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Iconic Tapestry of Picasso's 'Guernica' Is Back at the UN

In this Jan. 2, 2018, file photo, United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley walks past a tapestry woven by Atelier J. de la Baume-Durrbach of Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" as she arrives to speak to reporters at United Nations headquarters. (AP)
In this Jan. 2, 2018, file photo, United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley walks past a tapestry woven by Atelier J. de la Baume-Durrbach of Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" as she arrives to speak to reporters at United Nations headquarters. (AP)
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Iconic Tapestry of Picasso's 'Guernica' Is Back at the UN

In this Jan. 2, 2018, file photo, United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley walks past a tapestry woven by Atelier J. de la Baume-Durrbach of Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" as she arrives to speak to reporters at United Nations headquarters. (AP)
In this Jan. 2, 2018, file photo, United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley walks past a tapestry woven by Atelier J. de la Baume-Durrbach of Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" as she arrives to speak to reporters at United Nations headquarters. (AP)

The iconic tapestry of Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica,” which is considered by numerous art critics as perhaps the most powerful anti-war painting in history, returned to its place of honor at the United Nations on Saturday after a year-long absence that angered and dismayed many UN diplomats and staff.

The tapestry of the painting, woven by Atelier J. de la Baume-Durrbach, was re-hung Saturday outside the Security Council, the UN’s most powerful body charged with ensuring international peace and security. Since February 2021, the yellow wall where it had hung had been empty.

The tapestry was commissioned in 1955 by former US vice president and New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and offered to the UN on loan in 1984.

The Rockefeller family donated the land to build the UN complex after the world body was founded on the ashes of World War II, in the words of the UN Charter, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

When the United Nations headquarters was undergoing a major renovation starting in 2009, the tapestry was returned to the Rockefeller Foundation for safekeeping. It was reinstalled in September 2013 when the renovations were completed.

Early last year, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Jr., the son of the late vice president and governor who owns the “Guernica” tapestry, notified the United Nations of his intention to retrieve it. The UN returned it to him in February 2021.

Rockefeller said in a statement Saturday that the tapestry was being returned on loan to the United Nations, and he intends to donate the work to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the future.

“The Guernica tapestry with its probing symbolism -- its depiction of horrific aspects of human nature -- wrestles with the cruelty, darkness, and also a seed of hope within humanity.” Rockefeller said in a statement. “The Guernica tapestry is meant to be experienced and interpreted, with Picasso refusing to share its message when asked.”

Rockefeller said he was “delighted and deeply grateful, along with my family for the careful stewardship” of the tapestry by the United Nations and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

“I am grateful that the tapestry will be able to continue to reach a broader segment of the world’s population and magnify its ability to touch lives and educate,” he said.

In a Dec. 1, 2021 letter to Rockefeller, the UN said Guterres wrote: “This is most welcome news as we end a difficult year of global hardship and strife.”

“The Guernica tapestry speaks to the world about the urgent need to advance international peace and security,” the UN chief wrote. “We are honored to serve as careful stewards of this one-of-a-kind iconic work – as we draw inspiration from its message.”

The original painting, Picasso’s protest of the bombing of the Basque capital of Guernica during the Spanish civil war, is in Spain.

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In Beirut, a Photographer's Frozen Moments Slow Down Time and Allow the Contemplation of Destruction

A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
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In Beirut, a Photographer's Frozen Moments Slow Down Time and Allow the Contemplation of Destruction

A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)

We watch video after video, consuming the world on our handheld devices in bites of two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds, 15. We turn to moving pictures — “film” — because it comes the closest to approximating the world that we see and experience. This is, after all, 2024, and video in our pocket — ours, others', everyone's — has become our birthright.
But sometimes — even in this era of live video always rolling, always recording, always capturing — sometimes the frozen moment can enter the eye like nothing else. And in the process, it can tell a larger story that echoes long after the moment was captured. That's what happened this past week in Beirut, through the camera lens of Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and the photographs he captured.
When Hussein set up his camera outside an evacuated Beirut apartment building Tuesday after Israel announced it would be targeted as part of military operations against Hezbollah, he had one goal in mind — only one. "All I thought of," he says, “was photographing the missile while it was coming down.”
He found a safe spot. He ensured a good angle. He wasn't stressed, he said; like many photographers who work in such environments, he had been in situations like this one before. He was ready.
When the attack came — a bomb, not a missile in the end — Hussein swung into action. And, unsurprisingly for a professional who has been doing this work for two decades, he did exactly what he set out to do.
Time slowed down
The sequence of images he made bursts with the explosive energy of its subject matter.
In one frame, the bomb hangs there, a weird and obtrusive interloper in the scene. It is not yet noticed by anyone around it, ready to bring its destruction to a building that, in moments, will no longer exist. The building's balconies, a split-second from nonexistence, are devoid of people as the bomb finds its mark.
These are the kind of moments that video, rolling at the speed of life or even in slow motion, cannot capture in the same way. A photo holds us in the scene, stops time, invites a viewer to take the most chaotic of events and break it down, looking around and noticing things in a strangely silent way that actual life could not.
In another frame, one that happened micro moments after the first, the building is in the process of exploding. Let's repeat that for effect, since even as recently as a couple generations ago photographs like this were rare: in the process of exploding.
Pieces of building are shooting out in all directions, in high velocity — in real life. But in the image they are frozen, outward bound, hanging in space awaiting the next seconds of their dissolution — just like the bomb that displaced them was doing milliseconds before. And in that, a contemplation of the destruction — and the people it was visited upon — becomes possible.
Tech gives us new prisms to see the world
The technology to grab so many images in the course of little more than one second — and do it in such clarity and high resolution — is barely a generation old.
So to see these “stills,” as journalists call them, come together to paint a picture of an event is a combination of artistry, intrepidity and technology — an exercise in freezing time, and in giving people the opportunity to contemplate for minutes, even hours, what took place in mere seconds. This holds true for positive things that the camera captures — and for visitations of violence like this one as well.
Photography is random access. We, the viewers of it, choose how to see it, process it, digest it. We go backward and forward in time, at will. We control the pace and the speed at which dizzying images hurtle at us. And in that process, something unusual for this era emerges: a bit of time to think.
That, among many other things, is the enduring power of the still image in a moving-picture world — and the power of what Bilal Hussein captured on that clear, sunny day in Beirut.