Iconicity and network thinking in Picasso’s Guernica:
A study of creativity across the boundaries
VOLUME I
Chiara Ambrosio
Department of Science and Technology Studies
University College London
Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
University of London
London 2007
Table of Contents
VOLUME I
Acknowledgments
6
Introduction
8
Part I
Guernica and Creative Thinking
Chapter I
In quest of creativity
23
1.1 Some questions on the nature of insight
23
1.2 Discovery and Problem solving
32
1.3 Is there a “Logic of Discovery”?
40
Chapter II
Psychological Definitions of Creativity
45
2.1 Introspective reports and theories of creativity
45
2.2 Unconscious thought processes: a myth?
48
2.3 Experimenting with images: art and computing
56
2.4 A definition of creativity
61
Chapter III
Iconic Representations
66
3.1 Beyond (and against) resemblance: philosophical
views of artistic representation
66
3.2 Representation in art and science
71
3.3 A theory of iconic representation
78
3.4 Iconicity as homomorphism
3.5 Iconicity
processes
as
homomorphism
87
in
discovery
93
Part II
Artistic Creativity in Context:
Picasso’s Cubist Years
Chapter IV
Semiological versus semiotic theories of Cubism
100
4.1 Semiological accounts of Picasso’s creativity
100
4.2 African art and the iconic basis of conceptual
representation
105
Chapter V
Towards a cubist representation of the universe
113
5.1 La Bande à Picasso: the laboratory of avantgarde
113
5.2 Alfred Jarry
122
5.3 Art, literature and science: mirrors of nature?
128
5.4 The Portrait of Gertrude Stein
135
Chapter VI
Geometric visualization: concepts of form and
space in Picasso’s cubist production
140
6.1 The concept of form in Picasso’s cubist
representations
6.1.1 Perceptual organization and pictorial
forms
6.1.2 Picasso and the Psychology of Form
140
6.2 Geometry and the concept of space in Picasso’s
cubist canvases
149
140
143
6.2.1 Le mathématicien du cubisme
6.2.2 Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon
6.2.3 Further developments of geometric
visualization in Picasso’s cubist paintings
6.2.4 Gertrude Stein, William James and the
fourth dimension
149
158
161
164
6.3 Photography as a means of geometrization
168
Chapter VII
Cognitive models of creativity
174
7.1 Psychological explanations of
“incubation” and “mind popping”
creativity:
174
7.2 A model for network thinking
182
7.3 The role of guidelines for creativity
185
7.4 Iconicity and network
complementary approach
thinking:
a
189
Part III
Guernica
Chapter VIII
Art, history, science and technology in the creation
of Guernica
195
8.1 Guernica, Gernika and the Spanish Civil War
195
8.2 Guernica, camouflage and Gestalt psychology
203
8.3 Aesthetics of war: Cubism, Futurism and
technology of warfare
210
8.4 The return of Jarry: Picasso’s Sueño y mentira
de Franco
217
8.5 Towards Guernica: Picasso’s early sketches for
The Studio
227
8.6 “A resemblance more real than real”
