Jacques Louis David and Pablo Picasso, Essay Example

Although compositionally separated by more than one hundred and fifty years, Jacques Louis David’s The Oath of the Horatii (1784) and Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937) share many common traits, especially related to the horrors of war and how warfare tends to disrupt the cultural, social, and political systems of nations and often empires, in this case, Spain and the ancient Roman Republic.

This viewpoint is well supported by two leading art historians and scholars–Madelyn Gutwirth, Professor Emerita at West Chester University, who sees David’s The Oath of the Horatii as a reflection of the French Revolution while iconographically set in ancient Rome during the time of warfare between the Roman and Alban armies (45); and Rudolf Arnheim, former Emeritus Professor of Western art at Harvard University, who considers Picasso’s Guernica as a “symbolic invention of cubism in protest of the bombing of the town of Guernica” during the Spanish Civil War and as an “allegorical presentation of the plight of Spain during the war when brute force was momentarily triumphant” (34) over peace and common sense.

The Oath of the Horatii

As one of the most important leaders of the French school during the time of the French Revolution and the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte, Jacques Louis David (1748 to 1825) is usually designated as a Neoclassicist or an artist dedicated to the principles of classic antiquity but with a new outlook based on the revivalistic styles of Romanticism. But today, David is widely regarded as the father of academic art produced under the official patronage of nineteenth-century France, meaning that the people of France during the great revolution saw David as one of their own and as a representative of the social struggle against the imperial tyranny of King Louis XVI.

As an artist, David recreated  according to his own individual and non-classical style the majesty and beauty of the great Classical traditions, dating back to the days of Michelangelo, Bernini, and Bronzino. David was also a rebel, both socially and politically, which taken together enabled him to “imitate nature in her most beautiful and perfect form through the eyes of an ancient Greek sculptor” (Gutwirth, 65). During the rise of the French Revolution in 1789, David was very active as a Jacobin friend and associate of the radical Robespierre and as an outstanding member of the Revolutionary Convention which voted for the death of King Louis XVI. David was also an influential member of the Committee on Public Education in which he served as the director of French art programs for the New Republic.

Although rendered in 1784 some five years before the outbreak of the French Revolution and the storming of the Bastille, The Oath of the Horatii clearly reflects not only David’s political viewpoints but also those of the common people of France while under the oppressive reign of King Louis XVI. As to the subject matter of this magnificent painting, David once remarked that it symbolizes the heroism of the people of France and their civic virtue and duty to bringing down the monarchy of the king. The iconography of The Oath of the Horatii is based on Republican Rome and some scholars argue that David was inspired by the “sensational archeological discoveries at the ancient Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii” (Gutwirth, 72).

Story-wise, The Oath of the Horatii conveys the conflict between love and patriotism and is allegedly based on a play performed in the streets of Paris in 1782. First conveyed as a literary narrative by historian and biographer Plutarch, The Oath of the Horatii concerns the leaders of the Roman and Alban armies ready for battle and their decision to resolve their social and cultural differences “in triple combat among three representatives from each side–the Horatius brothers and the three sons of the Curatius family” (Gutwirth, 73).

In David’s painting, we see the Horatii swearing on their swords (the figure in the center of the panel) to either win the battle or die for Rome as their sisters in the far right-hand corner contemplate on what might happen if their brothers lose the fight. On the far left, the three sons of the Curatius family with arms outstretched bid the Horatii to pledge their lives in a battle to the death.

Thus, the message in David’s The Oath of the Horatii is “of a type which the revolutionary French public could readily identify” (Gutwirth, 74) via two warring camps of thought–the French monarchy and the aristocracy on one side, and the common peasantry on the other, both sworn to uphold their principles and cultural identities. In many ways, this painting makes a broad statement “about individuality and human strength” in the face of war, and “speaks boldly about choice and perseverance” (David, The Oath of the Horatii), especially in relation to the French peasantry and their choice to either live under the oppression of the French monarchy or overthrow it.

