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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).
On the RHS after the Christ figure we have at the TOP the Appalled Observer (e.g. me); thence resigned, dying Adonis and finally the back of Adonis’ head in the Forest of Cedars of Lebanon below Mount Lebanon in which Adonis is hunting. In the MIDDLE we have a Donkey/Ass (an innocent animal victim), an Old Muslim Woman (who despairingly has seen it all before), and the Ram/Sheep/Goat (another innocent animal victim). In the RHS BOTTOM we have the fallen classical Pillars (e.g. of Baalbek), the crushed Dove of Peace targeted by the Bomb (that incorporates the Old Muslim Woman and whose tail fin is over the shoulder of the Dying Adonis), and (my favourite) the Little Girl (self-possession and curiosity overcoming apprehension) and her dumb Teddy Bear. 
There is careful complementarity in colour and symbolism. Thus there is another Bomb on the LHS (incorporating the Eagle, it is flesh-coloured, with the double entrendre of Biological Bomb; its stylized tail fin is above the wings of the Eagle). Various trampling Ungulate hooves are logical elements. The 2 bombs are part of the “Vesica Pisces” construction arising from the classical Golden Rectangle (L = 1.618 x W) construction used by the Ancient Greeks (the Parthenon), Ancient Egyptians (the Great Pyramid), painters from the Renaissance onwards (notably da Vinci) and even (intuitively) by great landscape photographers such as Anselm Adams (see: here ).
I have made a “discovery” of what I call the Golden Flowers (4 petalled as with the European Truelove, Paris quadrifolia) which magically appear when the 2 circles of the Golden Rectangle and the diagonals of their enclosing Squares exactly hit the right spot of the Golden Section (the Divine Proportion; see MWC News ). Truelove is both sacred and profane (Father, Son, Holy Ghost and Virgin Mary versus the Medieval aphrodisiac poison Truelove that also brings luck in Love as in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales). Indeed the Vesica Pisces is also both holy and sexual (e.g. the sacred Christian Fish symbol versus the profane female Vulva representation and the Gothic Arch of Christian Churches versus the Bomb, Missile or male phallus shape) (for a detailed account of this REAL sacred and profane Da Vinci Code see MWC news ).
The Golden Flowers also have the shape of the Egyptian water fern Marsilia quadrifolia at night-time under water with the leaflets closed. The 4-leafed Marsilia gives the Nardoo seed used traditionally, after very careful washing, by Indigenous Australians (Australian Aboriginals). Washing is required to remove a thiaminase that otherwise yields thiamine deficiency and paralysis. The famous 19th century Australia explorers Burke, Wills and Gray did not wash the Nardoo flour enough when awaiting rescue on Cooper’s Creek in Central Australia and died from thiamine deficiency. Their companion King survived but was paralyzed by peripheral neuropathy (see my huge pharmacology reference text: Gideon Polya, “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds, Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003). The Golden Flowers (Truelove) appear at top of the Violated Woman’s Dress and as the Crushed Dove. The 4 huge Circles and some diagonals underlying the Double Golden Rectangle Geometry are still apparent.
A final element in the painting the painting owes a lot to my Great Uncle George Polya’s solution of the problem of regular shapes that fit into 2 dimensions (technically, 17 plane symmetry groups, all of which were used by the Muslim Moors in the fabulous Alhambra Palace in Spain). This solution inspired lithographer M.C. Escher (you no doubt have seen his wonderful lithographs of interweaving animal forms ). I had also tried, in a different way, for many years to “fit” multiple images into the 2 dimensions of paper and canvas following the mathematical proof of my wonderful Great Uncle George (see: George Polya, Zeitschrift für Kristallographie, 1924; Harold & Loretta Taylor, “George Polya. Master of Discovery”, Dale Seymour Publications, Palo Alto, 1993; George Polya, “How to Solve It”, 1945, published in many languages and still in print).
I am represented in spirit in “Qana” by the appalled observer between Christ and the dying Adonis. My "Qana" (1.3 metres x 2.9 metres) partly owes its style to Fernand Léger and Henri Matisse and its underlying geometry to Picasso and Da Vinci. It has about 3 dozen thematic elements but the core is the evil of destruction by war (crucifixion) but with the promise of renewal (resurrection) - a task poor Lebanon must now meet for the second time in a quarter century.
If enough people like my “Qana” I might attempt a really “Guernica”-size version for the cause of Peace and Humanity. I share the vision of French writer Emmanuel Todd ("Apres l'Empire"; English translation “After the Empire. The Breakdown of American Order, Constable, London, 2004) for a 21st century of endless Peace, or as Fukuyama puts it: "the end of history".
Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Each of us, in our own way, must speak out for the innocent. We are obliged to inform others about abuses of humanity and to act ethically in our dealings with all those complicit in such abuses. International sanctions and boycotts worked against Apartheid South Africa. International and intra-national sanctions and boycotts may yet constrain those complicit in the crucifixion of Lebanon and the destruction of Qana.
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Dr Gideon Polya, MWC News Chief political editor, published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003), and is currently writing a book on global mortality ---
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I am a lebanese girl, and i happened to pass by this page, i was really touched by what you wrote here,i just wanted to say that i, as well as all Lebanese, appreciate your concern about our country and our beloved Qana, Qana destroyed again by the israeli war this June. More than a thousand child was killed, the village which embraced Christ\'s first miracle has also witnessed the ugliest of massacres.. the world ignores it again...i will make sure many lebanese know about your efforts.. and you are welcome anytime you want to visit Lebanon.. you will have many homes here :grin
Truly yours
Hadil Abu Khozam :)
We too, are constantly baffled as to how, a nation which 70 years after the fact, still reminds us constantly about one of the most terrible chapters in human history, can openly engage in bombing innocent children and women, on beaches, in the street, in their own homes, on a daily basis and without any legality, and yet many world leaders and their sponsors choose to ignore the plight of 6.5 millions of forcibly displaced palestinians (for 60 years), hundreds of thousands dead, the illegal use of chemical weapons on innocents in Lebanon, etc. Every effort to promote peace, and the ceasing of shedding of blood on all sides, should be applauded.
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Tags: Gideon Polya Picasso- Guernica-Qana