You Shall Love Your Neighbor As Yourself.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

The second reading from Paul's letter to the Galatians, includes the familiar message: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

It continues, But if you go on biting and devouring one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another. I say then: live by the Spirit...

Paul was in Galatia, working on the original catholicism of the faith- making the teachings of Jesus truly Universal, applicable to people of all origins. He was perhaps one of the greatest Christian Foreign Diplomats, carrying a message of understanding and love.

This message brings to mind two Spaniards, and two very evocative murals, completed a century apart from one another. Take a look at Francisco Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son. It's expressive, dramatic, drenched in folklore. At the time, Goya was near the end of his life. He started the mural, painting directly onto the wall of his house, in 1819, at the age of 72. Distressed by the harrowing Napoleonic Wars, Saturn is one of a series of paintings, called "The Black Paintings," which expressed Goya's fear of insanity, and his deteriorating outlook on the merits of humanity.

Saturn Devouring His Son, by Francisco Goya, circa 1819-1823

The painting itself is nightmarish. The blackness seeps. Saturn, the father of the gods, eats his own children in his desperation to maintain power. The old man's face is psychotic; he has lost paternalistic devotion and has been overtaken by the need for dominance.

Fast-forward 100 years. Pablo Picasso is repeatedly challenging the lexicon of art history and changing the definition of "art." A Spanish citizen living in gay Paris, Picasso hasn't escaped the terrors of war. Franco's Nationalists have incited civil war in Spain, and with the support of both Hitler and Mussolini, work to root out and subvert the fierce Republican sentiment of the Spanish citizens. In a horrifying display of dehumanization, the German Condor Legion sends planes on behalf of Franco into Guernica, a village vivid with culture and spirit, in the middle of the Basque region.

The town of Guernica, after the bombing in April 1937.

It was market day, April 1937. Everyone was in the town square. But when the church bells rang, they rang not for the Glory of God, but in desperate, clanging warning. For 3 hours, German planes dropped over 100,000 lbs. of explosives and incendiary bombs. 70% of the town was raized, and 1600 villagers were killed or wounded. Not a single bridge, railway station, or even nearby small arms factory was hit. Guernica was the testing ground for a new Nazi military technique: blanket bombing of a town in order to break the morale of dissenters.

Picasso painting.

15 days later, 56-year-old Picasso stretched his canvas and began working. A massive 26' x 11.5', the painting was a visual-political invective. Picasso decided against blatant Republican symbolism in favor of the classic depictions of the terrors of war. Think of The Rape of the Sabine Women or The Massacre of the Innocents or The Third of May 1808. We see the animals of the Spanish countryside, the might of the bull, the terror of the wounded horse. We see the woman wailing over her dead child, and the mighty warrior, whose courage could not stand against the evils of modern warfare. See his helpless outstretched hand. We see houses on fire, and citizens fleeing in fright. It is an onslaught of expressive images. The painting is all in black and white- like a wartime bulletin, or as though the evocative meaning of color has been wiped from the canvas, lest the message become too overwhelming.

Guernica, by Pablo Picasso, 1937.

So.

When the message is as uplifting as "Love," why site the gory glories of paintings inspired by fear, by war, by hate, by dissent?

Because, despite our best efforts, we're still missing the original message of St. Paul. Though we strive heavenward, we still get so easily lost. War is perhaps the most blatant example, because it is clear, it is large, it is terrifying, and it effects multitudes all together, all at once.

But there is hope.

Can you find the flower in Picasso's Guernica? A simple flower, growing despite the blood and the horror and the distress. Growing past the shattered sword, beneath the dying horse's hooves. Reaching for the sun, and promising that Beauty will return to the earth, that we will move on, that we will try again, that tomorrow is a brilliant chance, just waiting to be taken.

Guernica, detail, by Pablo Picasso, 1937.