230
239
Chapter IX
Picasso’s problem solving towards Guernica
9.1 Guernica: a cubist painting?
239
9.2 May 1: sketches 1 to 6
9.2.1 Sketch 1
9.2.2 Sketches 2, 3 and 4
9.2.3 Sketches 5 and 6
249
249
255
257
9.3 May 2: sketches 7 to 11
261
9.4 Conscious and unconscious thought in the
creation of Guernica
268
9.5 Photography in Guernica: the role of Dora Maar
275
9.6 Picasso’s illumination: sketch 15
283
9.7 Paths towards the solution: sketches 16 to 25
287
9.8 The visualization of Guernica on canvas
9.8.1 State I
9.8.2 State II
9.8.3 State III
9.8.4 State IV
9.8.5 State V
9.8.6 State VI
9.8.7 States VII and VIII
297
297
300
303
304
308
309
313
9.9 Artistic problem solving in Guernica
314
Chapter X
Iconicity and network thinking in context
318
10.1 Network thinking in context
10.1.1 Conscious thought in Guernica
10.1.2 Unconscious thought in Guernica
10.1.3 Illumination in Guernica
10.1.4 Verification
318
318
321
324
330
10.2 Iconicity in context
336
Conclusions
351
Bibliographical References
373
INTRODUCTION
Pablo Picasso’s 1937 canvas, Guernica, is among the most compelling
images of modern warfare. Picasso completed it in the tragic circumstances
of the bombing of the Basque village of Gernika, 1 which is universally
recognized as one of the first attacks involving a population of innocent
civilians. Guernica cries out loud an unspeakable truth about primitive
feelings of fear and pain that the destructive power of war brings about in
the most genuine and crude manner. But what really makes Picasso’s
canvas so unique? My research is a journey inside Guernica which attempts
to explore its lasting representative force; it is a focused inquiry into the
inner nature of Picasso’s artistic choices, which transcended the sole
domain of art.
Guernica is an example of creativity across boundaries. Recent
interdisciplinary studies 2 suggested the possibility of exploring Picasso’s
creativity in a wider framework. This resulted in the realization that
paintings like Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, The Portrait of Ambroise Vollard and
most of Picasso’s Cubist experimentations are achievements resulting from
a process of discovery in which art is in dialogue with science and
technology. My work relies upon the assumption that it is possible to
extend the findings of such studies to Picasso’s 1937 canvas. In this effort,
I assign a central role to Picasso’s cubist experimentation. An important
1
I have chosen different spellings to distinguish Picasso’s canvas from the Basque town.
Throughout my study, I refer to the painting with the Spanish spelling (Guernica); whereas I
follow the original Basque spelling (Gernika) to refer to the town.
claim of my thesis is that Cubism constituted a proper cognitive
framework for Picasso. By virtue of its relations with science, Cubism
directed his creativity towards the most suitable representation for
Guernica.
I propose an interdisciplinary examination of Picasso’s canvas that
draws upon interpretative resources from diverse fields of knowledge.
Interdisciplinarity requires a productive combination of domains that are
apparently far apart. In the course of my study, I bring together history –in
particular the history of art–, philosophy, semiotics, cognitive psychology
and the cognitive sciences, cultural studies, technology and the astounding
discoveries in the realm of scientific and mathematical knowledge that
dramatically shaped artistic practice in the 20th century.
My aim is to assess the cognitive import of science and technology
upon Picasso’s creativity towards Guernica. For this purpose, my study
begins with an inquiry on the nature of creativity. Picasso’s canvas presents
all the characteristics of a genuinely creative endeavour. But how should
we understand creativity? Are there any commonalities between scientific
and artistic thinking? Can we talk about “discovery” in the arts as we talk
about it in science? And, more importantly, can the quest for Picasso’s
creativity towards Guernica cast new light on the production of novelties in
art and in science?
My thesis is divided in three parts. Part 1 comprises chapters 1 through
3, and poses some general questions on the nature of creativity and the
role of representations in creative processes, as they arise from the
observation of Picasso’s Guernica. In chapter 1, I present an overview of
contemporary approaches to the problem of creativity, with a special focus
2
See for example Henderson (1983), Henderson (1988), Miller (2000) and Miller (2001) and
on the issue of insight. I test the achievements of current accounts of
creative processes against the case of Guernica and individuate limits and
insufficiencies of the dominant models. Among them, I consider
advantages and disadvantages of accounts of discovery processes that draw
upon information-processing theories. Such accounts are advantageous in
that they provide us with a thorough description of the stages that
characterize problem solving activities –and problem solving has a
privileged place in my account of the compositional stages that culminated
in the completion of Guernica. Information-processing theories, however,
model only the observable aspects of discovery processes, namely those
that can be implemented in computer programs simulating discoveries.
In chapter 2, I underline the limitations of psychological accounts that
emphasize exclusively the conscious and observable aspects of creativity.
