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daphneblitheI LOVE when fic uses fine art, and so many Stucky authors do -– most famously, of course, Alex (Bettenoire). I’m a shameless art history geek so I’m absolutely joining that fandom party, and wanted to write about paintings I draw on, and why I love that fandom uses such artifacts. Stucky fandom has such phenomenal historical weight, and I adore feeling that verisimilitude, that wider network of very real historical cultural production -- within which our own dreams can play out.
Steve would have known Picasso’s astonishing Guernica: MOMA acquired it in 1939 (their original press release is here.) In my new fic I make Steve’s encounter with that painting a transformative experience, one that consolidates his determination to go to war. That’s a slightly problematic move, admittedly, because if anything, the painting has become an iconic image of anti-war movements – but I think (hope) my move fits the paradox of Steve Rogers, belligerent anti-bullier, warrior-for-peace.
Picasso’s massive mural (7.7 m by 3.3 m!) was a response to Nazi bombing the town of Guernica. The town had no military significance, no defences. In April 1937 the Luftwaffe used the town to experiment with aerial ‘total war’, and destroyed the town in over two hours of continuous aerial bombardment. It was engineered slaughter.
It is said that after the occupation of Paris, one of Hitler’s agents visited Picasso’s studio and saw a sketch of Guernica. Indicating the picture, he asked Picasso, “Did you do this?”
Picasso replied, “No. You did.”
"Most visitors look at the mural and flinch, can look only briefly and then have to move away. Voices are hushed. It’s as if the painting is somehow a cenotaph, a grave, an act of remembering a cruelty so profound that remembering it properly is impossible. All that can be represented are fragments, pieces. Jagged bodies. Huddled figures.
A woman, falling.
Steve stands there for a long time. People come and go around him, but he’s compelled. It’s like the cruelties of the nightmare forest, but made explicit across human bodies. As he looks at the figures coiled in terror at the base of the picture, Steve realizes distantly that nothing is going to keep him from fighting this. He’ll fight it with everything he has.
Somehow, he’s getting to Europe."
(Love Among the Ruins, Stucky Sleeping Beauty fusion, historical psychiatry. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16929495)
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Date: 2019-01-10 11:54 pm (UTC)I think my fave re:art history is probably Steve the Artist in the 4 minute window series
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Date: 2019-01-11 12:15 am (UTC)And Spitandvinegar's Aint No grave, WHY WHY hasn't every artist in fandom painted the art that Steve paints? (Actualyl maybe you have??? :) )
if I could paint I would so paint the pre-Raphaelite one of Natasha and the red rose in garden, so so perfetc. Saint Rita. patron of Impossible Causes.
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Date: 2019-01-20 02:18 am (UTC)BECAUSE IT'S HARD. THAT'S WHY. The art described in ANG is stuff that I'm like, "yes, I can picture how beautiful it is in my head, but I'm not Steve, I can't art that" Or, even if I could -- it'd take me a full month and that's a pretty big time commitment for an unsolicited illustration for a fanfic...
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