Please ignore the painting behind the curtain.

February 3, 2003 3:44 PM

Please ignore the painting behind the curtain. In a move that mirrors the covering of the bare-breasted Spirit of Justice statue at the Justice Department last January, the U.N. installed a curtain to hide Picasso's anti-war masterpiece Guernica last week.
posted by MegoSteve (38 comments total)

"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."

Or perhaps an entirely too appropriate background...
posted by George_Spiggott at 4:05 PM on February 3, 2003

Isn't the reason that 'Guernica' is covered the same as the reason for not having the meetings in a Burger King lobby, or in front of the Mona Lisa? Extra noise.

My only question is, can't Ashcroft simply stand someplace else if there is some problem with a statue? Thereby saving taxpayers' money?

And the U.N.?? If all the members of the U.N. danced around naked, scattering rose petals from baskets and yodeling in Norwegian, would anyone really be surprised?

How about just using a different hall and saving everybody the heartache and wasted time, money et cetera et cetera....?
posted by hama7 at 4:07 PM on February 3, 2003

you should mention that it's a reproduction.

i care a little less about someone covering up a copy of a work than the original.

not necessarily a belief that is logically sound, but one i'm guessing art historians might defend.
posted by fishfucker at 4:09 PM on February 3, 2003

Yeah, but that beady-eyed Picasso individual was a known furriner/adulterer/Godless/Communist. Today, he'd certainly be a Naderite/peacenik/terrorist.
Good riddance. You don't want Communist Corrupt Art there to disrupt a nice "I'll wai until Hell freezes over" Adlai Stevenson moment.

Me, I'd choose a fake Picasso over the real Colin Powell every day (and twice on a Sunday), but that's old Guantanamo-bound me speaking. I understand the people's right not to suffer Pacifist propaganda in a time of War.
posted by matteo at 4:26 PM on February 3, 2003

This is infinitely more disgusting than Ashcroft's actions. Ashcroft being offended by a little mammary action is funny, although it speaks to profoundly unsettling aspects of his personality. To cover up Guernica outside of the Security Council is akin to a doctor saying "you expect me to read a medical text with pictures of lesions and necrosis? get that away from me!" As for the point that they've covered up a reproduction... I think the fact that this specific reproduction has an explicit social purpose, and that its intended audience has chosen to obscure it, gives this action a social context that makes it, in effect, 'an original.'
posted by stonerose at 4:27 PM on February 3, 2003

> By May 1st, news of the massacre at Guernica reaches
> Paris, where more than a million protesters flood the streets
> to voice their outrage in the largest May Day demonstration
> the city has ever seen.

Where were these guys when the panzer divisions rolled up to Paris? Go ahead and cover the picture up, in honor of >1M surrender monkeys.
posted by jfuller at 4:35 PM on February 3, 2003

You wouldn't want people to start thinking about things when they see that picture. God knows what people thinking by themselves would lead to. This is plain wrong. There's a reason the reproduction is there and now we should just forget the reason. Not good at all.

jfuller: It's not like the french didn't fight back, they just
lost.
posted by lazy-ville at 4:48 PM on February 3, 2003

how carefully they go about setting the stage. remarkable.
posted by quonsar at 4:55 PM on February 3, 2003

I think the fact that this specific reproduction has an explicit social purpose, and that its intended audience has chosen to obscure it, gives this action a social context that makes it, in effect, 'an original.'


great point.
posted by fishfucker at 5:02 PM on February 3, 2003

Guernica is the perfect backdrop for a discussion about war. Sigh. This won't be the first time Picasso's works are censored. This painting and other works by Picasso were banned in the infamous degenerative art movement.

Here's a few other disconcerting and distracting Picasso works that may need to be covered up lest the rabble get any ideas that aren't sanctioned by the war machine.
posted by madamjujujive at 5:08 PM on February 3, 2003

Or perhaps an entirely too appropriate background...

I agree that it would make an appropriate backing for the security council in its discussion of war with iraq, though not for your reasons. The bombing of Guernica was a blatant act of mass murder for the sole purpose of cowing a people into submission. The similarity between that incident and the treatment of the kurds in iraq is very strong.

