Week 8 assignment: essay – interrelationships reflection apa format | Applied Sciences homework help
- If you had not read Ovid’s The Metamorphoses, what would you believe to be the subject matter of Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne? Do you believe it is a less interesting work if you do not know Ovid?
One obvious issue in looking at this sculpture and considering Ovid’s treatment of Apollo and Daphne is that today very few people will have read Ovid before seeing the sculpture. In the era in which Bernini created the work, he expected it to be seen pri- marily by well-educated people, and in the seventeenth century, most educated people would have been steeped in Ovid from a young age. Consequently, Bernini worked in a classical tradition that he could easily rely on to inform his audience. jac16871_fm_i-xx.indd 16 12/11/17 11:17 AM xvii
PREFACE
suPPOrting resOurCes Image Bank Instructors can access a database of images from select McGraw-Hill Education art and humanities titles, including The Humanities through the Arts. Connect Image Bank includes all images for which McGraw-Hill Education has secured electronic permissions. Instructors can access a text’s images by browsing its chapters, style/ period, medium, and culture or by searching on key terms. Instructors can also search for images from other McGraw-Hill Education titles included in the database. Images can easily be downloaded for use in presentations and in PowerPoints. The download includes a text file with image captions and information. You can access Connect Image Bank under the library tab in Connect. McGraw-Hill Create Easily rearrange chapters, combine material from other content sources, and quickly upload content you have written, such as your course syllabus or teach- ing notes, using McGraw-Hill Education’s Create. Find the content you need by searching through thousands of leading McGraw-Hill textbooks. Arrange your book to fit your teaching style. Create even allows you to personalize your book’s appearance by selecting the cover and adding your name, school, and course infor- mation. Order a Create book and you’ll receive a complimentary print review copy in three to five business days or a complimentary electronic review copy (eComp) via e-mail in about an hour. Experience how McGraw-Hill Education empowers you to teach your students your way. http://www.mcgrawhillcreate.com/
Question Bank
The Humanities through the Arts, tenth edition, includes a number of resources to assist instructors with planning and teaching their courses: an instructor’s manual, which offers learning objectives, chapter outlines, possible discussion and lecture topics, and more; a test bank with multiple-choice and essay questions; and a chapter-by-chapter PowerPoint presentation. aCKnOwledgments This book is indebted to more people than we can truly credit. We are deeply grate- ful to the following survey respondents for their help on this edition: Micheal Jay Adamek, Ozarks Technical Community College; Larry Atkins, Ozarks Technical Community College; Michael Bajuk, Western Washington University; Michael Berberich, Galveston College; Bill Burrows, Lane Community College; Aaron jac16871_fm_i-xx.indd 17 12/11/17 11:17 AM xviii
PREFACE
Butler, Warner Pacific College Adult Degree Program; Linda Carpenter, Coastline Community College; Jordan Chilton, Ozarks Technical Community College; Patricia Dodd, Houston Community College; Laura Early, Highland Community College; Kristin Edford, Amarillo College; Jeremy R. Franklin, Colorado Mesa University; Diane Gaston, Cuyahoga Community College; Donna Graham, Ozarks Technical Community College; Daniel Hieber, Ozarks Technical Community College; Jennifer Keefe, Valencia College; Donny Leveston, Houston Community College; Susanna Lundgren, Warner Pacific College; Jimidene Murphey, Wharton County Junior College; Sven Pearsall, Alpena Community College; Debbi Richard, Dallas Baptist University; Matthew Scott, Ozarks Technical Community College; Timothy Soulis, Transylvania University; Peter C. Surace, Cuyahoga Community College; Normand Theriault, Houston Community College; Peter Utgaard, Cuyamaca College; Dawn Hamm Walsh, Dallas Baptist University; and Adrian S. Windsor, Coastline Community College
We also thank the following reviewers for their help shaping previous editions:
Addell Austin Anderson, Wayne County Community College District; David Avalos, California State University San Marcos; Bruce Bellingham, University of Connecticut; Eugene Bender, Richard J. Daley College; Michael Berberich, Galveston College; Barbara Brickman, Howard Community College; Peggy Brown, Collin County Community College; Lance Brunner, University of Kentucky; Alexandra Burns, Bay Path College; Bill Burrows, Lane Community College; Glen Bush, Heartland Community College; Sara Cardona, Richland College; Brandon Cesmat, California State University San Marcos; Selma Jean Cohen, editor of Dance Perspectives; Karen Conn, Valencia Community College; Harrison Davis, Brigham Young University; Jim Doan, Nova University; Jill Domoney, Johnson County Community College; Gerald Eager, Bucknell University; Kristin Edford, Amarillo College; D. Layne Ehlers, Bacone College; Jane Ferencz, University of Wisconsin–Whitewater; Roberta Ferrell, SUNY Empire State; Michael Flanagan, University of Wisconsin–Whitewater; Kathy Ford, Lake Land College; Andy Friedlander, Skagit Valley College; Harry Garvin, Bucknell University; Susan K. de Ghizee, University of Denver; Amber Gillis, El Camino College–Compton Center; Michael Gos, Lee College; M. Scott Grabau, Irvine Valley College; Lee Hartman, Howard Community College; Jeffrey T. Hopper, Harding University; James Housefield, Texas State University–San Marcos; Stephen Husarik, University of Arkansas–Fort Smith; Ramona Ilea, Pacific University Oregon; Joanna Jacobus, choreographer; Lee Jones, Georgia Perimeter College–Lawrenceville; Deborah Jowitt, Village Voice; Nadene A. Keene, Indiana University–Kokomo; Marsha Keller, Oklahoma City University; Paul Kessel, Mohave Community College; Edward Kies,College of DuPage; John Kinkade, Centre College; Gordon Lee, Lee College; Tracy L. McAfee, North Central State College; L. Timothy Myers, Butler Community College; Marceau Myers, North Texas State University; Martha Myers, Connecticut College; William E. Parker, University of Connecticut; Seamus Pender, Franklin Pierce College; Ellen Rosewall, University of Wisconsin–Green Bay; Susan Shmeling, Vincennes University; Ed Simone, St. Bonaventure University; C. Edward Spann, Dallas Baptist University; Mark Stewart, San Joaquin Delta College; Robert Streeter, University of Chicago; Peter C. Surace, Cuyahoga Community College; Robert Tynes, University of North Carolina at Asheville; Walter Wehner, University of North Carolina at Greensboro; and Keith West, Butler Community College. jac16871_fm_i-xx.indd 18 12/11/17 11:17 AM xix
PREFACE
We want to thank the editorial team at McGraw-Hill for their smart and gener- ous support for this edition. Lead Product Developer Beth Tripmacher, along with Brand Manager Sarah Remington, oversaw the revision from inception through production. Product Developer Bruce Cantley guided us carefully through the pro- cess of establishing a revision plan and incorporating new material into the text. In all things he was a major sounding board as we thought about how to improve the book. We also owe thanks to Lead Content Project Manager Mary Powers, who oversaw the book smoothly through the production process; Tara McDermott, who oversaw the interior design in both the print and online versions of the text as well as the cover; Deb DeBord, who was an exceptionally good copyeditor; Content Licensing Specialist Carrie Burger, who oversaw the permissions process, along with Julie De Adder and Danny Meldung, who did a wonderful job researching and obtaining reprint rights for images; and Isabel Saraiva, who likewise did excellent work researching and clearing the rights for text reprints. All the wonderful people who worked on this book made our job easier and helped make this book distinc- tive and artistic. a nOte FrOm the authOrs Our own commitment to the arts and the humanities has been lifelong. One pur- pose of this book is to help instill a love of all the arts in its readers. We have faced many of the issues and problems that are considered in this book and, to an extent, we are still undecided about certain important questions concerning the arts and their relationship to the humanities. Clearly, we grow and change our thinking as we grow. Our engagement with the arts at any age will reflect our own abilities and commitments. But as we grow, we deepen our understanding of the arts we love as well as deepen our understanding of our own nature, our inner selves. We be- lieve that the arts and the humanities function together to make life more intense, more significant, and more wonderful. A lifetime of work unrelieved by a deep commitment to the arts would be stultifying and perhaps destructive to one’s soul. The arts and humanities make us one with our fellow human beings. They help us understand each other, just as they help us admire the beauty that is the product of the human imagination. As the philosopher Susanne K. Langer once said, the arts are the primary avenues to the education of our emotional lives. By our efforts in understanding the arts, we are indelibly enriched. jac16871_fm_i-xx.indd 19 12/11/17 11:17 AM jac16871_fm_i-xx.indd 20 12/11/17 11:17 AM This page intentionally left blank P art 1
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Chapter 1
THE HUMANITIES: AN INTRODUCTION
