us attorney general john ashcroft has apparently started something of a trend among his peers ... covering up art that is "off-message." our latest example comes to us thanks to the fine work of colin powell and john negroponte. "modern art's most powerful antiwar statement," pablo picasso's guernica, has been covered up with a sheet at the united nations.
how they get away with this shit astounds me.
as a protest against their cover-up, i have made guernica the background image on my computer. yeah, it is silly, but it made me feel a little better. maybe you'll want to do the same thing.
Guernica Reproduction Covered at UN
from: Art Daily
NEW YORK.- The "Guernica" work by Pablo Picasso at the entrance of the Security Council of the United Nations has been covered with a curtain. The reason for covering this work is that this is the place where diplomats make statements to the press and have this work as the background. The Picasso work features the horrors of war. On January 27 a large blue curtain was placed to cover the work.
Fred Eckhard, press secretary of the U.N. said: "It is an appropriate background for the cameras." He was questioned as to why the work had been covered.
A diplomat stated that it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the U.N. John Negroponte, or Powell, talk about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings.
This work is a reproduction of the Guernica that was donated by Mrs. Nelson A. Rockefeller to the U.N. in 1985.
A nice PBS retrospective of the work is here.
The Reina Sofía National Museum in Madrid, home of the original work.
Thursday, February 06, 2003
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