The painting, I think, is not so much anti-war (as is claimed above), but anti-fascist, anti-oppression, and anti-mass-murder. Why they would cover it up is beyond me.
posted by Mark Doner at 5:08 PM on February 3, 2003

I don't know, I think Ashcroft hiding (from) Justice is an equally powerful image as the UN not wanting to be distracted by thinking about war while they debate the subject of war.
posted by Foosnark at 5:14 PM on February 3, 2003

Speaking of Guernica...
posted by mediareport at 5:18 PM on February 3, 2003

> You wouldn't want people to start thinking about things
> when they see that picture.

In the interest of diversity of opinion (I'm sure we're all in favor of diversity here) they might leave Guernica undraped and hang this one next to it. ((large version here.) Or possibly, for those whose historical perspective reaches a bit further back, this one.
posted by jfuller at 5:22 PM on February 3, 2003

how carefully they go about setting the stage. remarkable. - quonsar

Precisely. Soma anyone?
posted by dejah420 at 5:39 PM on February 3, 2003

I think the fact that this specific reproduction has an explicit social purpose, and that its intended audience has chosen to obscure it, gives this action a social context that makes it, in effect, 'an original.'

Well said!!
posted by holycola at 5:48 PM on February 3, 2003

If all the members of the U.N. danced around naked, scattering rose petals from baskets and yodeling in Norwegian, would anyone really be surprised?

Seeing as my new year's resolution is to answer all rhetorical questions: yes, this would be on the front page of the Post the next day, and "anyone" would be surprised.
posted by RJ Reynolds at 5:49 PM on February 3, 2003

jfuller: Point well taken. But as I said there's a reason for this particular reproduction hanging there. The UN is supposed to be anti-war. Either one of those would be better than just giving people a smooth non-controversial facade. Anything that makes people think is good.
posted by lazy-ville at 5:53 PM on February 3, 2003

When World War II broke out later that year, Picasso requested that Guernica and a number of his other works be held at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on extended loan. After the war, most of these works were returned to Europe, but Picasso asked that Guernica and its preliminary studies be kept by MoMA until the "reestablishment of public liberties" in Spain.

I say that we give this reproduction back to the Rockefeller estate until public liberties can be restored in the United States.
posted by machaus at 6:02 PM on February 3, 2003

jfuller, I'll go for that compromise...I absolutely love that Delacroix. But! ...it has bare breasts so we made need a touch of cover-up so that we don't offend delicate sensibilities or give anyone the vapors.
posted by madamjujujive at 6:08 PM on February 3, 2003

[OT]

Seeing as my new year's resolution is to answer all rhetorical questions

That is a fantastic idea, RJ Reynolds. So good, in fact, that i may have to steal it from you. My workplace could do with a touch less rhetoric.

[/OT]
posted by quin at 6:19 PM on February 3, 2003

> so we made need a touch of cover-up so that we don't
> offend delicate sensibilities or give anyone the vapors.

Madame, you can give her a leather teddy for all of me. In return, can I give the kid beside her a cowboy hat and a couple chrome-plated six shooters?
posted by jfuller at 7:51 PM on February 3, 2003

"Where were these guys when the panzer divisions rolled up to Paris? Go ahead and cover the picture up, in honor of >1M surrender monkeys.
posted by jfuller at 4:35 PM PST on February 3"

jfuller - Is your grasp of history as tenous as it seems?. Or are you trolling? Does it matter?... Most of "those guys" (the French protesters) would not have been, unfortunately, trained in tank combat and equipped with tanks, supplies and air support to fight incoming Panzer divisions...have you ever tried to stand up to a tank barehanded? Or, for that matter, a Stuka dive bomber? I guess not - these tend to have heavy machine guns which cut human bodies into little bits.

The fall of France was a considerable surprise to most of the world (especially France) . It was due, mainly, to the use of revolutionary new tactics by the German Wermacht. France fell, yes: the Maginot line was bypassed, the French forces cut off......sure, France fell. And it took the french resistance movement a while to coalesce....so what?

