The Untouched Key Read online

  Guernica owes the immediacy of its emotional impact on the viewer, it now strikes me, to Picasso’s experiences during the 1884 earthquake in Málaga, experiences that affected his imagination so profoundly that they played an enduring role in his art. The crying, contorted female faces he painted in the period following Guernica can even be traced directly in theme to these experiences. He is not attempting to express his own inner state in the faces he paints, as is the case with Edvard Munch in The Scream or with various other expressionist painters; rather, Picasso’s portrayals are of actual screaming and crying women, but their features cannot be clearly distinguished and their suffering, circumstances, and history are as incomprehensible to us as strangers screaming in the street must be to a child who doesn’t know the reason for their terror.

  As I looked at Picasso’s paintings, I often felt I was seeing with the eyes of the confused, uncomprehending, disoriented, but interested and curious child. We try to distinguish the individual parts of the bodies of his nudes: Where is the foot? Where is the hand? Why are the eyes placed so that they aren’t looking at us, so that they can’t look at anyone? Art historians tell us that Picasso wanted to show both the front and the back of a head simultaneously because that was part of his “program” at the time. But why? Was Picasso a person who had to adhere to programs? After all, he always abandoned a style once he had developed it, since it bored him to be tied to any one in particular. But the theme of the distorted human body haunted him all his life. It seems to me that his brush was guided by a compulsion he neither understood nor recognized and indeed could not explain because it emerged from his unconscious, which had been imprinted with his earliest childhood experiences. If Picasso had felt constrained to show proof of his ability, he would have stayed with one of his successful phases, perhaps the cubist one. But he had proven his ability long ago when he was still a little boy. Therefore, as an old man he was free to paint what his repressed experience dictated without having to demonstrate his mastery of technique, color, and so on; only then was he able to let what was stored in his unconscious speak through colors.

  Little children often express their traumas in a painting the moment a brush is put into their hand. They don’t know what they are portraying, and unfortunately adults are practiced in overlooking the revealing content of children’s art. Picasso, however, did not have the opportunity to express himself spontaneously as a child; he said that he always painted grown-up pictures, and it took forty years before he was able to paint like a child, that is, to let his unconscious speak. In the same way that adults often are deaf to the cry for help expressed in a child’s drawing, taking pleasure instead in the pretty colors and broad strokes, the public received Picasso’s later, incomprehensible works with favor, for he was, after all, already recognized as a master.

  One can, if one must, see the twisted, distorted female nudes still being done by the artist at ninety simply as a sign of his preoccupation with sex. I prefer to picture the three-year-old boy who, in the midst of all the turmoil of the earthquake and the family’s flight, was also witness to his sister’s birth. Even if the adults had thought the boy might be traumatized, an awareness of psychology that would not have been likely in those days, probably in the family’s temporary quarters no one could have kept this lively, curious child from witnessing the event around which everything now revolved. How does a woman giving birth look from the perspective of a three-year-old, and what happens in the young boy’s psyche when this woman writhing in pain happens to be his mother? And all this in surroundings that have just been rocked by an earthquake. The little boy had to repress his feelings, but many images no doubt remained fixed in his memory, although separated from their context.

  It is an open question how much viewers can recognize of these events of early childhood in Picasso’s paintings. Such awareness should by no means be made into an obligatory program. I want only to indicate that even as severe a trauma as an earthquake need not be repressed entirely but can be represented in works of art if the traumatized child experienced his parents’ love and protection when the catastrophe occurred. In addition, I want to point out how much we miss if we disregard the dimension of early childhood experience.

  The artist is left with his loneliness as the child was with his: posterity does not concern itself with his trauma but only with his achievement. His paintings can bring in high prices the same way his childhood accomplishments brought him high praise. The more his pictures are praised, however, the more the artist who painted them remains alone with his truth, as I sensed so clearly at the exhibit in Basel. An earthquake in Málaga in 1884? Who cares about that today? Witness to the birth of his sister? What’s so unusual about that? But if we put everything together—the earthquake and the birth, the plight of his parents and of the whole city, an upbringing of seeing but remaining silent—a particular constellation emerges that was of indelible significance for this particular individual, Pablo Picasso. Had Picasso not been carried along the Calle de la Victoria in the arms of the father he loved, he might have become psychotic or he might have had to repress the trauma so totally that he would have become an upstanding, compulsive functionary in Franco’s Spain. Then it would have been no coincidence if he had taken a special interest in the production of weapons capable of destroying whole cities in one blow.

