Garitaonaindia, 1987; Granja and Echániz, 1998). The denial assured citizens that a bombing had been impossible; Francoist aviators had not been able to fly that day because of bad weather. The official Francoist 3 Public Relations Review xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx J. Xifra, R.L. Heath version claimed that the town was burned by Republicans in hasty flight. Fotos —the popular graphic weekly of the Falange— published photographs designed to show how, in Eibar, “the Russian separatist barbarism, unable to contain the overwhelming advance of the Spanish troops, reduced the city to rubble” (Mainer, 1990, p. 298). It was said that something similar had happened in Guernica. This official Francoist version was a propaganda tool (Iglesias, 2001). In this controversy, photography was used to prove what “really” happened. Photojournalism in both Francoist and Republican presses was a crucial means of publicity; each one used photographs as evidence and then conveniently interpreted them according to their preferred point of view (Ortiz, 2010). This denial is one reason for the lack of details about the atrocity such as the exact number of dead, the person directly responsible for the attack order, and the purpose of the bombing, which could be either “attacking a military objective for strategic reasons or terrorizing the civilian population, bombing a Basque symbolic village and trying to accelerate the surrender of Bilbao” (Pablo, 2006, pp. 23–24). The denial did not end the controversy over the bombing, from which Franco could not separate himself. Soon, the argument that overcast skies prevented the air attack disappeared as discussion focused on the bombing version of the fire. The conservative press broadcast ambiguous versions that depended on partial information distributed by Havas, the French information agency. For example, the monarchical newspaper L'Action Française (April 29, 1937, p. 2) commented that “all the red, pink, Freemasonry or Puritan press of the two hemispheres have launched shouts of horror since yesterday”; and concluded: “War is war," so it was of little use to scandalize if, in a war like the Spanish one, Guernica had been brutally bombed. Another French newspaper, Le Jour (29 April 1937, p. 3), merely repeated the denial sent by the Francoists. Other newspapers such as Paris-Soir (29 April 1937), La Petite Gironde (29 April 1937) and L'Illustration (8 May 1937) devoted themselves to the two versions of the facts. Le Figaro (April 30, 1937) stated briefly that ‘the historic city of Guernica has just been destroyed by an aerial bombardment,’ without specifying who was responsible. These arguments were reinforced by photographic documentation. Fotos magazine (8 May 1937, p. 21) published a report a few days after the bombing. The message was clear from the headline: “Let the world know! Marxist barbarism in Guernica.” The photographs showed only rubble, and linked it directly to the escapees: “Ruins and desolation! This is what the separatists who flee us did,” said a caption. Photographers who insisted on the fire explanation showed walls that had stood to deny the possibility that there had been a bombing. According to another caption, “In the houses, one can appreciate the destructive work of the flames” (Ortiz, 2010). A year later, on June 18, 1938, Fotos published an image that had previously been published in another magazine, with a significant title: Dante's Vision of Guernica. The same headline was used by Estampas de la Guerra (War Prints), a collection of illustrated books intended for propaganda, which appeared during the war. In contrast, as Ortiz (2010) pointed out, graphic magazines echoed the tragedy and symbolized the innocent victims of Francoism and fascism. On June 2, for example, the Communist magazine Volks Illustrierte reproduced the aforementioned statements of Aguirre, in the context of a John Heartfield graphic composition depicting a mother with her son next to a house in ruins (Evans, 1992). News of the terrible bombing reached and shocked the international audience thanks to the chronicles of G. L. Steer (Martin, 2002). The attack on Guernica inspired books, poems, pictures, films, and other works of art. This outcry started in the press and on the radio, after April 26, and immediately went to the cinema: first newsreels and then documentaries, produced in the midst of war by both sides and by other countries. The legacy of the town needed images filmed in situ, which later would be mounted in a different way, and even opposed, by filmmakers from countries and ideologies very different from each other. Since no images of the bombing were known to be preserved, journalistic accounts resorted to shots of the ruins of the town including smoking buildings, shocked citizens, and feverish rescue, filmed before or after the conquest of Guernica by the Franco army, which took place on April 29. Five camera-operators (Agustín