![]() ![]() Now painting could take off on its own–including, if it wanted, creating images free of representation. I’d tell him that when photography appeared, painting was no longer required to represent reality. ![]() I’d begin by showing Mozart a photograph. He ordained, in other words, the mass murder of his own people, most of them women and children because the men were off fighting in the civil war. There are so many issues at play in that soul-searing painting, done soon after the atrocity that inspired it: the fire-bombing of a Basque village by Nazi warplanes in support of General Francisco Franco. I wasn’t sure he could ever get his sensibility around it. Talking to Mozart about Guernica was a dicier business. After all, he loved gypsy music and was fascinated the time he heard an American girl playing ragtime on banjo at a party. I felt sure he would catch on and like it. A while back I spent some time imagining playing Louis Armstrong recordings for Brahms. I often speak to my biographical subjects while I’m writing about them. Recently in Madrid I stood for a while in front of Picasso’s Guernica, trying to explain it to Mozart. ![]()
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