Contrary to these approaches, I stress the relevance of unconscious
processes for an account of the dynamics of creative thought. Specifically, I
draw on a cognitive model based on the role of mental representations as
fundamental requirements to explain how concepts are moved about in
ways which would not be permissible in conscious thought. My use of the
term “unconscious” does not have psychoanalytical connotations.
Throughout my research, I will adopt a strictly cognitive definition of
unconscious processes, and I will consider them as processes involving
representations that are in a state of activation in long-term memory,
despite not being present in conscious awareness.3
Chapters 1 and 2 focus mainly on psychological approaches to the
problem of creativity. Indeed, the entire field of creativity studies is
commonly considered as a domain that pertains to experimental and
Robbin (2006).
3
In this, I follow the definition of unconscious that Arthur I. Miller proposes in Miller (2000),
pp. 337ff. and Miller (2001), p. 245.
cognitive psychology. Contrary to this relatively widespread conception, I
propose an alternative line of inquiry that relies upon philosophical
concepts. Psychological findings must be substantiated by an account of
the formal prerequisites for the production of genuine novelties, and such
formal prerequisites fall under the domain of philosophy. Therefore, in
chapter 3, I examine the relations between representations and creativity
through a set of formal notions that draw on the philosopher Charles
Sanders Peirce’s theory of signs.
I adopt Peirce’s complex notion of iconicity to examine the
representative relation governing Guernica. Iconicity is a structural relation
established through an act of cognition between representing facts and
represented objects in a representation. My claim is that, thus defined, the
notion of iconicity fulfils a twofold purpose. First, it casts new light on the
representative relation between Guernica and the events that it represents.
The canvas does not literally “resemble” the historical facts for which it
stands –at most it “evokes” them by appealing to universal feelings of fear,
pain and horror for the crimes of war. The representative force of Guernica
depends on its conceptual core, the roots of which are found in Picasso’s
experimentations across the boundaries of art and science.
On a strictly theoretical level, the notion of iconicity casts new light on
the internal functioning of Guernica as an instance of the most general
class of “representations” broadly considered. From this background, my
contention is that an analysis of Guernica can substantially contribute to
the current debate on the nature of artistic and scientific representations.4
Secondly, the notion of iconicity turns out to be productive to explain
the role and functioning of certain representations in creative processes. A
4
I consolidated this idea in the course of the conference “Beyond Mimesis and Nominalism.
Representation in Art and Science” (London, 22-23 June 2006), organized by the London School
of Economics and the Courtauld Institute of Art.
theory of creativity must account for the specificity of representations
which are constructed and manipulated in discovery processes. In artistic
and scientific creativity, perspicuous and fruitful representations have a
privileged place over entirely arbitrary or conventional ones. Perspicuity
and fruitfulness are central features of iconic representations, in which the
representational relation itself reveals novel aspects of the represented
objects.
Part 2 of my thesis comprises chapters 4 through 6 and delves into the
conceptual core of Guernica, which I relate to issues that Picasso absorbed
during the years of his Cubist experimentation (1907-1914). I begin with
an overview of the dominant interpretative reading of Picasso’s Cubism in
history of art and art criticism and subsequently argue for an alternative
explanation that emphasizes the cognitive impact of scientific and
technological knowledge upon Picasso’s creativity.
In chapter 4, I discuss structuralist analyses of Picasso’s Cubist
production. 5 The dominant model in history of art verges upon the
assumption that the roots of Cubism are to be found mainly within
Primitive Art and the works of Paul Cézanne.6 Without denying the role
of these influences, I propose a broader framework. Picasso was mainly
interested in the conceptual message of Primitivism and the
postimpressionism of Cézanne, for which he sought a suitable
representative vehicle. Scientific knowledge provided him with radically
novel ways to reduce forms to their essential geometric properties.
5
By “structuralist analyses” I mean analyses that draw on the theories of the Swiss linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure considered all language as a system of relational and
differential values. His views focused on the arbitrary nature of linguistic signs and were
recently used in art theory to explain the relation between signifiers and signifieds in Picasso’s
late cubist production.
