Powell had the painting of Picasso's Guernica covered up
deakin.edu.au
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I'm told that the UN's Guernica was donated by the philanthropist Nelson A Rockefeller in 1985. Unfortunately, it is now no longer on display. According to press reports, on 27 January this year a large blue curtain was hung to cover it up. Questioned why the painting had been covered, UN press spokesman Fred Eckhard said the blue curtain was a technically better background for the cameras covering statements being made outside the Security Council.
This may be the official explanation, but the same media reports quote unnamed diplomats observing that it would not be appropriate for the US Ambassador at the UN John Negroponte or Secretary of State Colin Powell to talk about war with Iraq against a backdrop depicting images of women and children and animals crying with horror and showing the suffering of war.
Whatever the reasons, there is a profound symbolism in pulling a shroud over this great work of art. For throughout the debate on Iraq, whether at the UN, in the US, or here in Australia, there has been a remarkable degree of obfuscation, evasion and denial, and never more so than when it comes to the grim realities of military action.
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Television cameras routinely pan the tapestry as diplomats enter and leave the council chambers, and its muted browns and taupes lend a poignant backdrop to the talking heads.
So it was a surprise for many of the envoys to arrive at U.N. headquarters last Monday for a Security Council briefing by chief weapons inspectors, only to find the searing work covered with a baby-blue banner and the U.N. logo.
"It is, we think, we hope, only temporary," said Faustino Diaz Fortuny, a Spanish envoy whose government owns the original painting.
U.N. officials said last week that it is more appropriate for dignitaries to be photographed in front of the blue backdrop and some flags than the impressionist image of shattered villagers and livestock.
"It's only temporary. We're only doing this until the cameras leave," said Abdellatif Kabbaj, the organization's media liaison. He noted that the diplomats' microphone, which usually stands in front of a Security Council sign, had to be moved to accommodate the crowd of camera crews and reporters. With the Picasso as a backdrop, Mr. Kabbaj said, no one would know they were looking at the United Nations.
The drapes were installed last Monday and Wednesday — the days the council discussed Iraq — and came down Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, when the subjects included Afghanistan and peacekeeping missions in Lebanon and Western Sahara.
So when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell enters the council Wednesday to present evidence of Iraq's acquisition of mobile biological weapons labs and terrorism ties, he will walk in front of flags that wouldn't look out of place in the auditorium of a high school gymnasium.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who keeps a Matisse tapestry and a Rauschenberg collage in his private 38th-floor conference room, denies he had anything to do with the "Guernica" cover-up.
"If you heard all the things done in my name, you'd think I was everywhere," he joked Friday. "I heard it was artistic."
Mr. Kabbaj amplified thus: "We had a problem with, you know, the horse."
It was, of course, a camera crew that noticed that anyone who stood at the U.N. microphone would be photographed next to the backside of a rearing horse.
Picasso: Social critic, Cubist and a little too opinionated for many in this organization.
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On Guernica and Communism...
"I am a communist and my painting is a communist painting. But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in any special way to show my politics." (Interview with Jerome Seckler, 1945, Picasso Explains)
This quote is not validated...but,
Picasso had been politically sympathetic to the International Anarchist Movement since his formative years in Barcelona, his art often betrayed this, it was full of social commentary about the abject misery of the poor and deprived in a corrupt materialist society. By the 1920's, due to the decline of the Anarchist Movement and because of his close association with the Surrealists, who had affiliated themselves with the Communists, Picasso also began leaning toward Communism. Revolutionary art went hand in hand with revolutionary politics. During the Spanish Civil War Picasso sided with the Republicans, who in turn were supported by the Communists, and he openly supported their struggle against Franco and Fascism.
When the German Luftwaffe bombed the Basque town of Guernica in April 1937, the world was horrified at the destruction and loss of innocent civilian lives. Picasso took this opportunity to show the world what he thought and in Guernica, his greatest painting, he used symbolic forms to demonstrate his loathing for all that Fascism represented, though he characteristically denied this afterwards in an interview with Jerome Seckler. Picasso was not disposed to giving any of Guernica's secrets away.
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Anti-war America hater--Paul Robeson...
1937
Paul films Jericho in Egypt, then lends his influence to political causes, helping Max Yergan to found the Council on African Affairs (CAA), an organization to promote African self-rule, and singing at charitable concerts for people left homeless by the civil war in Spain. Spending the summer in the Soviet Union, Robeson rejoices in the country's constitutional embrace of all nationalities and races. He dedicates his fall and winter to advocating the Spanish fight against fascism. At London's Albert Hall, he brings down the house when he changes the words of "Ol' Man River" from "I'm tired of livin' and scared of dyin'" to "I must keep fightin' until I'm dyin'."
1938
Despite the dangers, Robeson insists on visiting wartorn Spain, where he rallies the Republican soldiers who shower him with affection. Paul condemns the West's indifference to and praises the Soviet Union's support of the Spanish loyalists. Concerned about growing tensions in Europe, the Robesons transfer Paul, Jr., to a Soviet school in London. The Robesons befriend Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian independence leader, and Paul makes dozens of political appearances. His agent warns him that his outspoken politicism will cost him his career, but in the British provinces, Robeson is greeted with adulation—in Torquay he is carried into the concert hall by a cheering throng.
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Cowardly Massacre ?
Do you really know what the Iraqi people want ? |
