The Lady and the Lamp

There was always something odd about the lady with the lamp, an oil lamp in fact... It's almost as if she didn't belong in this picture. She seems to appear out of nowhere, from the window, from beyond, far beyond. She's shocked of course... she's just this very moment seen the melee that is occuring here. She brings light to shine onto the situation and it is this light that the painting draws its light from...not the electric light bulb that we see with it's jagged rays apparently casting its light... No, the light from which this picture is lit, comes from the oild lamp that this lady brings into the scene from somewhere beyond, far away from Guernica.

Statue of Liberty

The lady is none other than the Statue of Liberty. The facial similarity and the shoal hanging from her outstretched arm is further evidence that this is what this is. She holds her hand up in shock, her hand seems to resemble a star. Is that true? If it is, what is it trying to say? My guess is that it is a star (Picasso is quite capable of producing hands with life like rounded fingers). If the American flag has stars prominent in it, 50 in fact to represent each State, which it has, could this be one big star to represent the country as a whole perhaps? There are horizontal lines behind the starred hand too which would lend credence to this theory. So... the evidence, if true, does suggest that this figure is the Statue of Liberty.

But what is Picasso trying to say here? Why an oil lamp, why not the blazing 'fire of liberty?

American Non-Intervention

This is a reference to America's policy of non intervention in Spain's civil conflicts. Depsite one of the most fundamental principles of democracy, free elections, being disregarded and overthrown in a manner very much in the way of a totalitarian dictatorship, America maintained her policy to avoid getting involved. 

The oil lamp is a deliberate replacement for the blazing fire of liberty, because right there in Spain, a democratic state (or so one had thought), was not worth protecting. Liberty did not burn so bright in Spain. If America's Statue of Liberty that was erected to mark and represent democracy, freedom and all that comes with it and it's fire was a represnetation of the degree of that liberty, by comparison, in Spain. It was very much diminished... to the proportions perhaps of a small oil lamp!

This theory is quite possible. Paris, where Picasso lived at the time, had it's own miniature version of the Statue of Liberty. Picasso is likely to have seen this replica very often and it may have therefore woken the crass hypocrisy that this statue and the reverence placed upon it being as best, very selective and limited and at worst, an utter lie.