by Jean McDonough
Monday, January 20, 2025
Dear Pablo Picasso,
I am writing to inform you that patrons of the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, Spain, are now allowed to take selfies in front of Guernica, your Spanish Civil War painting that illustrates the terror bombing of a small Basque town on April 26, 1937—forgive me, Picasso; a selfie is a smartphone photograph of oneself, usually held at arm’s length, and often with the purpose of boasting to others how much pleasure or amusement the subject is experiencing in comparison to everyone else. While the decision to allow photographs of Guernica occurred in 2023, I am only now informing you of this disturbing museum policy, given the rapid acceleration of neofascism in the United States and my fragile mental state that has resulted from so much fear and anxiety.
Americans who flock to see your iconic anti-war painting are more interested in taking selfies than contemplating the pain and suffering wrought by Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator who led a violent rebellion against Spain’s democratically elected government in 1936, ultimately ruling the country with an iron grip for nearly four decades. They are oblivious of a woman trapped in a burning building and a weeping mother who cradles her dead child. No one notices the woman dragging her wounded leg through the street or that dead soldier sprawled on the ground; someone gouged out his eyes and tossed them back on his face. Then there is that bull with his head held high in a corner of the painting. Keep your eyes on him, Picasso. He gazes indifferently at the destruction all around him; his tail is a trail of smoke.
I hesitate to inform you that Manuel Segade, the director of the Reina Sofía Museum, lifted the Guernica photography ban because he seeks to alter the relationship between viewer and art, acknowledging that younger generations primarily interact with the world through their screens. It hardly seems a coincidence that in 2022, the year prior to Segade’s policy reversal, there was public backlash when Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones was given a private showing of Guernica and posted a photo of himself in front of your painting on what was then Twitter—his smile wide and unmistakable, hair windswept. The rock star wore a casually unbuttoned short-sleeve shirt and held a baseball cap at his side as if he were out for a jaunt in the park, completely blocking the stunned face of a bomb-blasted woman, half naked and limping down the street. Social media exploded in outrage at the exclusive nature of the image: “How is it possible you could get a picture with Guernica and we couldn’t take one?” While there may very well be inequities in the world of art, the narcissism of similarly indignant posts suggests that we might be spending a little too much time watching ourselves watch other people. Even Ángeles González-Sinde, the president of the museum’s Royal Board of Trustees, who escorted Jagger through the museum—and entertained the musician’s musing on whether art “should have political relevance or go back to being art for art’s sake”—seemed more interested in recalling the sexually charged musician of her starstruck youth than commenting on the contemporary significance of Guernica in a war-torn world. González-Sinde said of the visit, “Everyone wants to see Guernica, just like all of us wanted to see the Stones up close.” Apparently, the painting now falls somewhere between a source of entertainment and a prized possession rather than a call for world peace.
While I recognize that the thirty-year ban on photographing Guernica was intended to protect the painting from physical deterioration during the era of flash photography, as a former art museum security guard who diligently reprimanded patrons when they snapped their Instamatics, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the glazed eyes and faraway gazes of Americans who are more focused on an alluring golden age in their smartphone camera frames than the devastating consequences of fascism throughout history. Despite González-Sinde’s claim that everyone wants to see Guernica, in our American culture obsessed with self-image, no one really wants such a disturbing selfie background. Why compete for attention with a weeping mother cradling her dead child or a wounded horse writhing in the mud? Why associate yourself with that dead soldier on the ground when a powerful individual in our country would probably call him a loser for getting himself killed in the name of democracy?
Most Americans would prefer a selfie background that is—how shall I say it?—a little more flattering, perhaps with palm trees swaying on a pristine beach where we can model a kissy face to highlight our chiseled cheekbones or strike a far more provocative pose: hastily gesturing a peace sign as we stick our tongues out at the world. Nevertheless, we need to be a little more situationally aware when we take that ultimate selfie: No one wants to accidentally step off a cliff, stare down a speeding train, or—in a moment of arrogance and bravado—find ourselves smack in the middle of a fascist state.
Contextual awareness will always be challenging in a world filled with sensationalized headlines, news bias, and memes that promote false information. As I feared when I scrolled through the responses to Mick Jagger’s Guernica photo on Twitter, no one mentioned how Francisco Franco brutally persecuted his political opponents, ordered mass executions, repressed the culture and languages of the Basque and Catalan regions of Spain, censored the media, or reformed the education system to promote fascist ideology. There was a single Rolling Stones fan, however—a Catalan linguist—who appeared to at least generally acknowledge the horrors of Guernica when he posted: “And fascism; never forget it!” Everyone else on Twitter seemed too preoccupied with the flattering blue color of Mick Jagger’s pants, how good the aging man looked at nearly eighty years old—“you are the most beautiful man alive”—and whether the rock star believed in Jesus.