  His father’s sheltering arms made it possible for the little boy to overcome his terrifying experience in an optimal manner. Thanks to this protective care, he was able to store what he saw in a way that permitted him to keep expressing it in new forms in his art. Thus, he escaped psychosis as well as total emotional self-alienation (which characterizes the life of so many people) even though he suffered a severe trauma not only at the age of three but even at birth. Most biographers report major complications connected with Picasso’s birth. “Apparently, Picasso had such a difficult birth that he was at first thought to be stillborn. Such was evidently the opinion of the midwife, at any rate, for she left him lying on a table in order to devote her attention to his mother. It was only thanks to the presence of mind shown by his doctor uncle, Don Salvador, that the baby came to life.” Thus, Picasso, like so many babies, was deprived at birth of being held in his mother’s arms, of finding comfort and reassurance there after surviving the struggle for life, and of storing up tenderness and a feeling of trust at this crucial moment. But the later affection shown by his parents, aunts, and cousins helped him to keep taking anew the step leading from death to life. Many of Picasso’s contemporaries and friends report that he felt wholly alive only when he was painting. Only then was it possible for him to escape the lethal compulsion to achieve and instead to taste the freedom of inspiration, feeling, and impulse—that is, of life.

  The three-year-old Picasso was painfully reminded of the trauma of his own birth by the horrors of the earthquake, the proximity of death, and the birth of his sister. But these shocks to his psyche subsided, since the boy’s home life was happy and he was permitted to play. It was the discipline and constraints he experienced in school that reawakened his fears, especially since another birth, that of his second sister just as he was starting school, reminded him of his earlier trauma. This highly intelligent child at first reacted to school with learning problems and a severe illness, but as a result of the love and support of his family he did not succumb. He was allowed to rebel against the stultifying constraints confronting him and, even in the Spain of that day, succeeded in expressing his needs.

  When taken to school Pablo always demanded, especially from his father, some sort of pledge or token; and quite frequently this was the pigeon he used as a model. And the teacher … was quite willing to let him keep this pigeon on his desk and draw it to his heart’s content. Nevertheless, the little boy had such an independent character that whenever he felt inspired to do so he would leave his place, walk over to the window, and tap on the glass on the off-chance of being noticed by somebody who might get him out. His uncle by marriage, Antonio
Suárez Pizarro (the husband of Don José’s sister Eloisa Ruiz Blasco), since he lived opposite the school, used to keep an eye open for these appearances and would call for his nephew after one hour. This figure—one—seemed to Picasso, according to what he had been taught, to be the smallest possible unit, which was why he insisted on it. But how long the waiting felt, how long an hour could seem!

  Even today, one hundred years later, parents still believe they must teach their little children discipline, for if the children are already used to being obedient, then they supposedly won’t have to “suffer” in school. It is fortunate that there are some children, like Picasso, who do not submit when confronted with rigidity because they haven’t experienced it at home. Pablo’s revolt against his school harmed no one, even if it did cause headaches for a few adults. It was the first step on the artist’s long journey leading away from constricting conventions to the freedom to create, to think, and to feel.

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  KÄTHE KOLLWITZ:

  A Mother’s Dead Little Angels and Her Daughter’s Activist Art

  The following observations are a result of my participation in a discussion about Käthe Kollwitz in conjunction with an exhibit of her works in Zurich in 1981. She is not a painter who moves me deeply enough that I would have felt compelled on my own to become involved with her art. For me, the political effect and power of a work do not depend on its conscious themes. Some pictures can arouse my anger, can give me a feeling of wanting to resist or take action without their having to be regarded as political. In the case of Käthe Kollwitz, on the other hand, when I look at her pictures I am inclined to see hopelessness and despair but not a powerful political statement.

  Käthe Kollwitz, Vienna Is Dying! Save Her Children! VAGA New York 1989

  But now that I had told the Kunsthaus, the museum where her works were on display, that I would take part in the discussions, I tried to figure out why I found her pictures so depressing (as well as expressive of depression) and why a mother mourning over her dead child appeared so frequently in them. Art historians find what they consider adequate explanations for this, but I was not convinced. They emphasize, for example, that as a doctor’s wife, the painter was often confronted with the tragedy of mothers losing their children. In addition, she herself lost her son Peter in 1914 just a few days after he had gone to war as a volunteer, which had been a matter of great pride to her.

  Yet Käthe Kollwitz had already been obsessed with the theme of death and the dead child in the arms of its mother long before the death of her son. Simple causality was therefore not the answer, and yet I didn’t want to exclude her personal fate as the explanation. I began asking myself how these facts related to one another and whether they might gain new significance if they were placed in a larger, more comprehensive context.

  Before turning to Käthe Kollwitz’s childhood memories contained in her diaries, I walked through the exhibit and was attentive to the content of her work and its effect on me. Again and again I saw a dead child or a figure of death coming to take the child away from its mother or of death as lover, comforter, or friend who snatches the mother from her terrified children. I also saw death depicted as violently assaulting the children. Then I saw sad figures, prisoners bound with ropes, and revolutionaries whose faces very rarely expressed anger but rather resignation and hopelessness.

  I left the exhibit with many unanswered questions. What kind of images did the eyes of Käthe Kollwitz the child take in from her surroundings and store up? Who is the bent, lost-looking, depressive woman to be seen in almost all the pictures? It can’t be the self-portrait of a painter who was capable of that much expression and who showed such strength in the strokes of her brush. Could it be her mother, who did not have this outlet for self-expression? What role did death play in the artist’s childhood? What concrete experiences relate to the idea of death as a child pictures it? What riddles were there for the child to solve? With these questions in mind, I finally opened the pages of Käthe Kollwitz’s diaries.