The humaniTies: a sTudy of Values Today we think of the humanities as those broad areas of human creativity and study, such as philosophy, history, social sciences, the arts, and literature, that are distinct from mathematics and the “hard” sciences, mainly because in the human- ities, strictly objective or scientific standards are not usually dominant. The current separation between the humanities and the sciences reveals itself in a number of contemporary controversies. For example, the cloning of animals has been greeted by many people as a possible benefit for domestic livestock farmers. Genetically altered wheat, soybeans, and other cereals have been her- alded by many scientists as a breakthrough that will produce disease-resistant crops and therefore permit us to continue to increase the world food supply. On the other hand, some people resist such modifications and purchase food identified as not being genetically altered. Scientific research into the human ©RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY jac16871_ch01_001-016.indd 1 12/11/17 11:19 AM
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genome has identified certain genes for inherited diseases, such as breast cancer or Alzheimer’s disease, that could be modified to protect individuals or their off- spring. Genetic research also suggests that in a few years individuals may be able to “design” their children’s intelligence, body shape, height, general appearance, and physical ability. Scientists provide the tools for these choices. Their values are centered in science in that they value the nature of their research and their capacity to make it work in a positive way. However, the impact on humanity of such a series of dramatic changes to life brings to the fore values that clash with one another. For example, is it a positive social value for couples to decide the sex of their offspring rather than following nature’s own direction? In this case who should decide if “designing” one’s offspring is a positive value, the scientist or the humanist? Even more profound is the question of cloning a human being. Once a sheep had been cloned successfully, it was clear that this science would lead directly to the possibility of a cloned human being. Some proponents of cloning support the process because we could clone a child who has died in infancy or clone a ge- nius who has given great gifts to the world. For these people, cloning is a positive value. For others, the very thought of cloning a person is repugnant on the basis of religious belief. For still others, the idea of human cloning is objectionable be- cause it echoes the creation of an unnatural monster, and for them it is a negative value. Because this is a worldwide problem, local laws will have limited effect on establishing a clear position on the value of cloning of all sorts. The question of how we decide on such a controversial issue is at the heart of the humanities, and some observers have pointed to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s famous novel Fran- kenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus, which in some ways enacts the conflict among these values. These examples demonstrate that the discoveries of scientists often have tre- mendous impact on the values of society. Yet some scientists have declared that they merely make the discoveries and that others—presumably politicians—must decide how the discoveries are to be used. It is this last statement that brings us closest to the importance of the humanities. If many scientists believe they cannot judge how their discoveries are to be used, then we must try to under- stand why they give that responsibility to others. This is not to say that scientists uniformly turn such decisions over to others, for many of them are humanists as well as scientists. But the fact remains that many governments have made use of great scientific achievements without pausing to ask the “achievers” if they approved of the way their discoveries were being used. The questions are, Who decides how to use such discoveries? On what grounds should their judgments be based? Studying the behavior of neutrinos or string theory will not help us get closer to the answer. Such study is not related to the nature of humankind but to the nature of nature. What we need is a study that will get us closer to ourselves. It should be a study that explores the reaches of human feeling in relation to values—not only our own individual feelings and values but also the feelings and values of others. We need a study that will increase our sensitivity to ourselves, others, and the values in our world. To be sensitive is to perceive with insight. To be sensitive is also to feel and believe that things make a difference. Furthermore, jac16871_ch01_001-016.indd 2 12/11/17 11:19 AM
THE HUMANITIES: AN INTRODUCTION
it involves an awareness of those aspects of values that cannot be measured by objective standards. To be sensitive is to respect the humanities, because, among other reasons, they help develop our sensitivity to values, to what is important to us as individuals. There are numerous ways to approach the humanities. The way we have chosen here is the way of the arts. One of the contentions of this book is that values are clar- ified in enduring ways in the arts. Human beings have had the impulse to express their values since the earliest times. Ancient tools recovered from the most recent Ice Age, for example, have features designed to express an affection for beauty as well as to provide utility. The concept of progress in the arts is problematic. Who is to say whether the cave