Ugartechea, Raymond Mejat, Ricardo Torres, Russell Palmer and Teodoro de Arana) were filming in Guernica in the days immediately following the bombardment (Tranche & Sánchez-Biosca, 2000). Of these camera-operators, only the first of them shot from the Republican side. In just three days (between 26 and 29 April) there was almost no time to film anything. Had the resistance in Guernica lasted longer, more coverage would have captured the Francoist advance in detail (Matud, 2010). The only filmed images of Guernica shot from the Republican side were by Agustín Ugartechea, a Biscayan amateur filmmaker. After the event, Ugartechea took these poor-quality images with a semiprofessional, 16-millimeter camera; these images were incorporated into the film titled Guernika, directed by Nemesio Sobrevila, promoted by the Basque Government and released in October 1937 long after Picasso’s painting went on display. So, it is difficult to know what, if any film images, influenced Picasso—and others. Until recently, all the authors attributed these Ugartechea images to the Aragonese filmmaker José María Beltrán, who worked for the Basque Government and who only participated in the editing and filming of other takes of that film (Matud, 2007). In addition, Ugartechea’s film disappeared after he took it to show the delegation of the German house Agfa in Paris. In May 1937, a sack containing eighteen coils impressed with a film of 16 millimeters Agfa positive direct or reversible was received at the Delegation of the Basque Country in the French capital, where the works of a Basque cinematography were coordinated (i.e., there was no negative – the same roll filmed was the one projected). On the outside of each reel, Ugartechea had written the generic theme referred to in the film “Guernica.” One reel contains some images of the town destroyed by the bombing attack (Matud, 2007). Crucial to the role played by Guernica, the Republican side accused the pro-Franco side. Republican authorities’ statements were echoed in the international press. The news of the bombing was broadcast the same day it happened. As early as April 28, Georges Steer claimed that German aviators had razed Guernica. According to Steer, a systematic three-and-a-quarter-hour bombing took place, employing some 3000 shells and incendiary bombs; 70% of the buildings in the city were affected. Basque government President Juan Antonio Aguirre said a bombardment of the civilian population had been carried out by German aviators (Fontaine, 2003). George Steer’s chronicles on the bombing of Guernica were published by The Times and The New York Times. As journalists and propagandists battled over the event, the fact was that Guernica had been subjected to indiscriminate 4 Public Relations Review xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx J. Xifra, R.L. Heath destruction. Eventually it became known that the town was a symbolic objective (an attack on one of the fundamental places of the Basque nationalist imagination), and for experimental purposes (Ortiz, 2010). Indeed, Guernica was the first in a series of indiscriminate bombings on the civilian population during World War II, including Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Sloterdijk, 2003). However, while other cases such as that of Hiroshima were subject to censorship (Leo, 1985), that of the Spanish town was public from the beginning which gave rise to a huge media debate. Franco's propaganda used the photographs of Guernica to prove that the city had not been bombed; it turned the blame to the Republican side. Meanwhile, on the Republican side and in the international press, images of the atrocity circulated quickly and broadly. Among the newspapers that Picasso read was L'Humanité, which published a few weeks later the photos of the destruction with a caption that left no doubt: “Guernica, destroyed by the Hitler bombs." Life magazine included the photos in its issue of October 25, 1937. With a fixed plane of this snapshot began the film of Alain Resnais and Robert Hessens titled Guernica (1950). The image had become one of the icons not only of the destruction of Guernica, but of the Spanish Civil War and of the international antifascist struggle. 