Guernica

These have been a busy couple of weeks but that’s how I like it. Last Monday I had the opportunity to sit in on one of Dr. Aliocha Lasowski’s lectures and I must say that it was an absolutely enthralling two hours. He hardly used his notes, and he began by mentioning all the reasons and justifications for war. He moved into several specific wars and battles and dissected what led to their successes and failures. Finally, he brought in Picasso’s Guernica paintings. They are a series of depictions that Picasso claims were not symbolism, but realism; he felt this portrayed the horror of the effects of war. The painting I posted is the most well known. I remember reading about the Guernica series in Chaim Potok’s book My Name is Asher Lev, but didn’t realize that they were such influential works. Dr. Lasowski went over the efficacy of various communist regimes, the war on terrorism, and France’s “Battle of Bouvines.” I was slightly embarrassed when he asked for my input in the middle of the lecture. As soon as the students heard my accent they turned around and stared and the girls behind me started to whisper. Later they asked where I was from and they had heard about the Utah “desert”. I believe this lecture was comparable to something one would hear in a history class at Cambridge or Yale.