6
See for example Kahnweiler (1948), Rubin (1977), Henderson (1983), Rubin (1984), Rubin
(1994) and the general overview presented in Green (2001).
Geometry became a privileged vehicle for Picasso’s exploration of the
nature of space.
How did Picasso know about science? In chapters 5 and 6 I reconstruct
his formative years and present an overview of the manifold of factors that
contributed to direct his thought towards a conceptual resolution for his
cubist canvases. I examine Picasso’s early artistic development within the
wider framework of the great scientific and technological changes that
shook Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. Paris was at the centre
of a revolution that stem directly from the impact of unparalleled
discoveries upon collective imagery. Technological advancements such as
airplanes and their use in warfare brought about a radical reinterpretation
of the categories of space and time. The invention of war camouflage
challenged the rules of perception. The adoption of camouflage
techniques defied common notions such as form and space in disorienting
and unexpected ways. Great advances in the field of communications such
as wireless telegraphy and the telephone granted the most rapid
transmission of information in real time, independently of distance.
Pioneering experiments with images in movement revolutionized the field
of photography and culminated with the advent of cinema as a popular
form of mass entertainment. The discovery of X rays and radioactivity
suggested the possibility of a reality beyond sense perceptions. Even the
abstract field of mathematics undertook dramatic changes after the
formulation of geometries that exceeded the three-dimensional Euclidean
system.7
7
My initiation into the realm of the interactions between art and science at the beginning of
the 20th century began ten years ago, when I first discovered Stephen Kern’s 1987 pioneering
work “The Culture of Space and Time 1880-1918”. Kern’s encyclopaedic work presents a lucid
exposition of how great scientific and technological discoveries shaped the categories of space
and time in popular and high culture. I am grateful to Arthur I. Miller for stimulating my
academic interest in the topic and guiding me through essential readings on the subject that
In the course of chapter 5, I discuss Picasso’s intellectual life within the
challenging atmosphere that characterized Parisian artistic circles at the
beginning of the 20th century. His circle of friends, known as La Bande à
Picasso, comprised the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and the writers Max
Jacob and André Salmon. Their creative collaboration compelled them to
explore diverse realms of knowledge and confront the traditional
separation between art, science, philosophy, technology and literature. In
their exploration of knowledge across domains, the members of La Bande
à Picasso relied on the collaboration with other members of the French
avant-garde, such as the writer Alfred Jarry. Jarry’s writings contained
sophisticated references to non-Euclidean geometries, the relativity of
scientific knowledge and the value of scientific imagination.
A figure that profoundly marked the development of Picasso’s art was
the American writer Gertrude Stein. One of the central claims of my
thesis is that she had a lasting influence upon Picasso’s artistic production
from the Cubist years through Guernica. Stein’s scientific background
allowed her to act as an intermediary between artists, scientists,
philosophers and writers. Her apartment at 27, Rue de Fleurus, was a
privileged place in which the latest developments in the fields of science,
philosophy, psychology, art and technology were discussed. Picasso was a
habitual guest at Rue de Fleurus, and it might have been in those
circumstances that he learned about William James, Stein’ s mentor at
Harvard University, and his experiments with optical illusions and their
perceptual effects. 8 James’ psychology was a source to which Picasso
returned at a crucial moment in the period that preceded the completion
of Guernica.
included, among others, Shattuck (1958), Henderson (1983), Hendrson (1988), Henderson
(1998), Everdell (1999), Miller (2000), Holton (2001) and Miller (2001).
