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Picasso’s War: The Destruction of Guernica, & the Masterpiece that Changed the World

beautifulkyra
Even though the Picasso exhibit has come to a close at the Art Institute of Chicago, you can still find many books filled with the history, stories and imagery of the multi-talented artist. One of my favorites, Picasso’s War- The Destruction of Guernica, and the Masterpiece that Changed the World, isn’t filled with beautiful plates, but instead describes the politics and drive behind one of Picasso’s most famous and controversial works “Guernica.”

Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain, but many of his artistically productive years were spent in Paris amid a golden age of creativity and talented Parisians and expatriates. The Parisian atmosphere in the early 1900’s was full of innovation, discussion, passion, and artistic community. The artists of the time were primed for the opportunity to utilize their art to comment on current affairs. When Hitler bombed the Basque village of Guernica in 1937 in support of Franco, Picasso felt it imperative to make a statement. Picasso had earlier in life made his feelings about Franco clear, and the bombing of Guernica by the German forces only fueled the artist’s passion to speak out against the devastation of the town and the emotional impact on the people. The result was the mural sized painting of Guernica, with its ghost like figures, pain-filled eyes, mouths, and deconstructed forms that create a sense of crumbling, tumbling, and collapse of a moment.

Martin’s “Guernica” is about a 100 year old war but remains pertinent today. The piece itself is an illustration against inhumane acts, but also functions as a motivation for artists, not only as a beautiful and innovative work, but as a work of art filled with purpose.

Martin, Russell. Picasso’s War: The Destruction of Guernica, & the Masterpiece that Changed the World. Plume. Paperback, octavo. List price: $15.95. Our in-store price: $4.95.

Kyra is our “artist-in-residence” at Powell’s University Village where she takes special care of our art and art history sections and helps add the quirky touches to our newest store.

Staff Review of the Week highlights some of our favorite picks from the stacks. Come to any one of our three retail locations and talk to our interesting and knowledgeable staff about books!

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Judge Sewall’s Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience

Book review photo
We’ve all heard of the Salem witch trials that lasted from 1692-1693, but the focus is never on the nine judges who helped send over 20 innocent people to their deaths. Richard Francis gives us a detailed picture of one of those judges, namely, Samuel Sewall, a very religious, law-abiding Puritan citizen, but a very conscientious man who reflected upon his actions and found himself to have been woefully misguided in his pursuit of the devil.

No doubt the Puritans were zealots, as are many people throughout the religious world today, and it was this zealotry that took hold of their fears and subdued any traces of rational thought. They saw things in black and white, good and evil, and they believed any manifestation of strange behavior as “the devil made me do it.” They applied this attitude to the bratty ranting of little girls and with no hesitation, unequivocally accused of sorcery those random victims the girls pointed to. When some upstanding citizens were accused, it took public protests to bring down the court.

Judge Sewall, contrite and resolute, publicly apologized five years after the trials, thus taking personal responsibility for his role in this mass hysteria. The author believes this moment of apology made Sewall a modern man and altered the status quo. The Mather family, as in Cotton and Increase, were not happy with Sewall’s apology. Saying it irked them to no end is putting it mildly.

Sewall’s struggle to do what his conscience said was right changed him dramatically. After his apology, Sewall became an early abolitionist, supporter of Native Americans, a utopian theorist and a man sensitive to the rights of women. He was a devoted husband and father (he and his wife had 14 children). On a lighter note, we are introduced to Sewall’s abhorrence of periwigs. If there was one way to make a bad impression on Sewall, all you had to do was wear a wig in his presence.

Because the author draws heavily from Sewall’s diaries, we get a genuine view of Puritan life and insight into the mindset of the Puritans in a new and often hostile environment, with stresses and discomforts we have no inkling of. Although I found myself thinking they were a bunch of loony tunes stuck on a warped plane of religious self-righteousness, I also see a correlation to our own current time, where political figures often make empty apologies for all sundry of behaviors, most likely because they just get “caught,” not because they gave their actions in-depth reflection and found themselves to be lacking. And if you think hysteria is a past fad, look up the NY Times Magazine article about Le Roy, New York.

Francis, Richard. Judge Sewall’s Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience. Harper Perennial. Paperback, octavo. List price: $15.95. Our in-store price: $4.95.

Denise works tirelessly in customer service for Powell’s Books Wholesale where she mutters under her breath a lot and often reads on the sly.

Staff Review of the Week highlights some of our favorite picks from the stacks. Come to any one of our three retail locations and talk to our interesting and knowledgeable staff about books!

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Just Kids

just kids
“I came home and there were cutouts of statues, the torsos and the buttocks of the Greeks, the Slaves of Michaelangelo, images of sailors, tattoos, and stars. To keep up with him, I read Robert passages from Miracle of the Rose, but he was always a step ahead. While I was reading Genet, he was becoming Genet.” —PATTI SMITH, JUST KIDS

Just Kids is an igniting memoir which chronicles one of the 21st century’s most poetic relationships. Rock icon Patti Smith tells of her uninhibited relationship with the late photographer Robert Maplethorpe, beginning with their chance meeting on a street in Manhattan in the 1960’s and ending with Maplethorpe’s tragic death at the hands of HIV/AIDS. Smith’s reflection of their relationship—first as a lovers, then as a collaborators, but ultimately as fateful kin—provides heartbreakingly profound insights that move beyond the classic trope of rags to riches and speaks, instead, of what it truly means to love and to be loved.
With a the same lush language and radically honest voice that contributed to her rise in the world of punk rock, Patti Smith is perhaps the most qualified person to tell this story that is as much about the transmutation of her relationship with Maplethorpe as it is about the subtle transformation of the American artistic landscape over the past fifty years.

Smith, Patti. Just Kids. Ecco. Paperback, octavo. List price: $14.95. Our in-store price: $5.95.

Stephanie S. is a part-time bookseller at our University Village store. She also teaches poetry in the Chicago Public Schools.

Staff Review of the Week highlights some of our favorite picks from the stacks. Come to any one of our three retail locations and talk to our interesting and knowledgeable staff about books!