An Interview with Ryan

My friend Ryan has been kind enough to walk through this class with me all semester. We meet up every week or so to talk about any number of topics related to the class title, “Cultural Engagement.” It probably came as no surprise to him that I came to him with another huge, seemingly unanswerable question a few weeks ago. “What has been your most spiritual experience?” I asked over a French press at Shenandoah Joe’s. He knew the answer right away, “Seeing Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ at the Reina Sophia in Spain.” 

I’d been abroad for the whole semester studying in London, Zach and I went to Spain at the end of the trip. I was exhausted at that point; we’d been backpacking for a while, exploring cities by day and staying in hostels at night. As we neared the end of the trip I really began to ask myself what this whole experience had meant. Did I just spend a semester and my parents’ money enjoying Europe or was I really coming home changed somehow? What had I gained or done that’s positive?

One afternoon we wandered into the Reina Sophia. As we were going through the museum, I saw some of Picasso’s studies of tortured faces for “Guernica”. As you go along the wall there are dozens of them and I expected to turn the corner and see the whole huge painting. Instead I turned around and it was right behind me, it hits you all at once in an absolutely overwhelming way. It was faith affirming. On one hand it’s a very compassionate painting; it’s a call to action in which Picasso says, ‘we can’t stand for this!’ On the other it’s a reminder that we do terrible things to each other, the painting shows the agony of faceless violence. The figure on the right is looking up as if to call ‘why?!’ The chaos of it; the broken bodies and mangled forms are stark. The painting is in black and white and you just can’t look away. The pain was a shared experience but the healing is too, you’re viewing it alongside other people who are having the same reaction. That moment affirmed for me that art can have an impact; we don’t always have to work through politics. Everything we create has an impact. 

Guernica, Picasso. 1937