The Guernica comes to London!

A couple of months ago I blogged about the Guernica painting by Picasso, a symbol of civilian suffering during armed conflicts. Well, now you don’t need me to tell you about it anymore because the Grauniad is reporting that the painting will be coming to London soon!

After this past month’s conflict in Gaza I believe the Guernica’s symbolism becomes even more relevant today and I would recommend everyone reading Forgesian Thinking to go see it, it certainly is an experience not to be missed.

Details are not out yet as to when and where it will be exhibited but I shall keep you all posted as soon as I find out.

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Picasso’s Guernica

Years ago my dad told me how this painting has become a sort of symbol to left wing people in Spain. My parents have a copy of Picasso’s masterpiece at home and on that spirit I bought a copy of the painting mysel to hang on my flat in London.

Now Lena Gieseke, a 3D artist, has made a 3D exploration of the painting in which one can really appreciate the symbolism behind Picasso’s drawing. One can almost touch the angst, the panic and suffering the people of Guernica felt during the air raid.

The Guernica bombing became not just a symbol of the sheer suffering that any war inflicts on civilian population, but the raw evil that was the foundation of fascism as a political ideology. At a time when neo-fascist movements are emerging again in Europe, let’s not forget the lessons of history.

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Saramago’s new blog

Jose Saramago, the Portuguese writer and Nobel Prize winner, has started his very own blog. This is extremely exciting not just because he’s obviously an extremely gifted writer but because he’s an extremely lucid analyst on everyday socio-political issues.

You can read the blog here.

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Mahmud Darwish (1942-2008)

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Stay at home Saturday reading

Brilliant post by Charlie Beckett in defense of ‘amateur’ creativity in the face of professional journalists’ patronising attitude to the blogosphere. Essential reading.

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Ikea hacker

I hope everyone excuses the low level of activity recently in the blog. I’m really busy with my dissertation which is due September 1 plus frankly I can’t find anything interesting to report in the blog that you can’t read in the newspapers everyday. At the moment my brain is engaged in a continuous analysis of Spanish Conservatives’ use of language for political manipulation (the topic of my dissertation).

However in the middle of my daily blog-reading exercise I’ve found this a) hilarious and b) useful to all of us on a budget piece of art (hence the tag). If you love some of that DIY action have a look at this. An entire blog focused on the transformation of IKEA rubbish into a completely different type of IKEA rubbish… I might even turn my double bed into a sauna!

Hope people enjoy it and are able to save some cash!

VIA: Wikinomics.

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Martians at 70

The Spanish Academy of Radio has had a great idea to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Orson Welle’s famous War of the Worlds radio address, a replay of the piece.

On October 30 1938 Orson Welles terrified the US with a radio version of the famous work by H. G. Wells. The news style radio programme caught by late-listeners created confusion and general panic in the US as people believed an actual Martian attack was happening against the US.

It would be great to have BBC radio doing a similar thing in the UK as in English it probably would better capture the historic moment of 70 years ago.

So if you think is a good idea, let’s spread the word we still got three months to go to convince the BBC to do it!

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A graphic history of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39)

The Ministry of Culture in Spain has put up on the internet the ‘Rojo Archive’. The archive was created by the democratic Republican government at the beginning of the war. It’s believed to be named after Republican General Vicente Rojo who organised the resistance in Madrid against the Francoist troops after the democratic government had fled to Valencia.

The archive is formed by 3,051 photos together with information on them. One interesting thing is that the site allows for visitors to add extra information to the captions as a way to gather further information on the captions.

You can have a look at the pictures here.

The archive includes pictures not just from the war itself but also from the Jaca revolt from 1930 and the Asturias revolution of 1934. At the end of the war the Francoist regime used the archive to identify and persecute Republican fighters and sympathisers.

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Flower power v actual power

Waiting for the Holland-France match to start I overheard on the BBC that in the early days of the Isle of Wight music festival the anarchic nature of the event was so shocking to the locals and the political class than in 1971 Parliament passed a new act, encouraged by the Isle of Wight MP, forbidding overnight gatherings of more than 5,000 people in the open air. Such act still stands as law today.

Thought it was interesting enough to share it with the world.

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Andersen v Dickens

Who hasn’t experienced in his life the akward moment of the guest who wouldn’t leave? The guest that keeps talking even beyond the point when you are not interested anymore and all you want is to go to bed or simply be left alone…well it seems such ordinary and excruciating moment also happened to Charles Dickens 150 years ago.

It’s well known the mutual admiration Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen had for each other. They used to exchange letters and works and eventually Dickens invited Andersen to stay over at his house in England for a couple of days, such was the admiration between the two authors. However Dickens didn’t expecxt Andersen would become one of those guests that wouldn’t leave. Andersen arrived for a two day holiday and ended up staying for five weeks. It was not until Dickens made clear to Andersen that he had abused his hospitality that the Dane packed his bags and left. Many years later Andersen was surprised Dickens stopped answering his letters, one wonders why…

The full story you can find it in The Times today.

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