While it is nothing new that selfies narrow our perception and sometimes affect sound judgement, the relationship between museum patrons and Guernica was not always so narcissistically focused on the experience of the individual. During the late twentieth century, art curators were mystified by the apparently supernatural power of Guernica to emit a glowing blue line approximately three feet up from the floor on the wall opposite your painting in the museum, Picasso. Did you know that this phenomenon appeared so frequently that they assigned their staff to watch the wall and determine the cause of the apparition? It turns out that there were so many people contemplating Guernica for such long periods of time, most of them wearing blue jeans, that they left a long blue line when they leaned against the museum wall. They must have watched in horror as the wooden table morphed into a seething bull, incredulous that this transformation could take place in any modest kitchen, average household, and democratic nation where citizens ignore the warning signs of a political tyrant: steel balls, flaring nostrils, a dagger-shaped tongue, and tail raised to shit on anyone who opposes him.
Picasso, it seems that even you had trouble rendering that bull on your canvas. Were you frustrated when you rubbed out its eyes and repositioned them, one higher than the other on its head? I am terrified of its secret third eye, all milky white and ghostly in the center of its flat skull. Sometimes I think it follows me around the room. Did the eye ever follow you during Franco’s reign, Picasso? Was this why you told everyone that the bull in your painting represents brutality and darkness rather than risk disclosing its real name? Nearly a century since the bombing of Gernika, people are still polarized over this dark creature. Some believe it’s Francisco Franco, while others insist the animal is an innocent victim of brutal aggression and a symbol of sacrificial death in the bullfighting ring; they praise its unwavering courage and strength in the face of unjust persecution. A few historians even blame you for the bull’s brutality; they say it represents your own volatile ego with respect to your personal relationships, Picasso. All of this speculation makes me wonder, though. Would you agree that it is easy to mistake ruthlessness and self-interest for strength in the leader of a nation? Was this what you meant when you allegedly once said, “Are we to paint what’s on the face, what’s inside the face, or what’s behind it?”
I worry that we as Americans are so focused on ourselves, so busy angling our cameras to fit our faces in the frame, that we are losing our ability to imagine how people around the world are suffering from war, political oppression, and the denial of basic human rights—let alone our own neighbors from social injustice. Without the ability to imagine the suffering of people who are different from us, we not only lack compassion, but also encourage prejudice and intolerance. Furthermore, if we can’t even imagine that others are capable of suffering, peace between individuals and nations is unachievable. War is the ultimate failure of imagination, Picasso. Creative expression and the cultivation of art appreciation is therefore critical to the development of imagination in both the individual and the collective consciousness of a society whose primary goal is peace.
Dare I suggest that your arrogance was the downfall of your own compassion, Picasso? Do you remember when you were so frustrated with your portrait of Gertrude Stein in your 1906 Paris studio that you rubbed out all her features and ended up painting her face to look like those ancient Iberian masks you saw while vacationing in Spain? It was such a harsh and mean-spirited portrait, Picasso. Rather than portraying her naturally, you gave her an angular nose, down-turned mouth, and rubbery skin so thick that you could have lifted it off her skull. Even the razor-thin brows and asymmetrical tilt of her eyes in the painting made her look oddly similar to that revolting bull in Guernica. When Stein protested that the portrait didn’t look like her—she really was a talented writer, feminist, and art collector—you quietly replied: “It will.” And against all reason, this turned out to be true. Stein eventually loved the unflattering portrait because it linked her image with your genius, helping her to maintain a level of prestige when her own writing career languished. Picasso, I wonder if your relationships with women might have been more loving had you not reduced the human form to harsh geometric shapes with eyes and mouths that spin and shift on tilted spatial planes. I do recognize the value of Cubism, though: It certainly shocked people into seeing the world differently during the twentieth century. You once even cleverly boasted, “I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them,” but I would still argue that if we took the time to gaze into the eyes of strangers with both curiosity and compassion, we might expand our definition of self to include others—and leave more blurry blue lines on the walls of quiet rooms.