paintings (Figure 1-1) of 30,000 years ago that were discovered in present-day France are less excellent than the work of Picasso (Figure 1-4)? Cave paintings were probably not made as works of art to be contemplated. Getting to them in the caves is almost always difficult, and they are very hard to see. They seem to have been made for a practical purpose, such as improving the prospects for the hunt. Yet the work reveals something about the power, grace, and beauty of all the animals it portrayed. These cave paintings function now as works of art. From the beginning, our species instinctively had an interest in making revealing forms. Among the numerous ways to approach the humanities, we have chosen the way of the arts because, as we shall try to elucidate, the arts clarify or reveal values. As we deepen our understanding of the arts, we necessarily deepen our understanding of values. We will study our experience with works of art as well as the values others FIGURE 1-1 Cave painting from Chauvet Caves, France. Discovered in 1994, the Chauvet Caves have yielded some of the most astonishing examples of prehistoric art the world has seen. These aurochs may have lived as many as 35,000 years ago, while the painting itself seems as modern as a contemporary work. ©Javier Trueba/MSF/Science Source jac16871_ch01_001-016.indd 3 12/11/17 11:19 AM
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associate with them, and in this process we will also educate ourselves about our own values. Because a value is something that matters, engagement with art—the illumina- tion of values—enriches the quality of our lives significantly. Moreover, the subject matter of art—what it is about—is not limited to the beautiful and the pleasant, the bright sides of life. Art may also include and help us understand the dark sides—the ugly, the painful, and the tragic. And when it does and when we get it, we are better able to come to grips with those dark sides of life. Art brings us into direct communication with others. As Carlos Fuentes wrote in The Buried Mirror, “People and their cultures perish in isolation, but they are born or reborn in contact with other men and women of another culture, another creed, another race. If we do not recognize our humanity in others, we shall not recognize it in ourselves.” Art reveals the essence of our existence. arT, CommerCe, and TasTe When the great paintings of the Italian Renaissance were being made, their ulti- mate value hinged on how good they were, how fully they expressed the values— usually religious but sometimes political—that the culture expected. Michelangelo’s great, heroic-sized statue of David in Florence was admired for its representation of the values of self-government by the small city-state as well as for its simple beauty of proportion. No dollar figure was attached to the great works of this pe- riod—except for the price paid to the artists. Once these works were in place, no one expressed admiration for them because they would cost a great deal in the marketplace. Today the art world has changed profoundly and is sometimes thought to be art of an essentially commercial enterprise. Great paintings today change hands for tens of millions of dollars. Moreover, the taste of the public shifts constantly. Mov- ies, for example, survive or fail on the basis of the number of people they appeal to. Therefore, a film is often thought good only if it makes money. As a result, film producers make every effort to cash in on current popular tastes, often by making sequels until the public’s taste changes—for example, the Batman series (1989 to 2017). The Star Wars series (1977 to 2019 [projected]) cashed in on the needs of science-fiction fans whose taste in films is excited by the futuristic details and the narrative of danger and excitement of space travel. These are good films despite the emphasis on commercial success. But in some ways they are also limited by the demands of the marketplace. Our study of the humanities emphasizes that commercial success is not the most important guide to excellence in the arts. The long-term success of works of art depends on their ability to interpret human experience at a level of complex- ity that warrants examination and reexamination. Many commercially successful works give us what we think we want rather than what we really need with refer- ence to insight and understanding. By satisfying us in an immediate and superfi- cial way, commercial art can dull us to the possibilities of complex, more deeply satisfying art. Everyone has limitations as a perceiver of art. Sometimes we assume that we have developed our taste and that any effort to change it is bad form. The saying “Matters jac16871_ch01_001-016.indd 4 12/11/17 11:19 AM
THE HUMANITIES: AN INTRODUCTION
