Cries of children cries of women cries of birds cries of flowers
cries of wood and of stones cries of bricks cries of furniture of beds
of chairs of curtains of casseroles of cats and paper cries of smells
that claw themselves of smoke that gnaws the neck of cries that boil
in cauldron and the rain of birds that floods the sea that eats into
bone and breaks the teeth biting the cotton that the sun wipes on its
plate that bourse and bank hide in the footprint left embedded in the
rock...

- Pablo Picasso

In an act of savagery unprecedented in European history the Basque
Spanish town of Gernika¹ was for three hours on 27 April 1937 subjected
to aerial bombardment by the forces of fascism
acting under the control of General Franco and his Nazi allies.
Some 1,600 civilians were to perish violently as their town was
reduced to a single burning hell.

At eleven o'clock at night the whole town was in flames, not a single
house standing. The streets and the square were crammed with goods and
chattels snatched from the inferno. The people still searching for
missing relatives, for wives, daughters, husbands, sweethearts and
children.

- Elizabeth Wilkinson, Daily Worker, 28 April 1937

The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people,
against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than
a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could
anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction
and death? ... In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call
Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my
abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of
pain and death.

- Pablo Picasso

The scale of the massacre spurred a stunned and horrified Pablo
Picasso to put brush to canvas. For 24 days Picasso transferred
monumental grief and outrage into art, using 27 square metres of
intensely applied oil paint to condemn the senselessness of war. The
result: the stunning anti-war masterpiece 'Guernica'.

Immediately apparent is Guernica's breathtaking starkness, painted
in monochrome, devoid of all colour thus reflecting the objectivity of
a newspaper report or contemporary newsreel. This metaphor is
re-iterated through the fine gradations which appear near the centre of
the painting, resembling pieces ripped violently from a newspaper.

Likewise, a flash-bulb alludes to reportage.

And the depictions which Picasso presents so intensely are real and
horrific snapshots of the terrible indiscriminate consequences of war:
a woman wails to the sky as she cradles her dead child in her arms, a
shying horse bares its teeth as it is disembowelled, and among
severed limbs heads scream in agony and despair.

Guernica was first shown in the Spanish Pavillion of the World Fair
of 1937, where it was dismissed, albeit by the German Fair Guide, as
the work of a madman, 'a hodgepodge of body parts that any
four-year-old could have painted'.

Two years later the whole of Europe was embroiled in long and bloody war.

Creation

While the painting ended up in the Museum of Modern Art in New
York, a tapestry reproduction was commissioned in 1955 by then New
York Governor Nelson Rockefeller for the statehouse in Albany. In
1985, shortly after the original painting had been returned to be
permanently galleried in Spain, the tapestry was put on permanent loan
to the United Nations in New York where it is displayed at the
entrance to the Security Council chamber as a reminder of the horrors
of war.

It is a poignant footnote that when, on 5 February 2003, US
Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke before the United Nations to
make his case for a US attack on Iraq, the mural had been covered
over.

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.

- Maureen Dowd, New York Times

The central idea of my work is impermanence ... that things move on
and change. I want people to see that there is hope after
destruction.

- Lee Mingwei

Artist Lee Mingwei uses Guernica as both inspiration and a
point of departure for his interactive installation project 'Gernika
in the Sand' which explores ideas of history, war, destruction and
hope. Mingwei hand-places 14 tonnes of coloured sands over ten days to
reproduce a 7m x 17m interpretation of Picasso's epic masterpiece.
Rather than focussing on the gut-wrenching cruelties of war Mingwei's
work is wilfully temporary, inviting reflection on impermanence as
characteristic of existence and larger cycles of destruction and
creation.

Tellingly, like the Rockefeller tapestry, Lee Mingwei's
interpretation is warmer than the original, featuring browns and
creams in place of the original greyscale, drawing attention to the
beauty which can grow from loss. Sand is a poignant medium,
symbolising the processes of destruction and creation, insofar as sand
is born from rock to perhaps ultimately again become rock.

Lee Mingwei draws heavily on Buddhist tradition for guidance with
particular reference to the exquisitely intricate transient sand
mandalas often made by Tibetan monks to create a space for
contemplation, to meditate on the nature of suffering and destruction.
Buddhism provides that the suffering caused by the effects of previous
thoughts, words and deeds can be alleviated by following the 'Noble
Eightfold Path'—encompassing wisdom, virtuous behaviour and
concentration. Upon completion of ceremonies the mandala is
systematically dismantled.

The tension is extreme because it is destruction and creation
juxtaposed.

- Lee Mingwei

Midway through the exhibition, Lee Mingwei returns to the project
and destroys it within one day between sunrise and sunset by sweeping
it with a bamboo broom, creating a new, more abstract work in the
process. During this period, visitors to the gallery are invited to
walk barefoot on the sand, thereby being forced to juxtaposition
destruction with creation. Like the phoenix from the flames the
destruction of Gernika results in that which in itself is rich and
powerful and beautiful to behold.

To complete the project, Mingwei sweeps up the sand into a heap in
the middle of the gallery, where it remains until the exhibition
closes.

***

Gernika in the Sand is currently on display at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane. Gernika as we know it will be
destroyed on Monday 9 June 2008. Catch it while you can.

Trout Montague

05.06.08 Front Page

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