The exhibit has been around for decades, with people from around the world participating. Any medium and subject matter was allowed for the 100+ collected pieces, so long as it is in some way related to the concept or hope of peace in the world.
The most impressive and most imposing piece in the show was by far, “The Past, The Present, The Future” a massive painting, as tall as the ceiling, created by 22 students (and their teacher) from Yoko Middle School. The imagery was a barrage of contrasts where on the left side the students painted violent horrible imagery — a mushroom cloud, blood splatter, hollowed out and obliterated cities, while on the right side, fields of flowers, rainbows and flying doves.
Dividing up these contrasting images and periods of time (the brutal past and the hopeful future) was a gigantic, mangled clock. It was busted open as if it had been gutted, and its frame bent in all directions. Despite the damage, its hands remained remarkably clear and intact, frozen for all eternity at the moment of 11:02, which was the time on the morning of Aug. 9, 1945, when the atomic bomb “Fat Man” hit Nagasaki.
The intent of these student-artists was obvious, the violent past of man and then a peaceful possible future. And in the middle of it all, the dead clock which signifies both an unspeakable act that took place in the past, and also the possibility that such a thing could happen again. The unmoving clock can be a far more harrowing symbol than the ticking clock of a bomb which will soon go off. The ticking clock implies that there is still time, that things are still ok, that even if time is short, there is still a chance to run, to defuse, to change. A dead clock means that you might now live on the edge of life and death. That you could have already been condemned and may simply not know it yet.
I was told by a curator of the exhibit that this painting was intentionally meant to follow in the footsteps of Pablo Picasso and his immortal antiwar painting “Guernica.” In addition to a similar critique of war and violence, when designing this painting, the middle school students created it to be the exact same size as Guernica. I was very heartened to hear that young children had such an important aesthetic and political connection.
For those unfamiliar with “Guernica” it depicts the bombing of the town of Guernica by German planes during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. The Germans had entered the conflict on the side of Francisco Franco, who would later become dictator. The purpose of the bombing was not a military strategic one, since the few targets of military value in the village were left alone and mainly women and children were present the day of the attack. Instead the attack was meant to intimidate and instill fear in those who would oppose Franco.
The images don’t show what war art usually does: great deeds, grand battles, bands of brothers. Instead it concentrates on the interior of a house, lit by a single light bulb, where the world outside ends up chaotically spilling inside. Bodies lie strewn in unnatural poses, the wounded shamble like zombies, a woman shrieks carrying a dead child, panicked livestock cry out. A soldier lies in the bottom of the frame, his form stretched long across the canvas, in his outstretched hand a broken knife from which a flower is growing. For such a violent subject matter and such emotional content the choice of Picasso to keep the colors scheme monochromatic or limited in hues was very interesting. It is almost as if the artist meant to convey that while war absolutely causes chaos and activity, action, and drama, it also sucks the life from the world, or in this case, the color.
The style isn’t realistic but expressive. Bodies twist and turn, some deformed and swollen looking. A few take on what we might assume a scream looks like as it emerges from someone’s mouth and throat, slithering up into the sky like a soul escaping from Sasalaguan. The distorted cubist imagery of Picasso now takes on a political message. The bodies are made to be malformed and grotesque not out of some pure desire by the artist to bend and break the human form to his will, but rather as a comment on the nature of war. The twisting and torturing of these bodies is meant to represent that trauma, the metaphysical trauma of war, especially those who aren’t combatants, but just caught in the middle. It is not just a sound of anguish, or a scream, but it is a force. Something which rends the skin and hijacks the very shapes of people, their forms, their physical and spiritual being, and by doing so threatens to transform them into the very violence they are crippled with. Guernica is meant not only to depict a particular violent atrocity, but rather the effect of war on humanity, especially those who are not soldiers, but whose deaths and suffering become part of the calculus for winning a war.
MICHAEL LUJAN BEVACQUA
Mangilao, Guam