I guess you are unaware that the French rolled over Europe several times in the two centuries previous to WW2, and that the German conquest of France in WW2 was simply another round in an ongoing grudge match (and struggle for continental supremacy) between Germany and France...and Russia, Sweden, Italy....But the French got in their "conquest licks" allright. The ultimate outcome of the Napoleonic Wars was to kill off tall French males and thus shorten the average height of the whole French population.

Your "time horizon" is rather short: in recent history (to me, anyway, if not to you) untold numbers were on the receiving end of the bayonets of the French "surrender monkeys".

By the way, did you know that the use of the "monkey", as a derogative term, was heavily used in US WW2 propaganda posters to refer to the Japanese - as "subhuman" (ape-like) ?
posted by troutfishing at 8:02 PM on February 3, 2003

Just remember, the British saved our ass in World War Three.
posted by Space Coyote at 8:16 PM on February 3, 2003

The painting, I think, is not so much anti-war (as is claimed above), but anti- fascist, anti-oppression, and anti-mass-murder. Why they would cover it up is beyond me.

the answer is left as an exercise for the student.
posted by lescour at 9:22 PM on February 3, 2003

Perhaps they got simply tired of having photos of diplomats rendered almost unviewable by having a garrish painting in the background?

No, it must be a vast conspiracy to keep the people from understanding the true horror of war. It all makes so much sense.
posted by jammer at 10:04 PM on February 3, 2003

It's not a paper I particularly like, but the Washington Times reports an interesting wrinkle:

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.

(Link via BoingBoing)
posted by Vidiot at 10:42 PM on February 3, 2003

I'd reply to jfuller, but since others have made the point that he's outed himself as a witless, history-blind buffoon, I'll save my fingers. (Except to say that French deaths in WW2 were more than twice as high as US losses and nearly twice as high as British losses. Surrender? Yeah, right.)

Anyway, the relationship between 'Guernica' and the UN is designed as a warning of the League of Nations' flaccid response to the advance of fascism in Europe. So, yeah, it's no surprise that such things might raise a few thoughts if seen in the context of US foreign policy.
posted by riviera at 11:58 PM on February 3, 2003

lescour: the answer is left as an exercise for the student.
What, you think that bush, powell et al. are more in favor of fascism, opression, and mass-murder than saddam?
posted by Mark Doner at 12:06 AM on February 4, 2003

surrender monkeys

For the record, i'm sure jfuller's comment was meant to be referential.

Not that it makes it right in this context...
posted by quin at 12:26 AM on February 4, 2003

I just want to say that I saw the original painting in Madrid a few years ago and it is stunning.
posted by Dick Paris at 1:26 AM on February 4, 2003

wow. thank you for posting this.
posted by alms at 6:57 AM on February 4, 2003

Perhaps they got simply tired of having photos of diplomats rendered almost unviewable by having a garrish painting in the background?

In photography, using a relatively short depth-of-field will very effectively blur out a background while keeping the subject in focus. I don't think that's the reason.
posted by turaho at 10:06 AM on February 4, 2003

I think its pretty hollow to view this as a public decency issue. Like, have you really looked at that painting? Do you see further than the sworls of paint on the canvas? Do you see the horror and suffering therein?

I've got an idea, you can even do this at work. Take a particularly horrible depiction of modern warfare and place it up on eye level on the cube wall in front of you. Heck, make it your desktop if you're feeling lazy.

You really like looking at that all day?
posted by Ogre Lawless at 11:18 AM on February 4, 2003

But Ogre, my job doesn't involve deciding the fate of hundreds of thousands. It seems quite appropriate that the painting is there, and very telling indeed that it is being covered up.
posted by muckster at 11:46 AM on February 4, 2003

> jfuller - Is your grasp of history as tenous as it seems?.

Trout, you're so ancien regime.
posted by jfuller at 5:46 PM on February 4, 2003

Maureen Dowd writes about his in her latest column.
posted by homunculus at 11:22 PM on February 4, 2003

And Tom Tomorrow shows us what they don't want us to see.
posted by homunculus at 11:43 AM on February 5, 2003