"No, painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy."
Interview with Simone Téry, 24 March 1945, The Oxford Dictionary of Thematic Quotations, 2000
"We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth."
Dore Ashton, Picasso on Art (1972)
"Every positive value has its price in negative terms... The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima."
Francoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso, (1964)
Pablo Picasso
Spanish 1881–1973, worked in France 1904–73
Weeping woman 1937
oil on canvas
55.0 x 46.0 cm
Purchased by donors of The Art Foundation of Victoria, with the assistance of the Jack and Genia Liberman Family, Founder Benefactor, 1986
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
© Pablo Picasso, 1937/Succession Pablo Picasso, Paris. Licensed by VISCOPY, Sydney, 2006
Introduction
This page is designed to show how a work of art, in this case Weeping Woman, 1937 by Pablo Picasso, can be used as a starting point for investigating the theme of war across selected domains, standards and dimensions at Levels 5 and 6.
Following initial discussion and analysis of the painting with students, click on a selected domain for suggested further questions and activities. The questions are based on the standards written for dimensions in the Thinking Processes domain.
The quotations by Picasso have been chosen to initiate student discussion on issues relating to art and war.
References
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