5. Inspiring a masterpiece Exact details of the journalistic influence over Picasso in Paris are obscure and circumstantial. To understand the motivating idea behind the painting that Picasso was going to create to express his outrage, we must put ourselves in his place and move to his Paris studio where he received the terrifying news through the radio and the competing versions in the daily newspapers. Media reports of what happened in Spain were distorted by French newspapers, which were heavily politicized and openly partisan. The visceral empathy with the Spanish cause was not generated, by actual facts, but by images from newspapers. For the left and right European press, war became a transmitter of doctrine, and it was only learned later that the heroes, victories, and defeats of the headlines were often not only fictitious but also much more indicative of the international politics that of the reality prevailing in the Spanish front (Failing, 1977, p. 62). From this point of view, the inaccurate, conflicting and delayed transmission of the news of the event created an impression, but not a clear understanding. Interested parties suffered anguish at the impossibility of finding out from Paris what really happened in Spain. These circumstantial elements become the essence of the gestation of the work itself. Picasso's friend and fellow surrealist movement member, Louis Aragon, was at the time of the event director of Ce Soir and afterwards of L'Humanité, the newspaper financed by the Spanish embassy in Paris that enthusiastically defended the cause of the Republic. The first journalistic report arrived in Paris on April 27 in Ce Soir based on little more than a simple telegram sent by the correspondent of the newspaper in Bilbao. The report described the attack as the most horrible bombing of the war. L'Humanité of April 28 announced: “The most horrible bombardment since the beginning of the Spanish war: a thousand incendiary bombs launched by the planes of Hitler and Mussolini reduce to ashes the city of Guernica.” Picasso read L'Humanité daily (Plazy, 2006). Between 1936 and 1937, this newspaper launched an aggressive campaign against the right-wing press, calling it “the press that lies, the press that kills” (Ory, 1994). On April 30 and May 1, the first photographs of Guernica’s devastated walls appeared in various newspapers, including Le Figaro and Ce Soir. Headlines of Le Figaro, strictly following the Francoist line, proclaiming: “Guernica could not be destroyed by bombs thrown from the air, it was the red ones that set it on fire.” Countering the Francoist interpretation was testimony given by Father Alberto de Onaindia, a Basque Catholic priest, who was present during the bombing of Guernica. His narrative was all the more powerful because he belonged to an authority, the Church, which supported the Nationalists in the conflict. He described in detail the bombardment, its duration, the method used by the enemy aircraft and the extent of the destruction. While some newspapers were trying to silence the fact, other kept it alive: L’Echo d’Alger of May 4, 1937, L'Humanité of May 5, 1937, Le Populaire of May 7, 1937, and La Croix of May 8, 1937. In this same issue, published on page 2, is a “manifesto appeal to the Basque people” protesting against the bombing of Guernica. French Catholics, hitherto sympathetic to the Spanish nationalists, now condemned their acts. One of the signatories of this manifesto, Emmanuel Mounier, founder and editor of the magazine Esprit, was committed to the defense of the Basque cause. In the June 1937 issue of the journal, a 22-page dossier of documents and evidence was published on the destruction of Guernica: “Guernica or the technique of lies.” Several French press headlines continued to give testimonies about the bombing. An article by Jacques Klein in Le Petit Journal of May 8, 1937 provided further evidence of the destruction of the city by German aircraft. Paul Vaillant-Couturier, in L'Humanité of May 13, 1937 interviewed several survivors of the destroyed city. This controversy caught Picaso's attention and triggered his imagination. On Saturday, May 1, 1937, only five days after the bombing of Guernica, and coinciding with Labor Day, the largest demonstration of its kind ever was held in Paris. More than a million demonstrators converged on the historic route from the Place de la République to the Bastille. That same afternoon, Picasso, deeply impressed and irritated, renounced his habit of spending the weekends with Marie-Thérese and his little daughter Maya in the house he had in the countryside. Instead he took a pencil and a small pad of blue paper and drew a simple sketch of a bull, a horse and a woman (Martin, 2002). Now inspired, Picasso worked feverishly. On June 6, the large mural, Guernica, was finished. Then he produced a post-production set of drawings, with a marked emphasis on the head of a suffering woman. 