London Times: Picasso's "Guernica" called to its spiritual home

[DeepModem Mom]

Guernica called to its spiritual home
By Graham Keeley in Barcelona
Picasso work may finally be destined for the region whose suffering it represents

http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,285407,00.jpg

GUERNICA, the masterpiece by Pablo Picasso that symbolises the brutality of war, may be exhibited in the Basque Country for the first time. A vote in the culture commission of the upper house of the Spanish parliament approved a motion to return the painting to the region.

Basque nationalists and the main conservative opposition Popular Party formed an unlikely alliance to ask the Socialist Government to approve at least a temporary exhibition of the famous work in the Basque Country.

After the recent declaration of a permanent ceasefire by Eta, the Basque separatist organisation, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Prime Minister, is likely to feel that a symbolic gesture would go a long way to healing old divisions between Madrid and the Basques....

***

The painting was inspired by the bombing in 1937 of the unarmed civilian population of the Basque town that gave it its name, by the German Condor Legion squadron that supported General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. The carpet bombing of the traditional Basque capital during a busy market day caused an estimated 1,650 deaths and destroyed the town....

***

In Spain, Guernica has come to symbolise democracy because Picasso refused to let his masterpiece return to his own country while Franco was in power....

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2116997,00.html

[SpiralHawk]

1. BushCo apparatchik Colin Powell had the UN turn Guernica to the wall

so he would not have to see it -- as he marched into the UN to present the BushCo-PNAC pack of lies that led directly to the Iraq invasion and occupation by BushCo War Profiteer interests.

If memory serves me well.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. SpiralHawk, I think I remember that, too. A sad day for our country. nt

[SpiralHawk]

4. Aha - that was an easy google

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0209-04.htm

Published on Sunday, February 9, 2003 by the Toronto Star

The Lessons of Guernica
'Profound symbolism' as U.N. hides Picasso's anti-war masterpiece for Colin Powell's call to arms
Bush's `game over' remark makes it definite: U.S. will attack

by William Walker

UNITED NATIONS—On the second floor of the United Nations building in Manhattan, just outside the Security Council entrance, hangs a seminal piece of 20th-century artwork that offers a graphic and chilling reminder of the horrors of war.


A copy of Picasso's Guernica serves as a mute rebuttal to a pair of pro-war demonstrators calling for U.S. action against Saddam Hussein outside United Nations' headquarters in New York on Wednesday. (Photo/Graham Morrison)

But as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell sat down last week to deliver an historic speech about why America must go to war with Iraq, Pablo Picasso's Guernica was concealed by a large blue drape.

To twist an old axiom, those who ignore the horrors of history — or cover them up — are doomed to repeat them.

"The game is over," President George W. Bush declared, just 24 hours after Powell's presentation failed to sway doubtful U.N. Security Council members.

"Saddam Hussein will be stopped."

From the night of his State of the Union speech on Jan. 28, Bush and his administration have been turning the screws tighter and tighter, applying intense pressure on the U.N. to issue a second resolution authorizing war against Iraq and also leaning heavily on friendly nations like Canada to agree to join the military effort without U.N. backing.

But it wasn't until last week that it finally became clear to the world: Bush will go to war.

(snip)

[tanyev]

6. I am horrified. If I heard that at the time, I had forgotten.

There is no detail too small to escape their attempts at manipulation. But it's not working so well anymore. The truth is seeping out in spite of all of their efforts.

[saigon68]

21. "L'Apres Midi D'Un Faune"

Now standing in front of "L'Apres Midi D'Un Faune" which shows a prisoner daubed in his own excrement in front of a prison guard] "According to the Geneva convention, prisoners of war should be treated with respect and fed and clothed and looked after to a reasonable standard. I'm shattered and surprised that so much violence goes on…I never thought that was the case - I think there is the odd moment when somebody behaves badly, but it's supposed to be controlled.

