if anything is going to move me to watch the clone wars it's finding out there's a goddamn star wars version of picasso's gernika painting. i am going to lose my mind. what the fuck could this possibly mean in the context of star wars
like look at this thing. what the fuck is this supposed to mean
this is based on a picasso painting called guernica:
and i am absolutely obsessed with what symbols they chose to keep
i was asked by @phoenixyfriend to reblog it with my tag commentary, I'll clean it up but it's the same format
To clarify, this shot wasn't just in the clone wars (2008) (I looked this up as well) it was also in Rebels, 2014, where I noticed it in Thrawn's office, where he was analyzing the Mandalorian people. I was wrong, it was in Pre Vizsla's home as well.
With that said, I think it represents the sacking of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant and the taking of the darksaber from the Jedi Archives, and I have a few reasons for that.
- The skyline resembles that of that of Coruscant from the Jedi temple
- The woman in the front has a lightsaber that has fallen from her hands at the mandalorians feet.
- Coruscant has the amount of moons required for this sort of depiction, Mandalore only has two. (Coruscant has four total, and I can see three in the piece, the two in the front, and then one more further back, next to the tip of what I presume is the darksaber.
- The woman with the blaster isn't depicted as another mandalorian, she's unarmored, and given the period this was made at it could very well be that she's meant to represent the republic, in-universe, working in tandem with the Jedi.
The piece is depicted quite clearly as a moment of triumph for the Mandalorian at the center of the piece, he's domineering and above the fray, with that halo around him. On a meta level of the piece (Guernica) He'd also be the fire consuming the buildings and the women in the painting, as well as the tangle of bodies in the middle, the bull and the horse and the sword and the fire, consuming Coruscant in victory.
The attack on Coruscant happened during the fall of the Old Republic, the Mandalorians were at war with the planet, and as Pre Vizsla explains it, this war allowed a few members of House Vizsla to steal the darksaber from the jedi archives. It was in Thrawn's office because the man studies his subjects through the lens of art, what does the art say about the people, etc.
If we take it as the sacking of coruscant and specifically the jedi temple perhaps there's a level of awareness by the artist (in universe) that they (the mandalorians) attacked Tarre's peopleβ more than likely archivists, padawans, and temple employees, while there was a war going on. It's a less than honorable battle for a supposed holy goal that destroyed many, many people β the jedi and mandos ultimately among them.
And ofc using the real context of the paintingβ we know it was not an honorable battle, it was bombing and using the guns in the aircrafts to terrorize a city full of mostly women children on a market day, during a civil war when there wouldn't be soldiers around to do anything or help anyone there. And they specifically targeted that city, as it was a cultural heritage site to basque country, important to that resistance to Spanish nationalism/fascism.
And, referring back to Thrawn, knowing the empires ultimate plans for mandalore at that time in the story (rebels taking place shortly before the events of ANH).... βtotal warfareβ is commonly comes up and is depicted in irl through events like depicted in Guernica; so from a meta perspective it may have been chosen to be brought back up not only to discuss the Darksaber, but also to symbolize what was about to be depicted in the mandalorian s1 which was to my knowledge being developed around the same time as rebels Mandalore episodes in real life. (Rebels, Trials of the darksaber came out in 2017, Mandalorian S1 in 2019.)
I believe the location in the painting could be Coruscant, see those three moons (Coruscant has four).
Correct me of Iβm wrong, but I thought the Sacking of Coruscant happened in 3653 BBY, while Tarre Vizsla (the creator of the Darksabre) was inducted to the Jedi Order around 1050? I see these two events conflated often enough though, and Tarre Vizslaβs Wookieepedia page also mentions Sacking of the Jedi Temple sometime before 1032 BBY. So it seems to me that there have been two different sacks.
But yeah, I think this could be either the Sacking of Coruscant, which depending on the artist and what they wished to convey, could either glorify war (in line with the Mandalorian Neo-Crusaders who did the sacking), or it could condemn the senseless destruction of war, represented by the Neo-Crusaders and their worship of war itself (in line with the modern New Mandalorian thinking).
Or this could represent the Sacking of the Jedi Temple and stealing the Darksabre, which would make sense if it hung in some Vizla property, as they see the artifact as a symbol of their righteous rule.
Those Komβrk class fighters in the background would seem to suggest the latter; but they could be anachronistic as well if the painting itself was made later.
Or alternatively, it could represent Mandalore Tarre Vizsla and some unknown battle with the Jedi or more likely the Sith?
okay i tried to write it in the tags but it got too messy and long. HI I STUDY ART HISTORY AND CULTURAL HERITAGE and i have an idea to interpret it but I'm not familiar with mando lore so i need someone to like review it lol
cubism aims (between many things + I'm generalizing because there are obv different phases and interpretations of it by diff artists) to show an object through different times. you can never see a "full" chair - you're always gonna see one side of it. you have to walk around it or move it around to see the entirety of the chair. cubists (or at least some of them) make you see all sides of the chair in one moment. it's a "distortion" of space and time. (obv it's a lot more than this and much more complex but this is what i wanna highlight for my interpretation)
so. cubism in star wars obv didn't arise in the context of 20th century avantguarde. if cubism is the style developed by their culture, maybe this way of dealing with the representation of time depends on how the mandalorians understand and narrate time. (again I'm not familiar with mando lore so tell me if it makes 0 sense) they could, for example, see time as something rather still, instead of moving on a line or a circle like we do: they could believe that in every moment there is everything that there will be and that already has been - everything that is present now was present back then and will be present in the future. in this context that sees "time as a capsule" the sacking represented is not one specific sacking, and debating on which sacking it was would be futile. what's more artistically interesting would be what "core truth" do mandos see and choose to represent on wall that the event stands for. it's more interesting to see what it says about how mandalorians see themselves.
