Franco Kitsch

Painted in 1948 by Arturo Reque Meruvia for the Valley of the Fallen, it was rejected by someone in the Franco regime with good taste.  It is an interesting take on Baroque celebratory paintings, although the over the top portrayal of Franco as a knight in shining armor destroys the effect.  As a historical artifact it has interest, depicting all the factions in the Nationalist Forces:  the Carlist Requetes, the Falange militia, the moorish Regulares, the Spanish Foreign Legion, the Spanish Army, Navy and Air Force, the nurses, etc.  Above them all is Saint James Matamoros .  It bears some resemblance to Soviet Realism propaganda of the Stalin period.

It fails as celebratory art, but that form of art is tricky, usually resulting in pigeon stained forgotten statues in a generation or two.  For every Lincoln or Washington Memorial, we have endless examples of art of celebration that barely rises to the level of kitsch.  The passion of victors in a war is hard to freeze in art.  The Iwo Jima Memorial succeeds in this, standing out because a success in this area is so rare.  The statue of course is based on the famous photograph that freezed that moment of hard won triumph in time.  Lack of that type of immediacy perhaps gives us a key to the failure of celebratory art.