Where are the officers , if there are any officers? Actually, we now know that this is a strategy, isn't it, in the war against terrorism? But I just don't buy the idea that prisoners were stripped in the Second World War or had things like this happen to them. This is so crude isn't it? Look how pathetic it is to make a man stand in front of you smeared with his own excrement, what a stupid bloody thing to do and how diminishing for you. It's quite interesting that the Iraqi had a rather beautiful and graceful body and even in his humiliation is graceful and the American guard has got his big beer belly hanging over his belt, a pointy head, an awkward stance and looks really as though he doesn't know what he's doing except that he's got a large truncheon and a pair of gloves



Link: http://poetes.com/mallarme/faune.htm



"If it's organized violence like an army and it's going to justify its actions then it ought to behave really well, especially if it has absolutely overwhelming power - they don't need to use whips and boots when they've got Napalm, surely?" --- Gerald Laing

[DemoTex]

8. "Guernica" was draped because ...

On April 27th, 1937, unprecedented atrocities are perpetrated on behalf of Franco against the civilian population of a little Basque village in northern Spain. Chosen for bombing practice by Hitler's burgeoning war machine, the hamlet is pounded with high-explosive and incendiary bombs for over three hours. Townspeople are cut down as they run from the crumbling buildings. Guernica burns for three days. Sixteen hundred civilians are killed or wounded.

http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/guernica/gmain.html

On March 20, 2003 (66 years after Guernica), unprecedented atrocities are perpetrated on behalf of Bu$hco against the civilian population of the capital of Iraq, Baghdad. Colin Powell knew it was coming. He knew what he had to say to the UN that day was untrue. And he knew that Guernica is modern art's most powerful antiwar statement... created by the twentieth century's most well-known artist, Pablo Picasso. The mere draping of this work of art told me that we were in much deeper trouble with Bu$hco than we had ever imagined.


Picasso

[Coventina]

5. Yes, I remember that as well. One of my art history teachers passed the

article around the class after it happened.

Cowardly, gutless wonders.

[saigon68]

9. YES COWARD WAR CRIMINAL COLON BOWEL

Was stepping and fetching to his masters tune.

It was a PATHETIC DISPLAY by someone who is a total clone of the NEOCONS.

READ WAHT HARRY BELAFONTE SAYS ABOUT WAR HERO BOWEL.

lINK: http://www.blackcommentator.com/14_belafonte.html

HARRY BELAFONTE, ACTIVIST: There's an old saying in the days of slavery. There are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master. Colin Powell was permitted to come into the house of the master.

[librechik]

13. yes, but it was more about photos than Colin's tender feelings

No anti-product sentiment should be encouraged while the product is being rolled out.

[Coventina]

2. Somewhere Picasso is smiling about this.....

Good job, comrade. Your work continues to speak out against violence and oppression.

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. I have to wonder if there is an Iraqi artist out there, working on

'Fallujah'.

[saigon68]

10. hooded detainee art

ARTIST EXPRESSION: A sculpture by Abdel-Karim Khalil depicts a hooded detainee at Abu Ghraib.
NICHOLAS BLANFORD




But instead of retiring after 40 years of artistic success, Botero made a radical break from the subjects that had made his work so popular. His latest series of 50 drawings and paintings depicting the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, of all his large body of work, will probably have the most impact. Botero’s choice stands out all more starkly because it has hitherto been rare for any of today’s established artists to approach the subject.

THEN THERE IS THIS BEAUTY

[soothsayer]

11. I just saw the Da Da exhibit and was wondering the same thing.

You know some serious art is going to come out of that nightmare we've created.

[saigon68]

19. ONLY ONE OF THEM USES COLGATE 2004

ONLY ONE OF THEM USES COLGATE 2004

Oilpaint on canvas, 32” x 36”

© Gerald Laing www.geraldlaing.com

What has happened to my American Starlets of the early 1960’s?

Evidently some of them have joined the US Army.