6. Atrocity as rhetorical problem: the Guernica in Paris Deeping engaged in the Spanish Civil war, Largo Caballero, President of the Council of Ministers, saw the Spanish Pavilion 5 Public Relations Review xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx J. Xifra, R.L. Heath Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne of Paris, in 1937, as an opportunity to gain economic and political support beyond Spain’s borders. Because the majority of European states had signed the Non-Intervention Agreement, except the Soviet Union, the Republican government found itself at a clear economic and military disadvantage (Van Hensbergen, 2014). Instead of promoting Spain’s commercial and industrial achievements, its exhibitions and activities focused exclusively on the Republic’s political needs (Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 1987). The coalition needed allies and international aid. The Spanish Republican government had been formed by a coalition of socialists, communists, republicans and representatives from regional Basque and Catalan administrations. Despite his ability to bring together very different political programs, Largo Caballero was accused of being responsible for the Soviet Union’s growing influence in the Popular Front. The Soviet Union, the Republic’s only diplomatic and economic ally, was both needed and feared: necessary, because the Republic could not survive without its help, and feared, since Spanish officials were aware of growing anti-Stalin sentiments spreading throughout Europe. Luis Araquistáin, Spain’s Ambassador to France, shared these fears and tried to counteract them in the Pavilion by emphasizing the Republic’s liberal aspects, such as its protection of private property, agrarian and industrial reforms, educational programs and preservation of Spain’s cultural and artistic diversity (Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 1987). Caballero assigned Araquistáin to convince European powers to finance the Republic’s defense. Toward this end, the Republic had to demonstrate its stability and solvency, including its religious tolerance and independence from the Soviet Union. In February 1937, José Gaos was elected Chief Commissioner of the Pavilion. Araquistáin’s influence defined the Pavilion to reflect Caballero’s politics and Araquistáin’s socialist ideals (Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 1987). The Pavilion broadcast news and expressed moral outrage of this conflict. Some of the most important artists and intellectuals of the country rose to the occasion, such as Joan Miró (1893–1983), Julio González (1876–1942) and Picasso. After receiving the commission, Picasso was indecisive and did not paint anything, although he toyed with an idea as the subject of the work: The Studio, an allegory of painting represented by the painter and the model (Tejeda, 2010). Although Guernica became of focal point of the Spanish Pavilion, Picasso did not introduce the atrocity to the world or express any particular facts about it. Without the news coverage of the event, his paining would have lacked meaning. Without the moral rage of his painting, the atrocity would have lacked soul. Although he lived in Paris at the time, his sympathies were with the Republican cause, and he believed art can be expressly political as he said in a famous interview: What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who only has eyes if he is a painter, or ears if he’s a musician, or a lyre at every level of his hearing if he’s a poet, or even, if he’s a boxer, just his muscle? On the contrary, he is at the same time a political being, constantly alive to heart-rending, fiery or happy events to which he responds in every way. How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people and by virtue of an ivory indifference to detach yourself from the life which they so copiously bring you? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It’s an instrument of war for attack and defense against the enemy. (Van Hensbergen, 2014, p. 64) These political leanings were put into action when in January 1937 Josep Renau, Director General of Bellas Artes, and Josep Luis Sert commissioned Picasso to help create the Spanish Exhibition. The intention was to persuade. Those who commissioned the painting had a voice in its ultimate presentation. The painting was scheduled for the opening of the exhibition in April 1937. As that day approached, it was seriously behind schedule (Van Hensbergen, 2014; Ross, 2013). Changes in the content of the painting were made after Renau and Sert visited Picasso’s studio (Ross, 2013). Documenting this visit, Renau’s letter appears to be addressed to Jose Luis Sert and Luis Lascasas as the Pavilion’s architects. The letter begins with a description of Dora Maar, Picasso’s lover and the photographer who documented Guernica’s coming into being. It describes one version of the mural as covered in color and visually incoherent. Renau wrote that he had never seen so much shit in his lifetime. He further described the encounter: And I tell you that it seems there was clutter everywhere and colors and charcoal used on the mural, but we did not say anything. Then all of a sudden he had changed everything that had been attached to the mural and removed everything, all color on it. When we saw this we all applauded spontaneously. (Ross, 2013, p. 468) Picasso is reported in this letter to have said “Tienes razon España no se puede pintar más que en el blanco y negro verdad” which means “You are right, one cannot paint Spain in anything more than the black and white truth” (Ross, 2013, p. 469). This extremely revealing letter shows the power the