Dated 18 January 1951, Picasso painted the 〈Massacre in Korea〉 during the critical time of the Korean War. Unlike his 〈Guemica〉 of 1937, Picasso’s this piece shows all the signs of rapid productions to record a particular event with artist’s anxiety against the War. Like his 〈Guemica〉, it was a modem history painting on the traditional theme of the slaughter of the innocents by military invaders. The ‘slaughter’ in the form of mechanical violence of the robotic executioners symbolize the depersonalized agents of war and imperialism rather than being recognizable depictions of particular soldiers. It’s the title that connects this image to violence in Korea and to US participation.
When 〈Massacre in Korea〉 was exhibited in the May Salon of 1951 it was perceived in Franch Communist Party and the USA as a subversive painting. The issues of political engagement, social realism and comprehensibllity in France and the USA were controversially raised about it’s deliberate sense of ‘propaganda’. Modernists, then and since, however attacked the painting as an ‘aesthetic failure’ with their artistic and political reasons which was insisted on the slogan of ‘Art for the Art’s Sake’.
The art community in USA was taken aback by Picasso’s ‘new Guemica’ in which the aggressor against defenceless women and children was the American war machine. In the context of McCarthyite fears, the stereotypical view of Picasso took a battering. He had been characterized as a depoliticized, unworldly genius whose understandable concern for peace had been exploited by the amoral and doctrinaire Communists.
Here was a dilemma existing always in our society between ideological and artistic values. American Cold War environment claimed that aesthetic value and politics were separate. Thus, Picasso was being political. But the liberal aesthete could counter, whatever moral and political impact the content might have, 〈Massacre in Korea〉 is an ‘unhappy picture’ . Could anyone with any critical integrity fail to admit that it is ‘inferior’ to Picasso’s 〈Guemica〉? If only it were a ‘better picture’ , it’s rhetoric of anti-imperialism wouldn’t sound so hollow.