(also just. fyi, this idea of trying to figure out what specifically a painting or an art in general is representing is an idea that is deeply rooted into western's understanding of art - the idea of copying and representing reality, in this sense, is not common in places where the greeks' understanding of art didn't arrive)
in the case of this painting, the center is taken by a giant mandalorian towering even higher than the biggest ecumenopolis in the galaxy, towering over defeated enemies that stand for some of the biggest institutions of their time (jedi and republic). this speaks tons on how mandalorians see themselves - they're literally the biggest in the galaxy, the strongest, the best, the most powerful and fearful. it's interesting though that there isn't a bunch of mandalorians in group that tower over everything but one big mando. this showcases of how tight their sense of community and identity are. they represent themselves as one. they're so connected with each other that they have no problem in representing themselves as just one individual. maybe, but it's a stretch, it's them acting as one big individual that made them so bigger than everyone and everything else.
on the topic of halos and christian imagery, i'd like to point out that in some art history spaces it's believed that halos are an evolution of some tactics to distinguish people (specifically emperors) in big and messy roman narrative reliefs like Trajan's triumphal column or Marcus Aurelius's: they're so full of people it's hard to distinguish the scenes and characters. (I'll put some images to make it clearer)
this was the average complexity of a scene. these columns are like 30 meters high. it'd be impossible to distinguish the emperor from a soldier (even with the original colors) at such distance. so they decided that the emperor would be isolated from the rest of the people, who were "pressed together" - he'd be on the foreground with no one behind him (because if there was, their head would pop out from behind his shoulders) and no one pressed on his sides (or just their successor or someone that needed to be "praised" on the side). this left a sort of void around the emperor, especially the head. as this need to distinguish the emperor from the rest grew (with time, roman emperors became more and more autocratic and at some point they introduced the divine right to reign) this void started to be emphasized with colors like gold (used often for divine or important beings). when christians started to make their art, they "copy-pasted" many of this pagan systems to resematicize them (it must've had a big effect back then) and then, gradually, with time, we started to associate these symbols with christianity. MAYBE mandalorians had a similar story (or have similar story)
like. maybe they have clan or family based art that uses these tactics to highlight the leader that guides the clan (if i remember correctly, sabine's mom was the leader of her clan and pre visla was a sort of head figure for death watch, so, i figured mandos do have quite the sense of hierarchy that they'd highlight in art) and this got translated into identitary paintings to highlight their greatness even further.
TUMBLR POSTED IT WITHOUT THE LAST TWO PARAGRAPHS so I'll add them here.
i wanted to add, also, that it's possible that the painting was re-painted multiple times. it's implied in canon by how sabine talks to thrawn that she doesn't agree with his approach to art (very western, art gets preserved in a museum and analyzed from "afar", while sabine seemed to condemn it because she views art as having a more active role, and interacts with it more freely). this way, anachronisms and contradictions could be explained: for example, the signature vehicles could've been added much later than the original painting because the older fighters weren't as easily recognized or understood by the contemporary mandos for what they were and what they meant, or because they were used in the last sacking so it made sense to have them to make the picture more easy to read. OR, another example, the strange figures of the dying people and the pietΓ reference in particular could've been an anti-war addiction of the "pacifist mandalorians", while the big scary mando was painted in their warrior times.
in the other paragraph that got deleted, i explained why i think that it must've probably been the traditional artstyle. the wookiepedia page saying that "mandalorian cubism came back around the clone wars era". it could be cool to interpret it as the sign of how the mandalorians of that era were switching back to their warrior roots (death watch etc) while at the same time, by being the traditional artstyle, it's also entirely normal and possible that satine got herself a portrait in that style without viewing it as the artstyle of the violent side of mandalore she didn't like. she just thought it's tradition. what I'd be most interested in, though, is when and why did that "art nouveau/art deco" style of architecture (like. main hall of the palace) and style in general (satine's iconic dresses) took off. is that their version of avantguardism/modern art?
OH BTW I LOVE THAT META INTERPRETATION @nightfall-1409 about it being used to foreshadow the empire's plan. it's genius really, it makes total sense (i mean i love every take on this reblog chain but i would've never thought about that so it's cool to know!!)
I'm obsessed with this painting for years tbh
they will never convince me to take fuck out of my star wars fics. i'm fine with throwing in some kark and kriff and osik and shab whatever that's all well and good but they will have to pry the real life swear fuck from my cold dead hands. kark simply does not hit the same and canon can eat dirt when i've decided it's time for commander cody to say "what the fuck are you talking about sir" or some shit equivalent
You can pry fuck and shit and ass and god damn it out of my cold dead hands