commissioners had on the ultimate shape of the mural. The first audience of the painting was those who attended the Exposition in the 1937 World’s Fair. Beyond those who actually saw it, the audience enlarged to include the art world as Cahier’s d’Art dedicated a double-issue to its interpretation and evaluation (Van Hensbergen, 2014; Ross, 2013). The message was clearly pro-Spanish Republic and anti-Spanish Nationalists and Fascists. It was interpreted to be “the figurative depiction of the literal destruction of a Spanish village, marking the first time in modern warfare that women and children were subject to the same conditions as the combatants themselves” (Ross, 2013, p. 470). The message seems to be epistemically merited; however, its original audience did not consider it so. The work was widely panned as a “hodgepodge of body parts that any four-year-old could have painted” (Van Hensbergen, 2014, p. 29). It was regarded as a depiction of “useless horror which cannot reach more than a limited coterie of aesthetes” (p. 76). This is where a closer examination of the audience is called for as Guernica did influence those with money and political power. After the World’s Fair the painting traveled to many locations in England, including Oxford, Leeds, London, and Manchester, before arriving in New York for safe haven until Spain again became a democratically governed country. Picasso expressed his ultimate intentions for his work: 6 Public Relations Review xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx J. Xifra, R.L. Heath If peace wins in the world, the war I have painted will be a thing of the past… The only blood that flows will be before a fine drawing, a beautiful picture. People will get too close to it, and when they scratch it a drop of blood will form, showing that the work is truly alive. (Ross, 2013, p. 470) 7. Aesthetic rhetorical elements As Ross (2013) argued, Guernica indicted the atrocity committed by the Nationalists (who are signaled by the bull). The heroic, defiant Republicans were represented by the mutilated horse’s upturned head, slain warrior, and anguishing women. An earlier version, sketched with the horse’s head turned down, seemed to indicate the Republic was defeated – a message rejected by those who commissioned the painting. Addressing the rhetorical problem in Spain, the chaos in the mural represents the literal destruction of civilization; women and children are not safe. The light in the middle of the canvas shows the dual faces of modernity to illuminate and destroy. Technology which enables one to supersede nature by illuminating the darkness has been twisted and used to enable the darkness of death, mass death. The painting addressed a universal political condition as chaos and agony. The reaction sought is moral outrage as motive for coalition building based on interest alignment, opposition to war and the Nationalists. The Spanish Pavilion served the Republican government, not to manipulate but to show the world what was happening (Martin, 2002). The government wanted to influence the international community to support its cause (Palombo, 2015). Strategically, Picasso wanted his mural to publicize the atrocity he saw captured by what photojournalists had published in different media, including the new medium of film (Chipp, 1988). Public relations is a polyvocal process of constructing meanings, and in this case a painting often is less of a representational “picture” than a narrative of atrocity. From a symbolic interactionist perspective, “public relations and symbolic politics are both a meaning-construction process through use of symbols, interactions and interpretations” (Zhang, 2006, p. 27). If no atrocity had occurred, then there is no need for moral outrage. This meaning was narratively enacted though three main visual elements: the use of black and white, the terror of the horse and other victims, and the bull’s indifference. 7.1. Black and white: universal images and cinematic influence Picasso was part of an artistic revolution dedicated to updating the plastic language of art while maintaining a classic theme (Posada, 1988). This approach is evident in the long iconographic tradition – religious and profane – in Western art, of the massacre of innocents. In this way, Picasso may have been influenced by the scene of the massacre on the Odessa staircase in Sergei M. Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925). Also, the tradition of black and white film probably inspired Picasso; without the influence of black and white cinema, Guernica might have been painted in color. Although avant garde, the painting used classic narrative variations and adjustments. The Picassian group formed by the mother and her dead child in arms (like a 20th Century Pietá) expressed no solution to this universal problem, but marginal variations of those themes (Posada, 1988). The mother is in front, motionless, shouting and holding – she does not protect, but rather shows – the child, who is dead. Chipp (1988) claimed that Picasso was inspired by similar photographic images of refugees, women and children who fled Guernica, that appeared in newspapers days before the painting. Posada (1988) argued that the reinterpretation of the mother, who, with her son dead in her arms, shouts in Guernica as in the chilling scene of Eisenstein’s film. The posture of the child (head and arms hanging lifeless) is exactly the same as that of the child in the Battleship Potemkin which premiered in Paris at a cinema-club on November 12, 1926. Picasso, of course, viewed it. His close friend, Christian Zervos, published in the first 1927 issue of Cahiers d'Art a selection of frames of the film. Picasso had direct access to them. If we trace the work of Picasso before the Guernica, although we find figures with their heads thrown back in a gesture of anguish in bullfighting scenes both before and after 1927, the iconographic group composed of a figure standing holding a dead or injured child with head and arms hanging lifeless, also appears in a series of drawings, engravings and oils entitled “Le Sauvetage” made between 1932 and 1936 (Blunt, 1969). At a key moment in the movie Battleship Potemkin, a woman whose head is covered with a mantilla (the mother pushing the child's pram) falls dead. Her mouth is ajar in a gesture of pain. She is the model for the series of heads of a crying woman who performed both during the execution of the Guernica and for several months later in various materials. The scene represented by Guernica might take place inside or outside, day or night. Rather than a compelling antagonist, the indifferent and distant bull, the focus is on the protagonist, the people, the populace. The scene represents gesticulations of pain, of panic. The antagonist in Potemkin, in contrast is the cold, unforgiving and rhythmic advance of the compact mass of the platoon. In the film, Eisenstein used in the sequence of the staircase a syncopated rhythm of shots, of crossed images. Picasso used planes of light and shadow (another technique characteristic of the expressionist cinema to achieve dramatic effects), that intersect each other by highlighting, overlapping, or separating others into the different figures that make up the scene. 7.2. The terror of the horse Animals in Guernica symbolize the massacre in Guernica. The impaled horse with a massive laceration on its belly signifies the unjustified slaughter that took place (Ross, 2013). The injured horse alludes to the thousands of people who died and the hundreds who were devastatingly hurt. A large portion of the horse’s body is painted with what seems to be newsprint. Picasso used this 7 Public Relations Review xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx J. Xifra, R.L. Heath technique to show that he learned of Guernica’s bombing through news reports (Ray, 2006). To paint the horse, Picasso drew on his previous works entitled Caballo Destripado (Gutted Horse, 1917). The similarity of form and content between the two suggests, according to Barbadilla (2010), that the horse of Guernica is a picador horse with the head raised to represent the pain and suffering from the Spanish Civil War. It is victim of the hecatomb of Spain, the sacrificial victim. In contrast to the screaming horse is the passive bull, which Gaya (1975) and Wischnitzer (1985) reasoned, represents Nazi aggression, the dark forces. The question of the symbology of Guernica has been controversial. Indeed, According to [Jerome] Seckler, Picasso said that the bull represented barbarism and, therefore, Franquismo, and the horse the people, that is, the Republican people. [Juan] Larrea argued just the opposite: the bull was the people and the horse the Fascist enemy. Victims and victimizers had changed places. (Giunta, 2017, p. 5) Among Picasso’s numerous sketches to paint Guernica are those of horses. The suffering horse was an obsession for Picasso and became the central image of the painting. It screams and shrieks from pain. For Picasso, the horse represents the passive victim of bullfighting. It embodies suffering. Its lacerated and torn body occupies the center of the composition. Its skin is represented by short parallel lines that energize the center of the picture: Spasmodic animal, monster mad with pain, muzzle open, scream of anguish, bristling with knives in the wind that twists the neck (Barbadilla, 2010). Thus, the horse is a tormented animal. It is dying. It carries a spike in its back. Between its legs appears the corpse of a dismembered warrior who holds a broken sword. His tongue is like a dagger or a fragment of glass that symbolizes the cry of terror and pain of the animal. The horse can be a mare; the cut (vertical rhombus) takes the form of a vagina. It is Spain wounded by fascism, it is the victim of the picture. The horseshoe is inside the helmet, a symbol of bad luck. In contrast to the anguishing horse, the bird in the painting fades into the dark background as a symbol of hope for the future, just as the dove carrying an olive branch in the Bible is a symbol of peace. The bird signifies a longing for peace and prosperity, which seemed unattainable, flying away, during that time of war and violence, which is why it can barely be seen in the painting (Potter, 2003). 