In chapter 6, I develop the issue of Picasso’s initiation into scientific
topics along two main thematic notions: form and space. My line of
argumentation hinges on the claim that Picasso’s reflections upon
concepts of form and space was crucial to his cubist production and it
dramatically affected the final form of Guernica. I consider Gestalt
psychology and the artistic interpretation of non-Euclidean geometries as
central to Picasso’s cubist elaboration of notions of form and space;
moreover, I regard them as an indispensable basis to assess the continuity
between Cubism and Guernica. A formalization of the basic principles of
Gestalt psychology occurred almost in parallel with Picasso’s cubist
experimentations. This suggests that the research for the rules governing
perceptual organization, along with efforts to defy its inherent
organization, were investigated almost simultaneously by artists and
psychologists alike, and eventually culminated in similar results. More
importantly, Gestalt considerations on unit forming and unit breaking
elements (known as “coincidental disruption”),9 was an essential element
for the achievement of the final form of Guernica. In the course of chapter
6, I trace back to the cubist years Picasso’s interest in a notion of
psychology of form and underline its relevance for the completion of his
1937 canvas.
The second part of chapter 6 focuses on Picasso’s considerations on
spatial concepts and spatial relations. Specifically, it deals with the
scientific roots of the process of geometrization that characterized Cubism
since its inception. For this purpose, I introduce a character that played a
crucial role upon Picasso’s initiation into the realm of geometry: the
insurance actuary Maurice Princet. Princet had an interest in advanced
8
My work on the influence of William James on Picasso via Gertrude Stein draws on the
illuminating researches on the topic by Henderson (1983), Teuber (1997) and Miller (2001).
9
See Koffka (1935), p. 77 and Behrens (2002), p. 73.
mathematics. His mistress Alice Géry introduced him to Picasso in 1905
and since then he became a regular character revolving around La Bande à
Picasso. Primary sources report Princet’s lectures to the members of La
Bande à Picasso, which comprised discussions on non-Euclidean geometries
and the fourth dimension. 10 The sources that Princet privileged in is
lectures were Henri Poincaré’s La Science et l’Hypothèse and Esprit Jouffret’s
vividly illustrated Traité Élémentaire de Géométrie à Quatre Dimensions.
Notions from non-Euclidean geometry and the fourth dimension were
at the core of Picasso’s revolutionary cubist aesthetics, which consisted of
the reduction of forms to their conceptual geometric properties. The new
geometries furthered Picasso’s research of novel ways to explore the nature
of space. This culminated in a reformulation of the very concept of spatial
relations on the picture plane that verged on the possibility of conceiving
geometrical relations that cannot actually be perceived. This aspect of
Cubism played a fundamental role in the spatial organization of Guernica.
Faced with the problem of devising a suitable representational framework
for objects and characters in his 1937 canvas, Picasso recurred to the
conceptual resolutions that he developed during the Cubist years with the
indispensable aid of geometry.
I conclude chapter 6 with some considerations on Picasso’s
experimentation with photography as a means to condense and push
forward his Cubist reformulation of the concepts of form and space.
Recent researches in the archives of the Musée Picasso in Paris reveal that
in the first decade of the 20th century Picasso intensively experimented
with the photographic medium.11 His highly creative use of photography
allowed him to progress towards an increasing geometrization of forms in
10
See for example Salmon (1910), quoted in Miller (2002), p. 102, Metzinger (1912), p. 43,
Salmon (1955), p. 187, Salmon (1956), p. 24 and Vauxcelles (1918), quoted in Henderson
(1983), pp. 71-72.
space and test novel pictorial combinations. From 1936 onwards,
concomitantly with his relationship with the Surrealist photographer Dora
Maar, Picasso returned to his photographic experiments. His exploration
of forms in space acquired a renewed importance especially in 1937:
Guernica emerged as an oversize black and white photograph of horrors
that no camera could ever capture. This result emerged from Picasso’s
awareness, developed during the cubist years, that even in the most
realistic photograph “what you see is definitely not what you get”.12
A discussion of the interplay between art and science that characterized
Picasso’s cubist production requires a unifying model13 that will allow us
to understand the dynamics of his synthesis of diverse domains of
knowledge. This brings us back to the problem of creativity. In the course
of chapter 7, I discuss a model of creative processes that successfully
captures the complexity of thought across domains.
