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June 06, 2023
Guernica: "Did you paint this?"
Here's a WWII story I first heard in 1992 in Paris from a struggling young Irish painter named Richard hustling his drinks and living by his wit, humor, charm and talent on a few choice blocks of the Right Bank. I never found out what happened to Richard. But ever since I've thought about this simple and apparently fairly well-known Picasso story, and more and more since 2005.
In the Fall of that year, Julie McGuire and I were together in Madrid. We made time to see Guernica, very likely Pablo Picasso's most famous painting, and some other great modern Spanish works, at the Museo Reina Sofia in central Madrid. Picasso painted Guernica in 1937 after both German and Italian bombers shelled Guernica, in Spain's Basque Country, on April 26 of that year, during the Spanish Civil War. The bombing by Germany and Italy happened at the request of Spanish Nationalist forces. The painting is an outcry, protest and lament of the self-assured, polite, smooth and famously composed Picasso.
The smallest details of the story seem to change. But historians and journalists seem to agree on the following:
In 1942, during the 1940-1944 German occupation of Paris, German officers often visited Picasso's Paris studio at a time when some of his paintings were being burned as decadent. On one visit, an aggressive Gestapo officer found a simple postcard with an image of Guernica in the studio. The officer confronted the painter, and held before Picasso's face the postcard with its breathtaking indictments of war, national pride, meaningless death, pointless suffering, waste, government hypocrisy, inflamed leadership and self-destruction.
"Did you do this?", the officer asked.
“No, sir. You did."
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968)
RFK or “Bobby.” Far and away he was the most interesting and storied Kennedy. A phenom and a rock star at the end. Died 55 years ago today. June 6, 1968, a few weeks after MLK, Jr. was killed. I was 15, and an ambitious high school sophomore in Cincinnati after my family’s last back-then obligatory corporate America move. When Robert Kennedy died, I was already into policy and politics. And I’d already heard stories about him most people never heard. My dad, a P&G executive, was not bowled over by famous rich people. But he had crossed swords with Kennedy in the late 1950s when we were living in Detroit. And I got some stories out of him. John Kennedy was still in Congress then. And younger brother Robert was an abrasive and spectacularly unpleasant young Hill investigator obsessed with trucks and companies that used them. In fact, that was who Bobby Kennedy was for most people his whole life. That’s how they knew him: tough guy, mean boy and fixer. But over the next decade lightning rod Bobby changed--and to even those close to him that change was fundamental. He came into his own late in life by somehow softening. From rich bratty bully scrapper and runt of the Kennedy litter to high priest of American youth culture. Tons has been written about him—and about how those changes might have come about. Please read some of the literature on this guy. This Kennedy was a character out a great novel. But real. Authentic. With a happy ending. He grew. Existential hero, some said. Anyway, Kennedy was shot on June 5. He died early on June 6. His campaign manager—the super-charged Frank Mankiewicz —got on TV and announced Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s death in just a few sentences which you should see and hear if you can get a clip of it. Go find the YouTube version of Frank Mankiewicz’s announcement. I’m sure it’s out there somewhere. It’s amazing.
Posted by JD Hull at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)