The awkwardness of Mick Jagger smiling in front of a painting that represents the brutality of war reminds me of an uncomfortable experience in Gesundbrunnen Bunker, a World War II air raid shelter in Berlin. I doubt that photography was allowed in this repurposed subway station, though no one in our tour group dared to take a selfie; we were terrified that bombs would pummel the ground above us as the temperature rose from so many packed bodies in the bunker that it smelled of grime, sweat, and—with only fifteen toilets for 3,000 people—shit. Could this happen to us someday? I stood directly across from an airlock designed to prevent chemical gases from entering the network of tunnels. In case of catastrophic power failure, the Nazis had painted the concrete walls with luminous zinc and copper sulfides for orientation, providing up to two hours of glowing light. Our tour guide warned us not to touch it—the luminescent paint was toxic. She flicked on her flashlight, pointed it directly at one of the walls, and swirled it in the air. Then she turned off all the lights in the antechamber, revealing the unimaginable in pitch-black darkness: a glowing smiley face on the wall. Because our guide had only been able to estimate a round shape with her flashlight, the luminous green line of the circle was not completely closed. One of the eyes drooped dramatically. Even the smile was grotesquely lopsided. There was a gasp in our small group of tourists, if not a few nervous chuckles, but I wasn’t exactly sure what the purpose was of this smiling face—and who, if anyone, it was supposed to represent in the bunker. Why not draw a shocked face, a pleading face, a face clenching its teeth, a face with a bandage—or even a puking face?
Ideograms such as these are inappropriate to describe the suffering of war, especially the deaths of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. I am also disturbed by the emojis that Rolling Stones fans posted in response to Jagger’s Guernica selfie, several with big open smiles and bright red hearts for eyes—as bombs explode behind him. The rock star stands alongside a woman trapped in a burning building. She flails her arms and screams. Another emoji, this one with a winking face and puckered lips, blows the woman a kiss as her body is engulfed in flames. Despite the incongruity and insensitivity of these social media icons, I was encouraged when I came across what I thought was an anti-war comment in Jagger’s feed: a small yellow face with a downturned mouth, furrowed eyebrows, and puffs of steam blowing out of its nose. Certainly, this emoji acknowledged the rise of neofascist political influence in the United States when the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) documented 1,225 hate and anti-government extremist groups in 2022. Instead, the person who published this emoji expressed indignation: “Oh, damn, this guy can actually see and photograph Guernica on his own.”
I descended into the darkness of Gesundbrunnen Bunker during the summer of that following year when the number of hate and anti-government groups in the U.S. had increased to 1,430, prompting SPLC to issue a stark warning: “The years since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection have been a time for the hard right to prepare. In 2023, those opposing inclusive democracy worked to legitimize insurrection, paint hate as virtuous and transform false conspiracy theories into truth—all in preparation for one of the most significant elections in U.S. history.” It’s not a surprise that when my tour guide turned the lights back on in the Nazi bunker, I was relieved—the horrid smiley face was finally gone.
Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and wonder how you would paint me, Picasso. I fear that what lies behind my face defies explanation. Would you eventually reach an impasse with your sketch on canvas? Would you rub out my face in anger because there is something about it that you cannot get right? Perhaps you would leave my likeness incomplete but later render me according to the brutal conventions of Cubism: dissecting my eyes and dislocating my ears, nose, and mouth along shifting geopolitical planes that incite horror and disgust around the world. I would likely be unrecognizable, even to myself. If I were to protest that this hideous portrait looks nothing like me, you would calmly reply, “It will,” and this prediction would only increase my fear and anxiety. Already there are times when I no longer recognize the faces of those around me. Are these strangers really my friends, neighbors, and coworkers? How am I to know if I live in a thriving democracy? Will I be able to see my own hands in front of my face—or will part of me already be dead? Forgive my bold injection, Picasso, but at what point did you realize that you were dead? Perhaps you are unaware of this basic fact. Similarly, at what point does a democratic nation realize that it has lost its freedom to move its body—to think, to speak, and to feel?
I suspect that most Americans will dismiss this letter to you, Picasso. They will insist that it’s a work of fiction because no one can really speak to the dead. There may be some truth to this claim: I may never convince the dead to open their eyes; however, I can still argue that the ban on photographing Guernica should be reinstated, not to safeguard the painting from deterioration but to protect the American people from themselves. I encourage you to support me in this policy reversal, Picasso. Perhaps if Americans are forced to check their smartphones at the door to the Reina Sofía Museum, they just might focus on that dark corner of your painting where the bull is set to charge. Maybe then they will finally see what is in front of them.
Respectfully Yours,
J. McDonough
Jean McDonough is a school librarian with an MFA in poetry writing from the University of Michigan. She is working on a collection of nonfiction inspired by Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. These essays have appeared in journals such as Colorado Review, Water~Stone Review, and Reed Magazine. They have also received the following recognition: finalist for Ruminate’s 2022 VanderMey Nonfiction Prize; notable in The Best American Essays 2023; selection in The Best of Delmarva Review, 2024; finalist for Cutbank’s Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction, 2025; and four Pushcart Prize nominations.