Arthur I. Miller’s interdisciplinary researches on creativity in art and
science offer an account of creativity in terms of network thinking, a
cognitive model that hinges on the interplay between conscious and
unconscious processes. The bases for network thinking are found in recent
psychological researches on memory and mental representations. In his
account of creativity, Miller explicitly addresses the psychologist George
Mandler’s experimental achievements in detangling phenomena such as
“incubation” and “mind popping”. 14 Mandler proposes a “dual-process
theory”
11
which
accounts
for
activation/integration
of
mental
See Baldassarri (1994) Miller (2001), especially chapter 5 and Baldassarri (2006).
Miller (2001), p. 148.
13
For terminological reasons, I have chosen to use “model” to refer to cognitive and
psychological accounts of creativity, whereas I use “theory” to address philosophical inquiries
into the formal prerequisites for the production of genuine novelties. Hence, I will speak of
network thinking as a cognitive model of creativity, whose formal counterpart is a theory of
iconicity.
14
See Mandler (1994) and Mandler (1995).
12
representations in long term memory and their elaboration. 15 Mandler
explains that creative endeavors are characterized by a productive delay
(incubation) preceding the attainment of a desired solution, that appears
to come to mind somehow unexpectedly (mind popping). Mandler’s
description of how representations are activated and called from long-term
memory casts light on the creative nature of everyday life problem solving,
but at the same time it captures the distinctiveness of high creativity, in
which outstanding discoveries literally seem to burst forth.16
After having individuated the cognitive bases of Miller’s model, I
proceed to discuss the dynamics of network thinking and the advantages
of adopting it to clarify Picasso’s creative processes. Miller individuates
conscious constraints that direct creative thought towards novel and
unexplored directions. He emphasizes the role of consciousness in
demarcating the boundaries of a problem and parting it into smaller units.
At the same time, he stresses that focusing on conscious thought alone
cannot exhaustively explain the moment of discovery. For instance, a
diffused practice among highly creative individuals consists of taking time
away from the problem. In this interval, unconscious representations
active in long-term memory are free to combine in ways which would not
be possible in conscious thought. As I will show in part 3 of my thesis, this
is exactly what happened to Picasso during the process that led him to the
completion of Guernica.
15
See Mandler (1991), Mandler (1994) and Kvavilashvili and Mandler (2004).
The relations between high creativity and everyday problem solving are still a matter of
discussion. Certain lines of inquiry in psychology seem to tend more and more towards a
neurological description of creative phenomena, which does not cast much light on high
creativity. See for example Bowden et al. (2005) and Knoblich and Oellinger (2006). This
stream in psychology tends to reduce insight to a process that does not have any special
connotations and that ultimately should be “demystified”. Such approaches overlook individual
differences and the role of expertise in combination with intuition in high creativity. At most,
they provide us with a description of solutions to logical puzzles, but this is very different from
explaining the process behind groundbreaking discoveries!
16
Part 3 of my work comprises chapters 8 through 10 and it is the
culminating point of my journey into Guernica. Indeed, the final chapters
came to light after a real journey to Spain, in which I undertook
thstambitious project of searching for the “real” Guernica. My trip started
from the Basque village of Gernika and ended in the Museo Reina Sofia
in Madrid, where Guernica is now exhibited as one of the most precious
artworks of the Spanish cultural heritage. 17 In the village of Gernika I
searched for documents and material on the bombing that leveled the
town on 26 April 1937. In the course of my researches, I had the great
fortune of interviewing Luis Iriondo Autenexea, a Basque painter and
survivor of the bombing of Gernika. His moving account of that terrible
day gave me a glimpse of the frightening truth about Gernika, which
cannot be described either by documents or by history books.
In the course of chapter 8, I discuss the historical circumstances of the
bombing and focus on the reception of the news about the disaster in
Parisian intellectual circles. Picasso learned the news about the bombing
from newspapers and radio reports, and the event had a crucial impact on
the final realization of Guernica.
