"Powell without Picasso" Maureen Dowd
Roadside Artist
nobody heard me. Then again, the war mongers are not amenable to reason and
logic of ANY kind. Perhaps art does and end run around the wall against
trutht that they build around themselves, and that's why it must be covered.
Pagani
"Marilyn Welch" <mwel...@xxxislandnet.com> wrote in message
news:3E4178B0...@xxxislandnet.com...
> x-no-archive: yes
> Here's some more on raf's favourite painter - Picasso
>
> I'm thinking that the covering up of the tapestry based on Guernica
> is actually a testament to the intrinsic power of this work of art.
> Those who covered it up are actually afraid of it.
>
> Yo Picasso, you win again!
>
> ______________________________________________________
> Powell Without Picasso
>
> Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, February 5, 2003
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/05/opinion/05DOWD.html
>
> When Colin Powell goes to the United Nations today to make his case
> for war with Saddam, the U.N. plans to throw a blue cover over
> Picasso's antiwar masterpiece, "Guernica."
>
> Too much of a mixed message, diplomats say. As final preparations for
> the secretary's presentation were being made last night, a U.N.
> spokesman explained, "Tomorrow it will be covered and we will put the
> Security Council flags in front of it."
>
> Mr. Powell can't very well seduce the world into bombing Iraq
> surrounded on camera by shrieking and mutilated women, men, children,
> bulls and horses.
>
> Reporters and cameras will stake out the secretary of state at the
> entrance of the U.N. Security Council, where the tapestry reproduction
> of "Guernica," contributed by Nelson Rockefeller, hangs.
>
> The U.N. began covering the tapestry last week after getting nervous
> that Hans Blix's head would end up on TV next to a screaming horse
> head.
>
> (Maybe the U.N. was inspired by John Ashcroft's throwing a blue cover
> over the "Spirit of Justice" statue last year, after her naked marble
> breast hovered over his head during a televised terrorism briefing.)
>
> Nelson Rockefeller himself started the tradition of covering up art
> donated by Nelson Rockefeller when he sandblasted Diego Rivera's mural
> in the RCA Building in 1933 because it included a portrait of Lenin.
> (Rivera later took his revenge, reproducing the mural for display in
> Mexico City, but adding to it a portrait of John D. Rockefeller Jr.
> drinking a martini with a group of "painted ladies.")
>
> There has been too much sandblasting in Washington lately.
>
> After leading the charge for months that there were ties between Iraq
> and Al Qaeda, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld chastised the media
> yesterday for expecting dramatic, explicit evidence from Mr. Powell.
> "The fixation on a smoking gun is fascinating to me," he said
> impatiently, adding: "You all . . . have been watching `L.A. Law' or
> something too much."
>
> The administration's argument for war has shifted in a dizzying Cubist
> cascade over the last months. Last summer, Bush officials warned that
> Saddam was close to building nuclear bombs. Now, with intelligence on
> aluminum tubes, once deemed proof of an Iraqi nuclear program, in
> dispute, the administration's emphasis has tacked back to germ and
> chemical weapons. With no proof that Saddam has given weapons to
> terrorists, another once-crucial part of the case for going to war,
> Mr. Rumsfeld and others now frame their casus belli prospectively:
> that we must get rid of Saddam because he will soon become the gulf's
> leading weapons supplier to terrorists.
>
> Secretary Powell was huddling on the evidence in New York yesterday
> with the C.I.A. director, George Tenet. Mr. Tenet was there to make
> sure nothing too sensitive was revealed at the U.N., but mainly to
> lend credibility to Mr. Powell's brief, since there have been many
> reports that the intelligence agency has been skeptical about some of
> the Pentagon and White House claims on Iraq. It was Mr. Tenet who
> warned Congress in a letter last fall that there was only one
> circumstance in which the U.S. need worry about Iraq sharing weapons
> with terrorists: if Washington attacked Saddam.
