Picasso’s Guernica, standing at almost 3.5 meters tall and 7.7 meters wide, depicts a scene from the Spanish Civil War. It shows the intense aerial bombardment of the town of Guernica in the Basque Country that happened on Apr. 26, 1937, carried out by the Nazi German Luftwaffe at the behest of the Franco government.
The canvas is filled with the chaos, screams and slaughter of people and animals, showing their contorted body shapes and features in a classic example of Cubism, a form that juxtaposes diverse aspects and planes of three-dimensional objects onto a two-dimensional painting, as with, for example, a pair of eyes represented incongruously together in profile.
The painting is less a depiction of an actual scene and more a cacophany of symbolic elements evoking the psychological impact of the violence of war, with the frenzied barbarism of the Spanish bull, the broken blade of a sword and the iconography of the pieta — the Virgin Mary holding the dead body of Christ in her arms — on the far left of the composition, the woman’s distorted facial features and breasts, her back, shoulders, neck and head exaggerated and contorted, conveying the primal, profound grief tearing through her. If dreams work in the language of symbolism, Guernica is like the shards of a nightmare reassembled onto canvas.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
照片：維基共享資源
The history of art is dotted with denunciations of war, but Picasso has chosen here not to spatter his work with blood, and to instead employ understated black and grey tones, reining in the chaos, as if to suppress — and even mute entirely — the volume of the shrill cries. In so doing he has actually accentuated the terror.
When he was preparing for this piece, Picasso studied news photographs of the event. It is perhaps because of this that he decided to render this painting in a monochrome palette, adding the texture of newsprint, to evoke the feeling of a photojournalist’s report.
(Translated by Paul Cooper)
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
照片：維基共享資源
畢卡索的《格爾尼卡》以高近三點五公尺，長逾七點七公尺的畫幅，描繪西班牙內戰時期，巴斯克地區格爾尼卡城在一九三七年四月二十六日所受的地毯式轟炸，此為佛朗哥政府授意德國納粹軍隊所為的種族屠殺。
畫面中充滿了動態的、嚎叫的、瀕死的人與動物，其扭曲錯置的身形五官，是典型的立體派表現方式——把三度立體空間的多面向像比目魚的眼睛一般並置到平面畫幅中。
此畫並非描繪特定的場景，而是將戰爭暴力的心理衝擊，訴諸象徵元素：例如西班牙公牛的暴力野蠻、斷裂的刀劍，以及「聖殤」的圖像 —— 畫面左方的婦女抱著死去的孩子，她變形的臉部和乳房，她的背、肩、頸、頭部誇張地扭曲，傳達出最原始深切的哀痛。如果說夢是以象徵的語言運作，《格爾尼卡》便像是把夢魘的材料絞碎之後，再平貼到畫布上。
對戰爭的控訴，在藝術史上屢見不鮮。但畢卡索畫的不是鮮血淋漓，而是內斂的黑灰色調、抑制的騷動，似乎是把尖叫的音量壓低，甚至是靜音了，代之而起的卻可能是更令人怖懼的戰慄。
為了創作此作品，畢卡索研究了相關的新聞照片；或許這也是為什麼此幅畫全以黑、灰、白表現，其中並有如新聞紙的材質，如同另一種紀實攝影報導。
（台北時報林俐凱）
Many consumers are guilty of filling drawers or closets with old laptops, cellphones, fitness trackers and other electronic devices once they are no longer needed. It’s hard to know where to recycle such items, or it seems costly and inconvenient to do so. The world generates millions of tons of electronic waste — also called e-waste — each year. According to the UN’s most recent estimate, people worldwide produced 62 million metric tons of e-waste in 2022, and only about 22 percent of it was properly recycled. The US’ Environmental Protection Agency estimates that less than a quarter of e-waste is
You’re sitting in class when a classmate asks to borrow a pencil. It seems like a small favor, so you agree without hesitation. The following week, the same classmate asks to share your notes. Later, they request help with a group project. You agree each time — after all, you helped out the first time — but before you know it, it has become automatic. This scenario demonstrates the “foot-in-the-door technique,” a psychological concept that shows how agreeing to small, acceptable demands makes it easier to accept larger ones later on. The name for this strategy comes from door-to-door
A: The four-day Tomb Sweeping Day long weekend begins Friday and will run until Monday. Are you going to sweep your ancestors’ tombs? B: I did in advance last weekend, so I can go to Kaohsiung to see the musical “The Phantom of the Opera.” A: Wow, is “Phantom” touring Taiwan again? It debuted in 1986, so this year marks the 40th anniversary of the show. B: And it’s not just touring Kaohsiung starting March 31, but also Taipei starting April 21 and Taichung starting May 26. A: “Phantom” is one of the world’s Four Major Musicals. I’ve seen all of them, except “Les
Continued from yesterday（延續自昨日） https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/lang Gig Tripping “Gig tripping” combines concerts with travel. People fly to see their favorite artists perform — usually abroad—and spend a few days sightseeing before or after the show. While die-hard fans have done this since the 1960s, the post-pandemic travel boom changed the game. Even people who aren’t superfans are now booking international concert trips because they want to make the most of travel opportunities. This trend exploded in the US, as the math makes sense. Domestic concert tickets are so costly that flying abroad for the show plus tourism expenses often matches or even beats the price
RSS