7.3. The indifference of the bull In 1945, Picasso told Jerome Seckler: “The bull is not fascism, it is brutality, darkness” (Posada, 1988, p. 117). It possibly refers to bullfighting, the traditional blood sport of Spanish culture, during which bulls are successively sacrificed in the ring. The bull had symbolic capital for Picasso. He was born in the Andalusian city of Malaga – the ancient home of bullfighting (Tsai, 2014). In a lecture on the spirit of Spain, the Andalusian poet Federico Garcia Lorca, whose photograph graced the opposite side of the Spanish Pavilion to Picasso’s Guernica, said “Spain is the only country where death in a natural spectacle” (Ross, 2013, p. 465). For Picasso, being a true Andalusian included having an obsession with suffering, wounds and the proximity of death. Unwilling to renounce one of the world’s last primitive rituals of sacrifice, Picasso was drawn to the barbaric and instinctual pleasures of his “Black Spain.” The bullfight was a muse for Picasso throughout the 1930s, just as it was a hundred years earlier for his mentor Francisco de Goya (Arnheim, 2006). As Tsai (2014) pointed out, in January of 1937, Picasso made two aquatints titled the Dream and Lie of Franco, which were reproduced on postcards and sold for the benefit of the Spanish Republican Government. Each print is subdivided into three rows of three scenes that all together form an eighteen-scene narrative. Despite the surrealist absurdity of the narrative, his prints were intended as an attack on Franco and his regime. The title of the prints was appropriated from the celebrated 17th century dramatist Pedro Calderon, who along with Cervantes formed the backbone of Spanish literature. Read from right to left (because Picasso etched the images from left to right), Franco is portrayed as many manifestations of evil, from a polyp, a hairy turd, to a maja (lady) wearing a mantilla and carrying a fan embellished with an image of the Virgin Mary. A monstrous grinning figure, he kills and devours the innards of his own horse before transforming into one himself, only to be gored by a heroic fighting bull. Nationalistic and religious banners spout from his open wound. The grotesque representation of Franco is extended in Picasso’s poem written to accompany the plates, an abject form of surrealist automatism. The last four scenes of the second plate were added on June 7, six weeks after the bombing of Guernica. The mother cradling her child, and the screaming woman with outstretched arms were vital to his studies for Guernica. 7.4. The inanimate objects The inanimate objects in Guernica provide metaphorical optimism for the people of Spain. With regards to the torchbearer who holds the candlelight against the electrical lamp hanging from the ceiling, the lamp’s bulb was created to look like a pupil within an eyeball, interpreted to be the “evil eye” alluding to modern technology and the devastation it can bring about, such as war (Ross, 2013). The natural light emitting from the candle held by the torchbearer counters the modern invention, light bulb, almost as if it is expressing good versus evil, mirroring the real-life fighting happening in the world. Located near the broken sword held by the dead soldier, the flower signifies purity and harmony, while the broken sword represents combat and death. As Ray (2006) argued, Picasso places these two objects with contrasting meanings adjacent to each other, to show how the people yearn for peace in the midst of war. Lastly, the broken sword delivers the message that war has casualties on both sides. Soldiers used swords as weapons before the age of gunfire; thus the sword in the painting represents battle. Picasso chose to paint a sword with a cracked blade instead of a whole 8 Public Relations Review xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx J. Xifra, R.L. Heath one in order to express the defeat of the Spanish people, particularly on the Republican side. 8. Conclusion In conclusion, political public relations is an instance of issues management and a means for achieving fully functioning society. It requires platforms of fact, value, policy and identification. The case of the Spanish Civil War, especially the Paris exposition and Picasso’s moral rage captured in Guernica, provides data to analyze how events make matters public, frame those events and causes, and seek alliance and identification. Guernica offered no empirical proof to indict Francoists for the atrocity; the moral outrage condemned the military action. 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