>
> When Mr. Bush wanted to sway opinion on Iraq before his State of the
> Union speech last week, he invited columnists to the White House. But
> he invited only conservative columnists, who went from gushing about
> the president to gushing more about the president.
>
> The columnists did not use Mr. Bush's name, writing about him as "a
> senior administration official," even though the White House had
> announced the meeting in advance.
>
> They quoted "the official" about the president's determination on war.
> That's just silly.
>
> Calling in only like-minded journalists is like campaigning for a war
> only in the red states that Mr. Bush won in 2000, and not the blue
> states won by Al Gore.
>
> When France and Germany acted skeptical, Mr. Rumsfeld simply booted
> them out of modern Europe, creating a pro-Bush red part of the
> European map (led by Poland, Italy and Britain) and the left-behind
> blue of "old Europe."
>
> When the evidence is not black and white, the president must persuade
> everyone. There is no red and blue. There is just red, white and blue.
>
> --
> "Have you noticed that while Dubya is talking, Dick Cheney
> never takes a sip of water?"
>
> -- Robin Williams
> __________
> MW
>
keith o'connor (tinmangallery.com
heard both of us - now all three - than is apparent.
--
take care: Keith
The eye should not be lead where there is nothing to see.
Robert Henri - The Art Spirit
Roadside Artist <pag...@nospam.roadsideartist.com> wrote in message
news:v43euv5...@corp.supernews.com...
Roy L. Ballou
scot...@rogers.com says...
>
>I also referred to the painting's lasting power to evoke . Maybe more people
>heard both of us - now all three - than is apparent.
In all of this bullshit discussion on one
has mentioned that the version in the UN
lobby is a reproduction. NO WAY the Sofia Reina
in Madrid would allow the real thing out of
its sight again, I don't think.
Oliver Gili
I think, sir, you are missing the point somewhat. F.Y.I. I think people have
mentioned that it is a reproduction. But anyway reproduction or not, its
still a powerful visual image created in response to the bombing of
civilians using the then latest destructive technology.....
Oliver
"Roy L. Ballou" <bal...@noemailever.com> wrote in message
news:3e43...@news.zianet.com...
sculpt...@ethanham.com
supposed to be the first time the painting was in the U.S. (or some
such milestone).
What happened that makes you say Sofia Reina wouldn't let it out of
its sight?
bal...@noemailever.com (Roy L. Ballou) wrote in message news:<3e43...@news.zianet.com>...
Marilyn Welch
From alt.politics.bush
Picasso's Guernica: The Anti-War Masterpiece that the Bush Warmongers
Fear
(Editor's Note: Guernica can be seen in its entirety at
http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/people_n2/persons6_n2/images_persons6/guernica.jpeg
)
David Cohen, Slate, February 7, 2003
Earlier this week, U.N. officials hung a blue curtain over a tapestry
reproduction of Picasso's Guernica at the entrance of the Security
Council. The spot is where diplomats and others make statements to the
press, and ostensibly officials thought it would be inappropriate for
Colin Powell to speak about war in Iraq with the 20th century's most
iconic protest against the inhumanity of war as his backdrop. Why is
Guernica such a powerfully controversial image after all these years,
and how did it come to hang in tapestry form at the United Nations?
Guernica is a mural, 11 feet 6 inches high and 25 feet 8 inches wide,
which commemorates the aerial bombardment - and obliteration - of the
ancient Basque town of 5,000 inhabitants by German and Italian
squadrons on April 26, 1937. It has justifiably been held to be one of
the masterpieces of modern art. A modern history painting, Guernica
self-consciously draws on archetypal forms the artist was exploring at
the time: bulls, horses, melancholy women - particularly Spanish
themes that were nonetheless classical and universal. Picasso used a
distinctive pictorial language to convey meaning in a broadly
accessible way without compromising the hermetic originality of the
artist's style; the chopped-up, fragmentary treatment of form makes
the image more startling and conveys violence. Most notable, though,
is the painting's audaciously stark absence of color - Guernica is
painted solely in black and white and gray tones. Black-and-white
images carry symbolic as well as graphic punch, of course, and, to a
contemporary audience used to newspapers and film, the added
connotation of objectivity.
