I thought I’d become immune to such things, but looking back, I realize now that some parts of me have not outgrown my Milligan petulance.
I’ve liked Picasso’s Guernica ever since I became aware of it in college, and the painting became especially powerful in my imagination after somebody for some reason (the right-wing media and the SCLM and the actually-liberal media disagree on who’s to blame and what the motives were) covered up a tapestry version of the painting the day that Colin Powell addressed the United Nations in order to drum up support for Mr. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
Not long after that day in 2003, I resolved that, at some point, I would have a large poster version of Guernica in my office at some point in my career.
That said, when I started to move into Aaron Hall here at Emmanuel College, and when I started to remember that resolution, I realized that it was, after all, Picasso, with all of the anatomical and grotesque (and grotesquely anatomical) baggage that went with that. ?I realized that, since many of my students would be freshmen, a wall-sized Picasso in my office would likely be one of the first encounters many of them had with art designed to shock and to offend.
So I got the big, four-foot-long version.
Now it hangs next to my desk, and on balance, I think that’s a good thing. ?As the furniture is arranged, it becomes the backdrop when I meet with students, and a number of my colleagues have commented on the poster with some appreciation. ?(One history professor colleague joked that he should make my office a field trip stop when he teaches the buildup to World War Two, and when my ID picture wouldn’t show up on my faculty profile page, my department head photographed me with Guernica as the backdrop for the official English department website. ?Alas, the system started working later that day.) ?But I can’t disown that little spark in me, that Milligan College Humanities major part of my soul that wants to shock the innocent and offend the prudish, and I can’t pretend that I wouldn’t get a kick out of somebody’s being offended. ?(I haven’t had so much as a bite on the hook yet.)
I’m not sure that there’s any point other than to note that residual liberal arts brat living as an aspect of my persona. ?Perhaps knowing that is helpful enough in its own right.
Good pick. Maybe you should also provide an appropriate Nietzsche quote somewhere close by, too.
Picasso is one of the artists I am studying in regards to my recent forays into universals and particulars, somewhat egged on by Francis Schaeffer’s insistence that he destroys the particulars in search of the universals to, in Schaeffer’s view, his philosophical detriment.
I think Picasso is one of the most misunderstood artists of the 20th century.
Joe
It’s funny you say that, Joe. I have brought all of my Continental philosophers’ books (Hegel’s, Marx’s, Nietzsche’s, Freud’s, Heidegger’s, Wittgenstein’s, Sartre’s, Derrida’s) to the office, and they have their own shelf, right about eye level to a sitting student.
Oh, and they sit right next to my well-worn copy of The Last Temptation of Christ by Kazantzakis.
I think I’m incorrigible.
Perfect!
Joe
Try pinning a “War is not the answer” bumper sticker to the frame.
I was just reading about art on another blog talking about the need for exaggeration. It got me thinking about an old audio technician’s trick to find an offending frequency. They deliberately go through the frequency range boosting the levels to see if they can make it worse. That helps them pinpoint the problem. Then they back it out. Hmmm. I may have to blog about that. Wait. I think I kind of just did.
Joe