{"id":259,"date":"2014-07-30T13:36:01","date_gmt":"2014-07-30T17:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/surfingthespectacle.com\/?p=259"},"modified":"2020-09-13T02:40:02","modified_gmt":"2020-09-13T06:40:02","slug":"the-dream-depicted-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/surfingthespectacle.com\/?p=259","title":{"rendered":"The Dream Depicted"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n
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One of the world\u2019s most famous paintings generates a profound turbulence. <\/p>\n

\nBlack and white on a huge canvas, Picasso\u2019s Guernica<\/em>
\nimagines the frenzied destruction of an aerial bombing.<\/p>\n

It has become an iconic image of the madness of war.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

But while Guernica<\/em><\/i> is an image of war, there are no soldiers to be seen.<\/p>\n

Instead, the painting depicts a very particular kind of war.
\nA war against humanity.<\/p>\n

The bombs that fell in 1937 on the small town of Guernica
\nin the Basque region of Spain fell on women and children
\nand old men and animals. <\/p>\n

It was no accident. They were excellent targets.<\/p>\n

\"image\" <\/p>\n

Which reminds me, have you ever dreamed of flying?<\/p>\n

\"image\" <\/p>\n

In his masterful The History of Bombing<\/em><\/i>, Sven Lindqvist<\/a> shows us
\nthat when man first began to dream of flight,<\/p>\n

he began to dream of bombs.<\/em><\/p>\n

Early popular fiction depicted bombers high in the sky,
\nsafe and dedicated to their sacred mission:<\/p>\n

the absolute decimation of entire cities and races below. <\/p>\n

\"image\" <\/p>\n

And then, the dream became real.<\/p>\n

Man learned to fly, and quickly, very quickly,
\nhe learned to bomb.<\/p>\n

It proved an impressive way of keeping order.<\/p>\n

\"image\" <\/p>\n

Lets say you had valuable colonies filled with inferior people
\nwho possessed an entirely different skin color than your own.<\/p>\n

And say the colonies were disobedient. They opposed your occupation.
\nOr interrupted your removal of their resources.
\nOr gave comfort to your enemies. <\/p>\n

\"image\" <\/p>\n

You merely had to fly over the homes where their children
\nplayed and their wives cooked and their elders sat,
\nand drop your bombs.<\/p>\n

The fiery transformation was considered most effective. <\/p>\n

\"image\" <\/p>\n

You had delivered a clear message on the law of civilization:<\/p>\n

Never resist your superiors. Never think of resisting.
\nSubmit and serve.<\/p>\n

\"image\" <\/p>\n

In this way, early aerial bombing massacred civilians
\nin the villages and cities of Morocco and India and
\nIran and Ethiopia and many, many other countries.<\/p>\n

Only you never heard of these bombings.
\nThey had no Picasso to tell the tale of their devastation.<\/p>\n

Their stories went up with the smoke.<\/p>\n

\"image\" <\/p>\n

Of course, the civilized powers dropping the bombs
\ndid not endorse the brutal killing of innocents.<\/p>\n

They were nations of laws and justice and religion.
\nThey enacted strict international laws forbidding such actions. <\/p>\n

Only these laws applied to humans like themselves.<\/p>\n

Humans unlike<\/em> themselves,
\nAfricans or Arabs or Asians or Indians,
\nwere naturally inferior and fell outside such legal constraints.
\nThey could be slaughtered for their own good.<\/p>\n

\"image\" <\/p>\n

That\u2019s what was interesting with Guernica.<\/p>\n

Europeans bombed innocent Europeans.<\/p>\n

That was new in 1937. And deeply unsettling.<\/p>\n

\"image\" <\/p>\n

Picasso began working on his masterpiece almost immediately
\nafter hearing reports of the atrocity, and his Guernica<\/em><\/i> painting
\nsoon toured widely through Europe. <\/p>\n

When viewers gazed upon it, did they sense
\nit was an image more from the future than the past?<\/p>\n

No matter. A single painting, no matter how strong,
\nno matter how celebrated the artist,
\nwas not enough. Not enough at all.<\/p>\n

Soon the people of the civilized nations would learn
\nwhat their darker-skinned brothers already knew.
\nEveryone was at risk from the sky.<\/p>\n

\"image\" <\/p>\n

In a few short years, civilians living in huge cities
\nwould be incinerated by the tens of thousands. <\/p>\n

Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo would be
\ndecimated in a new kind of war where everyone
\nwas a target and innocence was irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Of course, that was another time, another world.
\nNothing like this could happen today.<\/p>\n

\"image\" <\/p>\n

The important work of our greatest artists tell us so.<\/p>\n

\n[This final image is a photo of a Damien Hirst artwork auctioned off with some of his other works for some $200 million in 2008, a sale now seen as a perverse marker<\/a> of contemporary decadence in the art world.]<\/em><\/div>\n

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