The Power of Interpretation (or how Alfred J. Barr explained Guernica to the public at MoMA),

ANDREA GIUNTA

The University of Texas, Austin

Conferencia; Visiting Lecture Series The Department of Art and Art History, The University of Texas, Austin; 2006

The University of Texas, Austin

To represent a theme in the form of an image does not necessarily imply silencing it on the canvas’ surface. Certain ideas that do not cause major conflicts when they are distributed in written form do provoke unexpected reactions when represented [in visual terms].  Images do not remain frozen in their own time.  Although we may pass in front of a museum’s serene paintings and immobile sculptures, contemplating them as vestiges of what once was, their powers remain latent.  A potential reactivation of their meaning is pending in every presentation before the public.  The most innocuous portrait can vibrate beneath the gaze of a viewer who sees some anomaly or misalignment of unexpected signifiers in it.              Images carry [inherent] danger.  A latent threat exists in them, effects that may be uncontrollable.  Recent history offers too many examples of excessively violent reactions in the face of images (such as the fury unleashed by mocking representations of Mohammed), on exhibit during long periods of time that unexpectedly become “dangerous” (like Attorney General John Ashcroft’s reaction, having the exposed breast of the “Spirit of Justice” sculpture, located in the Great Hall of the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. covered) or images that turn out to be inopportune in certain situations (like covering up the tapestry representing Guernica hanging in the hallway of the United Nations at the moment when Powell was announcing the end of negotiations in Baghdad, just prior to the city being bombed: as if it were to presage the bombardment of civilian populations to come, with the Picasso representation of the bombing of Guernica that history has condemned right behind him).             To interpret images is, to a certain extent, to silence them.  The more arguments that unfold in order to demonstrate that the correct interpretation has been reached—the most thoroughly documented, that offers the most convincing arguments—the fewer the chances that these images can give rise to anything unexpected.  Whoever makes the effort to establish the true interpretation of a work is endorsing it as the only one. Any interpretation apart from that considered to be the truth enters into an area of fantasy, falsehoods and lies.                   These considerations are useful as an introduction to a particular moment in the Guernica’s interpretation.  The debates set forth in the symposium organized by Alfred Barr in 1947 to discuss the meaning of this painting in order to arrive at a definitive consensus regarding its significance show that for him, resolving the question of its meaning was quite imperative.  Prior to that year, Alfred Barr had been convinced that the correct interpretation had been established, based on [different] sources, the artist’s words, his most characteristic iconography and on the history of Western painting itself.  The publication of Juan Larrea’s book sustaining opposite views regarding its interpretation left him, to begin with, in a state of surprise and bewilderment.  However, the point was not to confront positions in order to establish, in any case, that both were pertinent or possible.  One point of view—Barr’s—had to win out over the other—Larrea’s.  This essay will analyze the reasons why it was so necessary and imperative for Alfred Barr to establish what the painting meant.  His aim was not to undermine it, but to silence it.  This painting was a crucial piece in the Cold War’s symbolic confrontations.  Once its meaning had been established, its political visibility would also decline.  Once inserted into Modern Art history’s order, its implications analyzed and disarmed right down to the last molecule, the painting would no longer be exposed to politics arid disputes in order to shine, imposing and impressive, in the best showcase that Modern Art has to offer.             In the ten years that passed between the moment when Picasso made the work and when Barr organized the symposium, the Spanish War, the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War had all taken place.  The painting and the artist played an active part in all these events.