Reimagining Guernica to Engage the Antitheses of a Cancel Culture

Coherence in the surreal as a kaleidoscope of imagery forming a hyperobject

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Introduction

Multiple perspectives: There is no lack of commentary and explanation with regard to the surreal nature of the current times (Surreal nature of current global governance as experienced, 2016). Emphasis is commonly placed on the pervasive sense of meaninglessness -- with various parties to be appropriately blareschmed. The pattern has been most recently exemplified by the worldwide media attention given to the extraordinary saga surrounding the participation of Novak Djokovic in the Australian Tennis Open -- and its dramatic final prevention by the Australian government (Australian Open organisers 'deeply regret' Novak Djokovic saga, Al Jazeera, 18 January 2022; Binoy Kampmark, Dangerous Precedents and Hypothetical Threats: the deportation of Novak Djokovic, Australian Independent Media, 17 January 2022).

The value of recognizing a complex of "antitheses" is usefully indicated by the following examples cited by the Cambridge Dictionary:

• Institutions and human actions, complements and antitheses, are forever remaking each other in the endless drama of the social process.
• Yet the antitheses ostensibly at stake in this process are themselves complicated and deceptive.
• They posited metaphysical intervention, spiritualism, imagination, and elitism as the antitheses to sweeping rationalism, simplification, and mass culture
• Ideally, such awareness should lead to a more mature ranking of the values and antitheses which went into its making.
• Now, how are all these curious antitheses to be explained?
• Too often it is conducted in terms of unbridgeable opposites, false antitheses and exaggerated choices.
• Extreme theses and antitheses garner more attention, increase citation rates, and sell books.

In a period of crisis of crises the pattern evokes the question of how to perceive any crisis -- through what images it may be variously framed, as considered separately (Interrelating Multiple Ways of Looking at a Crisis: beyond the pandemic discipline of the one right way, 2021). Given the cognitive challenge any  crisis clearly constitutes, it could be argued that conventional images and metaphors may be totally inadequate -- if not dangerously misleading.

"Something" radically distinctive would appear to be required if any solution is to avoid being a feature of the problem. One inspiration in that regard is the role that has been played by the bombing of Guernica as a tragedy of the not-so-distant past -- commemorated through the symbolic significance attributed to it through the much-cited painting by Pablo Picasso (Guernica, 1937).

Shifting perspective: The painting is regarded by many as the most moving and powerful anti-war painting in history. Appropriate to the nature of the cognitive challenge, interpretations of Guernica vary widely and contradict one another (T. J. Clark, Picasso and Truth: from Cubism to Guernica, 2013). As indicated in one commentary:

The genius of Guernica is that it successfully combines dreamlike (some might say nightmarish) elements of Surrealism with the multiple-perspectives of Cubism. It was a shocking painting, both for its modern, Cubist style and for its haunting subject matter. (Guernica by Pablo Picasso, EmptyEasel)

As an exemplar of Cubist artwork, the bombing of Guernica as an "object" is analyzed in the painting -- broken up and reassembled in an abstracted form. Instead of depicting its elements as from a single viewpoint, Picasso depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a larger context. This implies a paradoxical aperspectival perspective as potentially the most relevant -- and fundamental to any reimagined Guernica.

Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century (Steven Gambardella, How Cubism Changed The Way We See The World: a history of Cubism and why it's important, The Sophist, 13 January 2019). It has framed the challenge of coherently interrelating a kaleidoscope of imagery, perhaps to be understood as a hyperimage (Felix Thürlemann, More than One Picture: an art history of the hyperimage, Getty Publications, 2019)

Reimagining Guernica as a hyperobject: Given the cognitive challenge the painting is so widely held to address, it could then be asked whether there is a case for imagining a "Guernica" appropriately indicative of the tragedy of the cancel culture of the current period and its complex of antitheses. All are under threat of being annihilated by an other. Each may well experience life in terms described as kafkaesque or entrapped in a Catch-22 situation.

Would a reimagined Guernica be sufficient as a static image in 2D, or do the advances in information presentation imply that the imagination needs to be engaged otherwise, and to a higher degree -- dynamically in 3D or 4D, for example? Is some form of hypnotic quality a necessity, given the power exerted by the crisis imagery currently disseminated by the media?

Rather than as an image readily imagined in conventional terms, is such an image better understood as a "hyperobject" -- whatever that may now be deemed to indicate? (Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects: philosophy and ecology after the End of the World, University of Minnesota Press, 2013;  Hyperobjects: an excerpt, Academia.edu; Introducing the Idea of 'Hyperobjects': a new way of understanding climate change and other phenomena, High Country News, 19 January 2015)

Discussed further below, they have been held to be entities of such vast temporal and spatial dimensions in relation to human life that they defeat traditional ideas about what is indicated -- associated with references to hyperreality. Examples include global warming, a black hole, or the biosphere (Elizabeth Grace Boulton Climate change as a 'hyperobject': a critical review of Timothy Morton's reframing narrative, Wiley interdisciplinary reviews: Climate Change, 7, 2016, 5).

As yet to be explored is the manner in which hyperobjects might clash and how this might be experienced. The scope of such dynamics in an information society recalls commentary on the clash of galaxies in the universe -- and hence, potentially  to be understood as hyperobjects -- the appropriateness of the title of Samuel Huntington (The Clash of Civilizations, 1996).

Anti-otherness: The original Guernica is upheld as an articulation of anti-war insight. In a cancel culture there is no lack of problematic concern with the threat of other expressions of "anti" -- if not of otherness in general -- as explored separately (Elaborating a Declaration on Combating Anti-otherness -- including anti-science, anti-spiritual, anti-women, anti-gay, anti-socialism, anti-animal, and anti-negativity, 2018).

An obvious example for many at this time is the perspective of "anti-vaxxers" -- highlighted as a primary concern in the Djokovic saga in relation to the Australian Tennis Open. In the same period the attitude has been emphasized by declarations by iconic figures, curiously ignoring highly deprecated historical processes with which such advocacy can be readily compared:

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