Guernica is no stranger to political dispute. Picasso painted it for
the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 Paris World's Fair as the fulfillment
of a commission that predated the bombing atrocity. After the World's
Fair, Guernica toured European capitals, a rallying-cry-in-paint to
the anti-fascist cause. In 1939, the mural and supporting studies
arrived in New York for a fund-raising tour in aid of Spanish war
relief. It left America for numerous exhibitions during the Cold War
years (by which time Picasso had joined the French Communist Party)
but during that time the Museum of Modern Art had become its
semipermanent home. Meanwhile, the Franco regime, far from viewing the
work as an embarrassment, was calling for its "return" to Spain -
ignoring the fact that the painting had never actually resided there.
In the first Spanish monograph on Picasso, published in Madrid in
1951, the author described Guernica as "the picture of all bombed
cities" - a neat formulation that underscores the cost of universalism
in art. Lack of specificity makes the image more potent and more tame.
While at MoMA, the mural became the focus of intense political
activism. Commenting on the natural home for the painting, Picasso had
said in 1956, "It will do the most good in America." In 1967, however,
400 artists responding to the Vietnam War signed a petition urging
Picasso to take it out of the country: "Please let the spirit of your
painting be reasserted and its message once again felt, by withdrawing
your painting from the United States for the duration of the war." The
liberal art historian Meyer Schapiro viewed this as nonsensical
political posturing. In a letter to the Art Workers Coalition in 1970
he asked if MoMA was making a protest against the crucifixion by
hanging paintings of that subject, and by implication, wondered why
Franco was so keen to have Guernica in the Prado, if hanging it
implied criticism of all warfare.
Not long after, in 1974, Tony Shafrazi, a young Iranian artist (and
later a trendy SoHo dealer) sprayed the words "Kill Lies All" onto the
picture, as a protest against U.S. action at My Lai. (The canvas was
well-varnished so his paint cleaned off with ease.) A self-proclaimed
Guerrilla Art Action Group came to the defense of Shafrazi, arguing
that he was completing, not vandalizing, Picasso's creation. Spain did
eventually get Guernica in 1981 under the terms specified by Picasso
of the country's transition to democracy.
The tapestry version at the United Nations was a gift from the estate
of Nelson D. Rockefeller in 1985. (For many years, the original had
hung at the Museum of Modern Art, of which Rockefeller was a key
supporter, while the United Nations was built on land belonging to the
Rockefellers.) The tapestry version succumbs to the temptation of
color - browns and taupe - considerably weakening its effect, as does
the change in medium and its smaller scale.
The continuing sensitivity to Guernica exemplified by the U.N.
cover-up may remind us that modern art is poor in images glorifying
just military action, though rich in images of the horrors and
injustices of war. Further back in history, of course, there are
numerous celebrations of the triumph of righteous might.
Unfortunately, some of the best depict the vanquishing of Saracens,
which might not go down so well today. Long gone, however, are the
days when statesmen actually commissioned public works of art, history
painting, or monumental sculpture for purposes of propaganda,
self-glorification, and political justification. Except, of course, in
Baghdad, where innumerable portraits of Saddam Hussein and
Bamiyan-sized replicas of his arms adorn the fateful streets.
--
"A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight
and too fat to run."
--Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
___________
MW
Edward G. Nilges
The Guernica at the UN, which was covered up, is a tapestry
reproduction donated by Nelson Rockefeller.
However, its originality or being a copy has nothing to do with the
very disturbing fact that it has to be covered up lest men who are
contemplating a crime under international and domestic law be
discommoded.
Oliver Gili
http://www.takebackthemedia.com/bushnonazi.html
Oliver
"Marilyn Welch" <mwe...@xyzislandnet.com> wrote in message
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