Who put the wraps on Guernica?
By Leslie Feinberg
A woven tapestry reproduction of the famous mural "Guernica"
has hung on the wall outside the United Nations Security
Council chamber since 1985. But on Jan. 27, it was covered up
with a drape. Why?
Screaming, shattering people and animals: Guernica. The
painting is characterized as modern art's most powerful
anti-war statement.
Pablo Picasso painted the mural for the Spanish Pavilion at
the 1937 World's Fair.
Spain was rocked by civil war. Resistance fighters, joined
by solidarity brigades from the United States and around the
world, were battling hand-to-hand against Gen. Francisco
Franco's fascist forces.
On April 27, 1937, Franco gave the go-ahead for Hitler's air
force to use a little Basque hamlet in northern Spain as
bombing practice. For more than three hours, the village was
pummeled from the sky with high explosives and incendiary
bombs. When the smoke cleared, 1,600 civilians were dead or
wounded.
By May 1, word of the horror at Guernica reached Paris. More
than a million enraged people poured into the streets in the
biggest May Day march that city had ever witnessed. The world
was stunned. The normally apolitical Picasso was moved to
capture the massacre in his now-famous mural.
Apparently the realities of war--particularly the terror,
death and destruction at ground zero of bombing raids--are not
the backdrop U.S. officials want for their photo
opportunities.
Dignitaries have long been filmed, photographed and
interviewed in front of the painting. "So it was a surprise for
many of the envoys to arrive at UN 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.S. logo," reported the Feb. 3 Washington Times.
The censoring curtain was draped on the days the council
discussed Iraq.
"A diplomat stated that it would not be an appropriate
background if the ambassador of the United States at the UN,
John Negroponte, or [Secretary of State Colin] Powell, talk
about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting
with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings."
(Washington Times, Feb. 3)
Reprinted from the Feb. 13, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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