Here is one gesticulating triumphantly over the battered corpse of a dead Iraqi in Abu Ghraib Prison. She wears rubber gloves to protect her hands, but not from domestic dirt. She looks as if she might be an ad for toothpaste. We know the American dental fetish for perfect teeth. There is a marked difference between hers and those of the victim. The corpse was wrapped in what appears to be an Arab Airlines plastic bag.

I took the liberty of substituting the Colgate logo in commemoration of Bush’s immortal words at his first press conference with Blair. When asked what they could possibly have in common, he replied, “We both use Colgate”.

[saigon68]

20. LOOK MICKEY 2004

LOOK MICKEY 2004

Oilpaint on canvas, 36” x 32”

© Gerald Laing www.geraldlaing.com

This painting refers to Roy Lichtenstein’s first essay in cartoon-based art.

In his painting, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse are fishing. Donald Duck has accidentally hooked his own rear end and is excitedly tugging at his rod – hence the caption.

When the image of Lynndie England humiliating an Iraqi prisoner was published, America hooked its own …

I have treated the soldier and the prison as though they were an anodyne part of a Disney film; perhaps Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

The Iraqi is shown in the second-hand but subjective reality of half-tone.

[leftchick]

12. Well there is this....

it is on my desktop.

[saigon68]

18. MORE BOTERO

Picasso’s masterpiece “Guernica” has galvanized generations to the
horrors of war. Botero’s paintings will undoubtedly have the same affect.
His work shows in the plainest terms a world that has been knocked off its
axis by Washington’s bloodlust. This is what the world looks like when the
law has been jettisoned and men are subjected to the willfulness of
megalomaniacs. Torture is never extraneous; it reflects the very heart of a
regime. So it is with the Bush administration.

Botero’s paintings show us the violence that animates the Bush government
and portends an increasingly uncertain future for us all. They’re worth a
look.

[leftchick]

22. do you have a link?

I remember reading about this fellow well over a year ago and was very interested then poof, I could find nothing! Thank you for posting his art. That is quite something isn't it?

[saigon68]

23. YOU BET LC HERE IT IS

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=11066

BOTERO

"I, like everyone else, was shocked by the barbarity, especially because the United States is supposed to be this model of compassion," he said in an interview from his art studio in Paris.

Just Google his name for dozens more



HERE IS GERALD LAING ALSO

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cambridgeshire/features/2005/02/laing.shtml

[leftchick]

26. So he is showing in the US minus the Abu Ghraib paintings?

<snip>

Most of the 50 oils and sketches will be part of a broader exhibit of 170 paintings that opens June 16 in Rome. There are plans for the show to go to Germany later this year and then in 2006 to the United States. Botero said the Abu Ghraib paintings will not be included in the U.S. tour unless museums ask for them.

What museum will be brave enough to ask for them? I won't hold my breath. :(

Link to all of the paintings here. They are magnificent....

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20050413_2.htm

[saigon68]

27. They are excellent *****danger*** GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING

It would take a "Very Brave" gallery to ask for them.

These paintings might be destroyed or worse by the NEOCONS.

This one would be destroyed for sure

[Shakespeare]

24. Botero ROCKS. The Clintons hosted an exhibition of his sculptures...

...on the white house lawn back in 96-97 (part of a program through Hillary's office).

[saigon68]

25. Here is an example

[DoYouEverWonder]

14. I am glad I got to go do the tour of the UN last summer

It really is an amazing piece of art in person.

[DUHandle]

15. It’s a beautiful work.

[RaleighNCDUer]

16. Don't know that I'd call it 'beautiful'

but it is stunning and powerful.

I'd love to see the original. Get the full impact that you can never get from a print.

[itcfish]

17. Sorry, But the Guernica

Belongs to All of Spain as per the wishes of it painter Picasso. Picasso wanted the painting to be returned to SPAIN when democracy returned. Guernica belongs to all of Spain and the World. Is is an Anti War Statement.