Letter by Jad Salman

6.Nov 2009
Dear all,
I hope that all of you are doing fine. As for myself, I am well and recovering from both a health problem, but also from a very long, even at times hard experience in Picasso's atelier.
Just for your information, I took off extra time from my courses at university, in order to work with the children for nearly two weeks. Boris asked me to join the group of adults working with the children on the 21st of October until the 4th of November.
I am writing to you this email after having finished the Kids' Guernica action in Picasso's atelier in Paris and after seeing the last email of Boris send to Hatto and to all of us via Takuya Kaneda .
Also I did not wish to enter this discussion i.e. exchange of emails between especially Boris and Hatto until I have seen the final result of the workshop.
As a young artist and as a believer / member of Kids' Guernica project and concept (I have done two murals with Palestinian children in Ramallah), and despite of all my efforts and time spend with the children to work with them in the atelier, I was not satisfied with the approach adopted by the organizers, mainly Boris (the artist coordinator) and Jean Marc (theatre director and graphic design teacher who was brought by Boris into the project to plan and to direct the action). Why? I felt that my hands were tied or blocked because I was merely asked to assist a process already decided by the two in advance. What kept me till the end in the process and silent towards the larger community of Kids' Guernica were the wonderful kids and their efforts to create a mural on the canvas which could contain their message.
My work in this process was in reality to help Boris and Jean-Marc to keep the children quiet. I am saying this after I saw the difference between what the children could paint by themselves (I saw children doing wonderful sketches in color after they had understood the full meaning of Picasso's Guernica and what Kids' Guernica stands for) and how their initial sketches were selected by Jean-Marc who then re-designed them before imposing them upon the canvas and this without colors. The children were asked by one of the adults opposed to the process as to why no colors were used but to have a mural only in black and white, and the answer he got was: "we don't know; our teacher Jean-Marc wanted it to be like Picasso's Guernica."
To understand the full process the sketches of the children were scanned and then by use of the computer so much redesigned that the original life of the lines disappeared. By simplifying them, the aim of Jean-Marc was to obtain 'clean' images. They were then printed onto paper to cover the entire canvas. The outlines of the three main images were traced upon the canvas as the biggest three objects of the mural. The children were not involved at all in the process of selection of images and how they were redesigned. Anybody can see that the lines were no longer that of a child's hand. (I asked Jean-Marc why these three images were selected and I got no other answer except that he expressed his doubts and fear that the children alone would create only a mess and we stand to lose the canvas.)
There was a second process as to what produced the final outcome: for each child there was selected one spot on the canvas predetermined by Jean-Marc and Boris where the child should copy one of its own sketches upon the canvas. As a result the canvas is now filled with big and small images not created by one group of kids but by children forced to become individual actors. They were never allowed to collaborate in order to create the mural together as children.
Originally the conception was that the canvas should be divided into war and peace, but when I was working with some children on the left side, that is the war zone, I let them create exceptions. Instead of having just war related actions in the left side of the canvas, one of the children painted in black and white a peace or love ghost to catch the war ghost.
This exception was only possible after Hatto had told Boris and Jean-Marc but also written to all of you that in the true spirit of Kids' Guernica, it should be a painting done by children and not one imposed upon the children by adults. Especially after a personal talk between Boris and Hatto which took place in my presence early Monday morning, (Nov. 2) and this before the children had arrived (the canvas was only rolled out on the previous Friday (Oct.30) in order to put on it the three images), I felt a bit freer to work with the children as they wanted and this without being challenged by Boris and Jean-Marc.
However, even till the last day the children were controlled and told what to do, where to paint what, what was wrong, incomplete etc. and this is not my point of view. It was as well the opinion of those who were responsible for the children from the school they came from and who were with the children throughout these eleven days of hard workshops. They were shocked by the behavior and the orders given by Boris and Jean-Marc to the children. This opinion prevailed even by the new persons who came for the last three days to be responsible on behalf of the school for the children i.e. bringing them and taking them home but also to make sure they behaved well as kids willing to contribute to the process and to respect the adults who were responsible for the Kids' Guernica project in Picasso's atelier.
Again, from my point of view as a young artist, the method adopted by Boris and Jean-Marc was not correct such as redrawing the three main objects of the canvas by using the computer for it killed the spirit of the kids' drawings and did not bring about clean art. I also disagree with imposing upon the children that they should not use colors (except for the rainbow added in the final end).
Instead there was followed a wrong model of Picasso's Guernica (there was a poster of Picasso's Guernica hanging in the atelier and Jean-Marc compared the process of the work on the canvas with what was portrayed there even when a matter of the grey scale of color which he compared with the one on an old poster printed in 1953). It is also not good to stuff children with all kinds of theory e.g. Jean-Marc talking for two and a half hours to the children every day and the children having to listen to what he thinks about art and how to do a painting. Just for the sake of clarity in information, of the eleven days spend with the children, they had worked on the canvas itself for two days while the rest was taken up by these talks and theory and to do more sketches and more sketches. As a result some kids did not come during the final days which were the real days of action on the canvas because they were fed up of talks and just doing still more sketches either on paper or in little booklets provided by Boris.
In short, the final outcome for everyone to see does not justice to what these wonderful children wanted to do!!!
Again I am writing to you this email not to challenge anyone or to make the problem bigger. However, there is a problem in need to be fixed. We need to be clear what is Kids' Guernica about and what should be our behavior towards all children we wish to involve, in order to create the canvases of Kids' Guernica.
Here I want to write something to Boris directly. Yes, you have attempted to do something and hopefully together we learn out of this experience in Picasso's atelier.
Above all I feel to have made twenty new friends despite all difficulties. These children were simply marvelous.
Believe me, since I come from Palestine, most important is that we make a child really smile and believe in life.
Peace and love for all.
Jad Salman
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www.jadsalman.ps

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Letter by Jad Salman