Framing Violence, Framing Victims: Picasso's Forgotten Painting of the Korean War

What is it about?

Picasso produced a large canvas, Massacre en Corée in early 1951 in response to reports of massacres taking place in the Korean War. Although, by then, he was probably the most famous painter of the twentieth century and his great work on the Spanish civil war, Guernica, enjoyed considerable renown, Picasso's Korean war painting was largely passed over at the time and has been forgotten, much as used to be the case of the Korean war itself. This article, using Judith Butler's insight into the effects of the frames that define an image, offers an explanation for the contemporary reading and the reception of Picasso's Massacre in Korea.

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