OCTOBER 2005

Kill Lies All

In 1974, the young Iranian artist Tony Shafrazi spray-painted the words "KILL LIES ALL" onto Pablo Picasso's "Guernica", then installed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as a protest against U.S. actions in My Lai. The Guerrilla Art Action Group came to the defense of Shafrazi, arguing that he was completing, not vandalizing, Picasso's creation.
How would Picasso have viewed the matter, he who himself painted over a Modigliani? Picasso's remarks are more in tune with Shafrazi's ideas than with what museums stand for: 'Ultimately, what is important about a picture is the legend it has created, not whether it is preserved or not,' and 'Everything I have done has been for the present, in the hope that it will forever remain in the present.'