  The entries about her childhood were very illuminating. Käthe Kollwitz, born Käthe Schmidt in 1867, grew up in Königsberg in a religious sect called the Free Religious Congregation, which had been founded and run by her maternal grandfather, Julius Rupp. After her grandfather’s death, Käthe’s father took over leadership of the group. His writings plainly show a mixture of naiveté, coerciveness, and scrupulousness. Käthe was raised to follow rules and orders to the letter and to suppress her feelings in the service of religious values, self-control chief among them. Since she was a very alert and high-spirited child, strict measures and severe punishment were required for her upbringing. The artist describes being locked up by herself for a long time as punishment for screaming, with no one coming to talk to her. Once, a night watchman going by on the street even came to the door because he was alarmed by the child’s “bawling.” As is so often the case, her older siblings adopted the parents’ ways and used similar methods to train the younger child.

  I do not remember much about my sister Julie at that time. Later Mother told me that Julie had always been a solicitous child. Two years younger than Konrad, she was always trailing along behind her brother to save him from mischief. Even at that early age she had begun her mothering of us which we later so rebelled against.

  Once Mother sent the two of us to visit Ernestine Castell. As Julie was preparing to leave with me, she took a lump of sugar out of the box and pocketed it. “What is that for?” Aunt Tina asked. “To cram into Kaethe’s mouth if she starts to bawl,” Julie answered.

  This stubborn bawling of mine was dreaded by everyone. I could bawl so loudly that no one could stand it. There must have been one occasion when I did it at night, because I remember that the night watchman came to see what was the matter. When Mother took me anywhere, she was thankful if the fit did not come over me in the street, for then I would stop dead in my tracks and nothing could persuade me to move on. If the fit came over me at home, my parents would shut me up alone in a room until I had bawled myself to exhaustion. We were never spanked.

  Her stored-up rage led to physical symptoms, whose significance no one could be bothered about.

  Käthe Kollwitz, Death Reaches for the Children VAGA New York 1989

  [My] stomach aches were a surrogate for all physical and mental pains. I imagine my bilious trouble began at that time. I went around in misery for days at a time, my face yellow, and often lay belly down on a chair because that made me feel better. My mother knew that my stomach aches concealed small sorrows, and at such times she would let me snuggle close to her.

  Käthe was allowed to snuggle close to her mother as long as she was quiet and behaved herself and above all didn’t say anything about what was troubling her. This resulted in loneliness, self-accusations, and depressive moods beginning in childhood.

  On the whole I was a quiet, shy child, and nervous as well. Later on, instead of these tantrums of kicking and roaring I had moods that lasted for hours and even days. When in these moods I could not bring myself to use words to communicate with others. The more I saw what a burden I was being to the family, the harder it became for me to emerge from my mood.

  I needed to confide in my mother, to confess to her. Since I could not conceive of lying to my mother, or even of being disobedient, I decided to give my mother a daily report on what I had done and felt that day. I imagined that her sharing the knowledge would be a help to me. But she said nothing at all, and so I too soon fell silent.

  There is a picture of [my mother] holding on her lap her first child, which was named Julius after my grandfather. This was the “firstborn child, the holy child,” and she had lost it, as well as the one born after it. Looking at her picture you can see that she was truly Julius Rupp’s daughter and would never let herself give way completely to grief. But although she never surrendered to the deep sorrow of those early days of her marriage, it must have been her years of suffering which gave her for ever after the remote air of a madonna.
Mother was never a close friend and good comrade to us. But we always loved her.

  Käthe Kollwitz describes her love for her mother as “tender and solicitous.” She was often fearful that her mother might “come to some harm,” “get lost,” “go mad,” or die. Sometimes she wished her parents were already dead, “so that it would all lie behind me.” It was inevitable, with all her desperate attempts to hold back her true feelings, that she suffered not only from physical symptoms but from psychic ones as well. She writes:

  I don’t know just when I began to suffer from nocturnal frights.… Nights I was tormented by frightful dreams.… Then there was a horrible state I fell into when objects would begin to grow smaller. It was bad enough when they grew larger, but when they grew smaller it was horrifying.

  I experienced such states of unfounded fear for many years; even when I was in Munich [in her early twenties] they occurred, but in far feebler form. I constantly had the feeling that I was in an airless room, or that I was sinking or vanishing away.

  Her belief in her own guilt and in the value of a strict upbringing for a person’s later life would in itself be sufficient to explain the depressive cast to Käthe Kollwitz’s pictures. For if a child is forbidden to express her true feelings, observations, and thoughts because only good, kind thoughts that are pleasing to God are permitted, then everything that has no place in this “good” world is relegated to the realm of death. As a child, Käthe Kollwitz often dreamed she was dead; this was because the uncomfortable, intense side of her nature was not allowed to live. Since I regard depression as the consequence of attempts, such as she was subjected to, to smother life, at first I was inclined to interpret the many depictions of death in her graphic work as the symbolic manifestation of her suffering. Gradually, however, it became clear that the theme of death in her art had other sources as well.