Exhibiting Guernica without making a sound

Let’s imag­ine for a moment that, in June 1937, a cul­tur­al space in Paris had offered to exhib­it Guer­ni­ca, you know that work by Picas­so, but want­ed to avoid men­tion­ing the sit­u­a­tion in Spain in any way.

This mon­u­men­tal can­vas is a com­mit­ted denun­ci­a­tion of the bomb­ing of the town of Guer­ni­ca which had just occurred dur­ing the Span­ish war, a bomb­ing ordered by the Span­ish nation­al­ists and exe­cut­ed by Ger­man nazi et Ital­ian fas­cist troops.

In Paris, the Blum gov­ern­ment abdi­cat­ed under the pres­sure of those events.

What would a Parisian cul­tur­al space have done then, had it been offered the oppor­tu­ni­ty of exhibit­ing Picas­so’s Guernica?

It would have con­sult­ed with its superiors.
Or per­haps, in a jolt­ing  attempt at exist­ing on its own and won over by the beau­ty and pow­er of the work, it might have attempt­ed to reduce its polit­i­cal impact by trans­form­ing it into “a mas­ter­piece of con­tem­po­rary art” in order to hang it on its walls.

We are in 1937, Picas­so is already an estab­lished painter which is why he was com­mis­sioned for the work.

But the Pop­u­lar Front goven­ment has decid­ed to keep a low pro­file over the Span­ish war.

So the cul­tur­al space is up shit creek with­out the prover­bial pad­dle. Exhibit­ing Guer­ni­ca and talk­ing about the Span­ish rev­o­lu­tion means run­ning the risk of being called to account, or of see­ing doors lead­ing to fund­ing, closed.

So, in a cre­ative surge, it looks for a way to exhib­it the work as describ­ing bull-fight­ing, and orga­niz­ing a round table with anti-bull­fight­ers; con­tra­dic­to­ry free expres­sion hav­ing its requirements…It even con­sid­ers the pos­si­bil­i­ty of invit­ing a Ger­man picador…

Silence, this is an exhibition!

No, I’m kidding…

I had a night­mare, that’s all. I saw myself nego­ti­at­ing over the exhi­bi­tion of Zehra Doğan’s works with a Parisian cul­tur­al space. And I’m still try­ing to under­stand how a dream can turn so screwy… 

Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
iknowiknowiknowblog.wordpress.com

Expon­er el Gerni­ka sin lev­an­tar ampol­las Haga clic para leer
Expos­er Guer­ni­ca sans faire de bruit Cliquez pour lire

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Daniel Fleury

REDACTION | Auteur

Let­tres mod­ernes à l’Université de Tours. Gros mots poli­tiques… Coups d’oeil politiques…