The Guernica in the News

There is a small not about the "Guernica" at Guardian Unlimited today:

Guernica: The Biography of a 20th-Century Icon, by Gijs van Hensbergen (Bloomsbury, £8.99)

In early 1937 Picasso agreed to paint something for the Spanish Republican pavilion at the forthcoming Paris Exposition. He came up with a few doodles, but was otherwise uninspired. Then, on April 26, 60 Italian and German planes bombed the Basque town of Gernika in wave after wave until there was nothing left. Picasso leapt into action, covering almost 30 square metres of canvas in just under six weeks. "Painting is not done to decorate apartments," he growled. "It's an instrument of war for attack and defence against the enemy." In this excellent study, Van Hensbergen argues that Guernica sounded the death knell of European art, especially after it was shipped to Moma in New York and inspired such people as De Kooning and Pollock. He also points out that "Guernica has become synonymous with indiscriminate slaughter in whatever corner of the world such tragedy takes place." There's a tapestry of Guernica at the United Nations, though oddly enough it was covered up when the Americans arrived to argue the case for invading Iraq. The official reason was that Guernica was "confusing the viewer" on the TV news.

IP

It is interesting that the author refers to the episode in which the "Guernica" was hidden from the public eye during the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, when Powell was forced to lie about WMD's that where never there.

Why?

Because I said it a couple of years ago, right here at Ingeleraz.

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