When Darkness Returns, Art Persists

A mural of Picasso’s Guernica in the Basque town of Gernica itself. (photo by Almudena Sanz Tabernero on Pixabay)

In the summer of 2023, I stood alone in a room at Madrid's Reina Sofia Museum, face to face with Picasso's Guernica. The massive canvas filled my vision - the screaming horse, the fallen warrior, the mother with her dead child, all in stark black, white, and gray. Years before, I had visited the Basque town of Guernica itself, seeing the ancient oak tree that survived the bombing, a silent witness to both horror and survival.

I left the Spanish capital the following day and took the train to the Basque Country to begin my month-long walk along the Camino de Santiago. The landscape outside my window reminded me of Hemingway's Spain. Ten years ago, his writing had first drawn me to Pamplona, where I sat in his favorite Café Iruña and visited the cathedral where Jake Barnes, his alter ego in "The Sun Also Rises," struggled to find peace in prayer. It was there I first encountered pilgrims heading to Santiago, not knowing then that I would later join their ranks.

Hemingway's connection to Spain runs deep through both art and darkness. He witnessed the Spanish Civil War that gave birth to Guernica and transformed that darkness into "For Whom the Bell Tolls," writing with the same spare beauty he used to describe the Pamplona streets I walked. Later on my Camino, I passed a monument marking where 300 Spaniards were executed—another reminder that this peaceful pilgrim path holds memories of both darkness and light.

“Starry Night” - Vincent van Gogh (Wikimedia Commons)

Art historians have documented how periods of social and political crisis often spark remarkable artistic breakthroughs. I've seen this pattern in many places. As a Dutchman, I feel a special connection to Van Gogh. I've stood in his tiny room at the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, looking out at the same night sky he transformed into "The Starry Night." Outside, I tried to capture a photo of the olive trees with the mountains behind them, just as he painted them. The painting itself I've seen many times at the MoMA in New York, but unlike my solitary moment with Guernica, I've only ever viewed Starry Night surrounded by crowds of tourists, phones raised high to capture their moment with the masterpiece. Still, in his deepest personal darkness, Van Gogh created works that radiate light.

The sound of light emerging from darkness takes me back to my childhood home, where my father's record player often filled our house with Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. Their music, born during the Harlem Renaissance, emerged from one of America's darkest periods of racism. Yet what they created wasn't just protest - it was pure joy, pure beauty, an assertion of life itself. As Martin Luther King Jr. would later say, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that." His words echo the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance artists who came before him, who knew that creating beauty was itself an act of resistance. Today, as we honor Dr. King's legacy, his message about finding light in darkness feels especially poignant. Like the jazz musicians who influenced him, he understood that the path through darkness isn't just about resistance - it's about creating something beautiful and lasting in its place.

I've witnessed these echoes of creativity in unexpected places. In 1990, I visited the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Standing there, I learned about Viktor Ullmann and others who created music and art until their final days. Their story connects to another Dutch voice: Anne Frank, who wrote in her diary, "I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn." She found beauty even in her hiding place, writing about the piece of blue sky she could see through the attic window.

Today, as darkness seems to gather again, I think about all these artists who turned their pain into beauty. In Ukraine, musicians play in bomb shelters. In Iran, women dance in protest. In Myanmar, poets write verses of resistance in between power outages. Creativity emerges not despite darkness but because of it - as witness, as protest, as hope.

Walking the Camino last summer, following ancient footsteps, I thought about how art connects us across time. Guernica speaks not just of one bombing, but of all human suffering and resistance. Van Gogh's starry night reminds us to look for beauty even in our darkest moments. The jazz that filled my childhood home still lifts spirits today.

This is what art does when darkness falls. It doesn't deny reality - it helps us face it. It reminds us that others have walked through dark times before us. It shows us how to find light, or when needed, how to create it ourselves.

Anne Frank wrote: "What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again." I've made several visits to the attic where she hid, standing in those same rooms where she wrote these words. She could see a chestnut tree from her hiding place - a connection to the living world outside. That tree died years ago, but its offspring now grow in places around the world. I found one in Paris, in a quiet corner near Centre Pompidou, a living reminder of hope's persistence. Perhaps this is why we need art now more than ever. Not to escape reality, but to face it. Not to forget darkness, but to learn how to create light within it. It is in this spirit that I write these words today. Like Anne Frank finding courage through her pen, I hope that by sharing these stories of art emerging from darkness, we might all find renewed strength for the days ahead.

This morning, I looked again at my photo of Guernica. In its stark grays, I see not just pain but also resistance. Not just darkness but the human need to witness, to create, to persist. In times like these, that might be our most important lesson from history: darkness returns, but so does art. And with it, always, hope.