Picasso, Guernica, Qana & The Da Vinci Code

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QANA was a town in Southern Lebanon that was destroyed in July by Israeli bombing (see: bbc ). Decent people throughout the world have been distraught over the latest crucifixion of Lebanon which had only 6 years ago emerged from 20 years of destructive Israeli occupation. The latest Israeli War has killed over 1,000, wounded some 4,000, rendered 1 million homeless and made much of Southern Lebanon uninhabitable (genocide) by unexploded bombs including those deriving from the dropping of 1 million cluster bombs. It is estimated that reduction of Lebanon to a UK-US-occupied Iraq scenario through the destruction of economy and infrastructure would cause 20,000 avoidable deaths annually (see MWC News ).

Words fail at such barbarity. I am a scientist – I pose and test potentially falsifiable hypotheses in order to get to the truth of things. I am also a Humanist writer and have committed myself to quantitatively reporting the horrendous avoidable mortality in the world (substantially deriving from Occupation or neo-colonial First World economic domination) and the even worse dangers facing the world from global warming (e.g. see MWCNews ). I am also an artist and because words have failed I took up my paint brush in response to the Lebanon tragedy that was quintessentially defined by the destruction of Qana by the Israeli Wehrmacht.    

I have painted a huge painting entitled "Qana" that derives conceptually from Pablo Picasso's 1937 "Guernica" and from my profound, acute distress over the recent devastation of Lebanon. Picasso's huge "Guernica" (3.5 metres x 7.8 metres) was painted after the Nazi German bombing of the Basque town of the same name during the Spanish Civil War and is the most famous anti-war painting as well as one of the largest paintings ever made.

My mentor as an artist was the late Spanish painter Ignacio Marmol who knew Picasso and introduced me to the classical scaffolding employed widely by painters from the Renaissance onwards (Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael being celebrated examples, more recent notables being Renoir and Modigliani). Such scaffolding is crucial for big paintings such as murals and theatrical sets (as I well know from painting huge paintings). However, while I suspected the geometrical order underlying "Guernica", I was astonished to discover the extraordinary mathematical precision of Picasso's construction.

Picasso’s “Guernica” Double Golden Rectangle secret revealed

The Secret of “Guernica” (and of “Qana”) is that Picasso used a “Double Golden Rectangle” geometry. A Golden Rectangle (beloved of architects and artists from the Ancient Egyptians and Greeks onwards) (see MWC News ) is a rectangle in which the Length (L) is 1.618 (Phi) times the Width (W) i.e. L = 1.618 x W. You will immediately  protest that surely the overall dimensions of Picasso’s “Guernica” are inconsistent with this, that they are 3.5 meters x 7.8 meters  and 7.8/3.5 = 2.2 not 1.618.  However Picasso   put a “frame” into his painting, clearly at the top and sides and only partly seen at the bottom (see: here and here ).

The “frames” at the sides of the “Guernica” painting are (possibly deliberate) red herrings. The important thing is that the top frame and the partial bottom frame (at the far Left Hand Side, LHS, of the painting) are clearly delineated and Picasso used 2 exact Golden Rectangles for the rest of the painting between these 2 lines; put precisely, the length of the painting, L =  2 x Phi x the distance (W) between these lines  = 2 x 1.618 x W. Picasso was very precise in this construction – on a scale of several metres it is astonishingly exact to within half a centimeter.

Qana and the Da Vinci Code

I have used exactly the same “Double Rectangle” geometry in my painting “Qana” – the boundaries of the “double Golden Rectangle” in “Qana” are the sides of the painting, the top line (the bottom edges of the bomb tail fins) and the bottom line (starting on the far LHS and running through the bull’s hoof and thence ending just after the teddy bear at the far RHS).

The painting contains a lot of themes but is fundamentally about destruction (the Israeli bombing of Qana) and resurrection (the re-building). Hence it has a central figure of an inclusive bearded Christ with a Crown of Thorns and the Spear Wound. However the Jesus Crucifixion and Resurrection story is pre-dated by the Greek/Roman/Phoenician myth of Adonis, the beautiful young man (seen hunting beneath the Cedars of Lebanon and the snows of Mount Lebanon on the far RHS). Adonis (with a Semitic meaning of “my lord”) was killed by a boar while hunting but could not be saved by his lover the goddess Astarte/Aphrodite/Venus  (see the wounded, resigned Adonis); the River ran red with blood - this actually happened in spring time in Lebanon in classical times with the River Adonis, the present-day Nahr Ibrahim that is fed by melting snow from Mount Lebanon in the Spring (bottom LHS). However there is eventually resurrection (as depicted by the androgynous figure, far LHS).

Other key “players” (from LHS to RHS) are the Woman being violated by a Bull/Minotaur (the US; cf Guernica) which also relates to  Zeus in the form of a Bull raping Europa; the Woman is also attacked by an Eagle (Israel) which grasps her deshabillé left breast and attacks the Infant wrapped in the Lebanon flag colors (Red, White, Green); the Woman (no hijab i.e. possibly Christian) has an infant; her Dress and that of the adjacent, secretive Muslim Mother and Child is simultaneously fallen, modern, white Brickwork (bombed Buildings); and  beneath this lies a dead or dying Man and the River of Blood (the River Adonis or Nahr Ibrahim of present-day Lebanon). Qana claimed to be the place where Jesus changed water into wine at the wedding – but there are other Qana (or Cana) candidates, albeit only a few dozen kilometers away (R.H. Mounce favours these latter candidates over the Lebanon Qana; see The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, William Eerdmans, Ann Arbor, 1979).