In January 1937, Picasso had been commissioned by the Spanish
Republican Government to paint a canvas for the Spanish Pavilion at the
17
In the years that followed its creation, Guernica travelled all over the world. After the Paris
World Fair, the canvas was exhibited in Norway, Denmark and Sweden. In September 1938
Picasso shipped it to London, where it was exhibited at the New Burlington and the
Whitechapel Galleries. From 1939 to 1981 Guernica remained in the United States. Prior to
the outbreak of World War II, it was exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and
Chicago. In 1940 it returned to New York and remained on view at the Museum of Modern
Art –though often temporary loaned– until 1981. Picasso always wished that Guernica would
finally return to Spain, but he explicitly posed the condition that this should happen in
concomitance with the end of Franco’s dictatorship. Picasso died in 1973, Franco in 1975. On
10 September 1981 Guernica arrived in Madrid, where it was exhibited at the Casón del Buen
Retiro, a separate division of the Prado Museum. The canvas was protected by armed guards
and a bullet proof glass case for over ten years. Lastly, in 1992, the painting was transferred in
the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, built in honour of King Juan Carlos’ wife,
that housed the collection of the recently closed Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art.
Paris 1937 International Exposition. During the months that followed the
commission, however, he showed some resilience in handling the
assignment. The bombing of Gernika provided him with a powerful topic
for his canvas. His resolution was accompanied by an unexpected decision
to take an explicit political position at a particularly difficult moment for
his homeland.
Along with the historical circumstances that accompanied the creation
of Guernica, in chapter 8 I examine the cultural environment surrounding
Picasso during the 1930s. I delve into his relations with the Surrealists, his
understanding of technologies of warfare, his experiments with
photography and his return to themes that he had developed during the
cubist years. In particular, I stress the importance of his creative
collaboration with Dora Maar, which crystallized in the photographic
record of the progress towards the final form of Guernica.
In chapter 9, I propose a thorough examination of all the preparatory
sketches that Picasso produced for Guernica. My examination was
facilitated by Picasso’s careful dating and numbering of every drawing. My
analysis of the sketches aims to capture the compositional rhythm of
Picasso’s work on the painting. I alternate descriptions of the stages of the
painting with general considerations on the nature of Picasso’s problem
solving and its conscious aspects, the role of his unconscious thought and
the outstandingly creative combination that it triggered. I individuate
Picasso’s illumination with sketch 15, in which Picasso clearly adopted a
cubist resolution for the canvas. My argument hinges on the assumption
that the conceptual core of Cubism was an indispensable pictorial
resource for the attainment of the universal character of Guernica. Sketch
15 remarkably crystallizes the historical, psychological, philosophical
scientific and technological considerations that I present in chapters 1
through 8. It is an illuminating example of artistic discovery, in which
boundaries fade between traditionally separate domains of knowledge.
Lastly, in chapter 10, I conclude with a contextualized discussion of the
theoretical framework that guided my study of Guernica. Picasso’s canvas
allows us to return to the problem of creativity with fresh insights. My
analysis hinges on the necessity of a twofold approach to creative
processes. Therefore, in drawing my conclusions on Picasso’s creativity I
stress the need of the joint application of a cognitive model of creative
processes and a philosophical inquiry into the formal constraints that
make novel combinations possible. I suggest that Charles Sanders Peirce’s
notion of iconicity and Arthur I. Miller’s model of network thinking are
theoretically compatible devices to try to explain creative processes in
context. Network thinking casts new light on the productive interplay
between conscious and unconscious representations as processes that
ultimately depend on mental representations, whereas iconicity provides
us with a formal account of the very nature of such representations and of
the rules that make them fertile and perspicuous.
Picasso’s Guernica is one more instance of the need to abandon the
traditional academic separation between fields and areas of expertise.
Great achievements in art and science were guided by the capacity of
highly creative people to think across domains of knowledge and adopt an
interdisciplinary mode of thought. It is my hope that this work will open
novel lines of inquiry along the path that guided Picasso towards the
realization of Guernica.