of taste are not disputable” can be credited with making many of us feel righteous about our own taste. What the saying means is that there is no accounting for what people like in the arts, for beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Thus, there is no use in trying to educate anyone about the arts. Obviously we disagree. We believe that all of us can and should be educated about the arts and should learn to respond to as wide a variety of the arts as possible: from jazz to string quartets, from Charlie Chaplin to Steven Spielberg, from Lewis Carroll to T. S. Eliot, from folk art to Picasso. Most of us defend our taste because anyone who challenges it challenges our deep feelings. Anyone who tries to change our responses to art is really trying to get inside our minds. If we fail to understand its purpose, this kind of persuasion naturally arouses resistance. For us, the study of the arts penetrates beyond facts to the values that evoke our feelings—the way a succession of Eric Clapton’s guitar chords playing the blues can be electrifying, or the way song lyrics can give us a chill. In other words, we want to go beyond the facts about a work of art and get to the values revealed in the work. How many times have we found ourselves liking something that, months or years before, we could not stand? And how often do we find ourselves now disliking what we previously judged a masterpiece? Generally we can say the work of art remains the same. It is we who change. We learn to recognize the values illuminated in such works as well as to understand the ways they are expressed. Such development is the meaning of “education” in the sense in which we have been using the term. responses To arT Our responses to art usually involve processes so complex that they can never be fully tracked down or analyzed. At first they can only be hinted at when we talk about them. However, further education in the arts permits us to observe more closely and thereby respond more intensely to the content of the work. This is true, we believe, even with “easy” art, such as exceptionally beautiful works—for exam- ple, those by Giorgione (Figure 2-9), Cézanne (Figure 2-4), and O’Keeffe (Figure 4-12). Such gorgeous works generally are responded to with immediate satisfac- tion. What more needs to be done? If art were only of the beautiful, textbooks such as this would never find many users. But we think more needs to be done, even with the beautiful. We will begin, however, with three works that obviously are not beautiful. The Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros’s Echo of a Scream (Figure 1-2) is a highly emotional painting, in the sense that the work seems to demand a strong emotional response. What we see is the huge head of a baby crying and, then, as if issuing from its own mouth, the baby himself. What kinds of emotions do you find stirring in yourself as you look at this painting? What kinds of emotions do you feel are expressed in the painting? Your own emotional responses—such as shock; pity for the child; irritation at a destructive, mechanical society; or any other nameable emotion—do not sum up the painting. However, they are an important starting point, since Siqueiros paints in such a way as to evoke emotion, and our understanding of the painting increases as we examine the means by which this evocation is achieved. jac16871_ch01_001-016.indd 5 12/11/17 11:19 AM
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FIGURE 1-2 David Alfaro Siqueiros, Mexican, 1896–1974, Echo of a Scream. 1937. Enamel on wood, 48 × 36 inches (121.9 × 91.4 cm). Gift of Edward M. M. Warburg. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Siqueiros, a famous Mexican muralist, fought during the Mexican Revolution and possessed a powerful political sensibility, much of which found its way into his art. He painted some of his works in prison, held there for his political convictions. In the 1930s he centered his attention on the Spanish Civil War, represented here. ©2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOMAAP, Mexico City. Photo: ©The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY PERCEPTION KEY Echo of a Scream 1. What are the important distortions in the painting? 2. What effect does the distortion of the baby’s head have on you? 3. Why is the scream described as an echo? 4. What are the objects on the ground around the baby? How do they relate to the baby? 5. How does the red cloth on the baby intensify your emotional response to the painting? jac16871_ch01_001-016.indd 6 12/11/17 11:19 AM
THE HUMANITIES: AN INTRODUCTION
Study another work, very close in temperament to Siqueiros’s painting: The Eternal City by the American painter Peter Blume (Figure 1-3). After attending carefully to the kinds of responses awakened by The Eternal City, take note of some background infor- mation about the painting that you may not know. The year of this painting is the same as that of Echo of a Scream: 1937. The Eternal City is a name reserved for only one city in the world—Rome. In 1937 the world was on the verge of world war: Fascists were in power in Italy and the Nazis in Germany. In the center of the painting is the Roman Forum, close to where Julius Caesar, the alleged tyrant, was murdered by Brutus. But here we see fascist Blackshirts, the modern tyrants, beating people. In a niche at the left is a figure of Christ, and beneath him (hard to see) is a crippled beggar woman. Near her are ruins of Roman statuary. The enlarged and distorted head, wriggling out like a jack-in-the-box, is that of Mussolini, the man who invented fascism and the Black- shirts. Study the painting closely again. Has your response to the painting changed? FIGURE 1-3 Peter Blume, 1906–1992, The Eternal City. 1934–1937. Dated on painting 1937. Oil on composition board, 34 × 47⅞ inches. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. Born in Russia, Blume came to America when he was six. His paintings are marked by a strong interest in what is now known as magic realism, interleaving time and place and the dead and the living in an emotional space that confronts the viewer as a challenge. He condemned the tyrant dictators of the first half of the twentieth century. Art ©The Education Alliance, Inc./Estate of Peter Blume/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photo: ©The Museum of Modern Art/ Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY PERCEPTION KEY Siqueiros and Blume 1. What common ingredients do you find in the Blume and Siqueiros paintings? 2. Is your reaction to the Blume similar to or distinct from your reaction to the Siqueiros? 3. Is the effect of the distortions similar or different? 4. How are colors used in each painting? Are the colors those of the natural world, or do they suggest an artificial environment? Are they distorted for effect? 5. With reference to the objects and events represented in each painting, do you think the paintings are comparable? If so, in what ways? 6. With the Blume, are there any natural objects in the painting that suggest the vitality of the Eternal City? 7. What political values are revealed in these two paintings? jac16871_ch01_001-016.indd 7 12/11/17 11:19 AM
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Before going on to the next painting, which is quite different in character, we will make some observations about what we have said, however briefly, about the Blume. With added knowledge about its cultural and political implications—what we shall call the background of the painting—your responses to The Eternal City may have changed. Ideally they should have become more focused, intense, and certain. Why? The painting is surely the same physical object you looked at originally. Noth- ing has changed in that object. Therefore, something has changed because some- thing has been added to you, information that the general viewer of the painting in 1937 would have known and would have responded to more emotionally than viewers do now. Consider how a Fascist, on the one hand, or an Italian humanist and lover of Roman culture, on the other hand, would have reacted to this painting in 1937. A full experience of this painting is not unidimensional but multidimensional. Moreover, “knowledge about” a work of art can lead to “knowledge of ” the work of art, which implies a richer experience. This is important as a basic principle, since it means that we can be educated about what is in a work of art, such as its shapes, objects, and structure, as well as what is external to a work, such as its political references. It means we can learn to respond more completely. It also means that artists such as Blume sometimes produce works that demand background informa- tion if we are to appreciate them fully. This is particularly true of art that refers to historical circumstances and personages. Sometimes we may find ourselves unable to respond successfully to a work of art because we lack the background knowledge the artist presupposes. Picasso’s Guernica (Figure 1-4), one of the most famous paintings of the twentieth century, is also dated 1937. Its title comes from the name of an old Spanish town that was bombed during the Spanish Civil War—the first aerial bombing of noncom- batant civilians in modern warfare. Examine this painting carefully. FIGURE 1-4 Pablo Picasso, Guernica. 1937. Oil on canvas, 11 feet 6 inches × 25 feet 8 inches. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain. Ordinarily Picasso was not a political painter. During World War II he was a citizen of Spain, a neutral country. But the Spanish Civil War excited him to create one of the world’s greatest modern paintings, a record of the German bombing of a small Spanish town, Guernica. When a Nazi officer saw the painting he said to Picasso, “Did you do this?” Picasso answered scornfully, “No, you did.” ©2017 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: ©Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY jac16871_ch01_001-016.indd 8 12/11/17 11:19 AM PERCEPTION KEY Guernica 1. Distortion is powerfully evident in this painting. How does its function differ from that of the distortion in Blume’s The Eternal City or Siqueiros’s Echo of a Scream? 2. What are the most prominent objects in the painting? What seems to be the rela- tionship of the animals to the humans? 3. The figures in the painting are organized by underlying geometric forms. What are they and how do they focus your attention? Is the formal organization strong or weak?