Structuralist Analysis of Guernica

Guernica[pic 1]

Pablo Picasso

1937

black，gray， and white oil on canvas

137.4 in X 305.5 in

 Madrid national Princess Sophia Art Museum

Structuralist Analysis of Guernica

        Guernica is a famous artworks of Picasso, it is a combination of cubism and formalism   of abstract paintings. It was inspired by the German bombing to the Spanish town of Seneca, a representative of antiwar warfare. The characters and the animals shapes in the painting are both deconstructed and reconstructed. To analysis this work in a structuralist way, the semiotics as a examine of referent must be studied.  Picasso sign these images into symbolic representation, it announce its originate form, at the same time, it brings the course to light. Cubism, in this artwork, is both iconic and indexical status of the object. In this artwork, an image with multiple meanings, which we call it “polysemy".^[1] This paper further analysis the artwork in semiotics.

        Picasso did not use complete realism, but the effect of expression was stronger and realistic than use realism into this painting. Some structured figures are mainly lines and color blocks, but the meanings and symbols are very complicated. From the perspective of structuralism, in these paintings, these fragmentary lines form a symbolic system. For example, the eyes of the characters, in this painting, no matter what direction the person's face is facing, his eyes are the same water drop shape. In this case, the painting of the eye gave up the shaping of the shape, but only the expression of "eyes", which can be called "icon". The emotion of the eye is not the purpose of structuralism. If you cover the other parts of the picture and look at the characters' eyes alone, you can't feel the emotion in this work. Here, the eye is an icon, if you use other shapes to replace the circle here, still can convey the concept of the eye. In addition, some of the short lines on horses, are merely expressing animal fur, ignoring the effect of hair dynamics on hair. Moreover, there is a screaming woman on the right side, and there are some triangles on her back and the house behind her, which represents the flame, and this triangle can also be called icon sign of the flame.

        The women screaming in fear of fire can be called "index", which conveys the state of panic. In fact, just looking at this part of the picture is unable to infer feelings outside of panic, which only expresses panic here.

        This painting was also depicted a dull (generally understood as a symbol of Spain), a horse (laboring people), a dove (peace), flowers (beautiful things like love), these can be called “symbol". This information is in existence in people's innate thinking. On the surface, dove and peace are two completely different words, but because of cultural background and historical reasons, dove and peace become a fixed combination of people's cognition. For example, we from the top overlooking a mug, we can only see a circle and a rectangular, but we still can determine this is a mug, because our experience tells us it is deep to hold water, the rectangular is a handle, the hand can go through it and pick up the mug.