Guernica

In extreme contrast to the Neoclassical style and imagery found in David’s The Oath of the Horatii, Pablo Picasso’s Guernica reflects some of the ideals of Cubism and as Rudolf Arnheim describes it, “imitates Ingre-like drawings and figure subjects in a broadly realistic manner” but distorted as if the artist was viewing the scene in the painting through a refractive lens” (43) that bends the light, causing the figures to appear angular and unnatural amid heavy swirling lines and rich color that seem to be related to Picasso’s admiration for the Expressionistic style of painting.

Rendered in 1937, Guernica was painted for the Spanish pavilion of the Paris International Exposition as a symbolic protest to the bombing of the militarily neutral town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. After hearing about the destruction and loss of life wrought by the bombing of the town, Spanish-born Picasso was emotionally devastated and decided to begin work on his mural as a sign of artistic protest against the bombing and the dictatorial regime of Francisco Franco (Holliday, Guernica: An Artistic Perspective). Following its exhibition in Paris, Guernica generated much controversy and was seen by many contemporary art critics as representing “an effective political statement and an effective artistic statement” (Holliday, Guernica: An Artistic Perspective) concurrently. At any rate, Guernica is undoubtedly an allegorical representation of the “plight of Picasso’s Spain during its civil war and how warfare devastates a nation’s culture, society, and individual freedom” (Arnheim, 50).

In Guernica, Pablo Picasso utilized all of his knowledge and resources based on his Cubist experiences, such as using brilliant if not severe shades of white, black, and gray and the “marvelously complex design of interpenetrating planes and unexpected linear distortions” (Arnheim, 52) that symbolically represent the terror and mayhem of the bombing of the town of Guernica. The figures of the dead warrior lying on the ground near the left corner of the panel, the dying horse near the center, the bull in the upper quadrant, and the man in the upper right-hand corner with arms outstretched (much like the Horatii in David’s painting) in pain and agony, are nothing less than iconographic symbols of the bombing of Guernica and, as Picasso once remarked, “expresses the age of brutality and darkness” experienced by the good people of Spain while under the domination of Franco and his dictatorial regime (Arnheim, 55).

Another often overlooked aspect of this painting is related to sound, meaning that the viewer is able to imagine the figures shrieking in pain with “dead and dying people lying everywhere in the chaos” with their “mouths crying in suffering” and the horse and the bull, “defenseless and pinned in against the attack,” bellowing in terror (Holliday, Guernica: An Artistic Perspective).

Perhaps the most controversial figure in this painting is the bull which some critics and observers have concluded is an iconic symbol for Franco’s fascism and that because of its “flared nostrils, wide eyes, and open, crying mouth,” stands as an eyewitness to the devastation of Guernica (Holliday, Guernica: An Artistic Perspective). Overall, in contrast to David’s The Oath of the Horatii, Picasso’s Guernica as a form of Expressionistic art clearly interprets “the humanistic values of a society steeped in the horrors of war,” and as one of the most influential painters of the twentieth century, Picasso “set forth his own personal indictment on the evils of modern totalitarianism” (Arnheim, 57).

In essence, David’s The Oath of the Horatii and Picasso’s Guernica are nationalistic symbols with the first representing outright rebellion against a far greater and stronger adversary, being the French aristocratic classes and the monarchy of King Louis XVI), and the second as a depiction of militaristic brutality against a much weaker and innocent class, being the common people of Guernica as farmers and agriculturist.

Bibliography

Arnheim, Rudolf. The Genesis of a Painting: Picasso’s Guernica. Stockton: University of California Press, 2006.

David, The Oath of the Horatii: The French Revolution in Painting. 2012. Retrieved from http://www.unc.edu/~navin/David.html

Gutwirth, Madelyn. Corneille’s Horace and David’s Oath of the Horatii. New York: Peter Lang, 2011.

Holliday, Angie. Guernica: An Artistic Perspective. 2012. Retrieved from http://personal.centenary.edu/~eholland/Guernica.html