great minds think alike?

The April Issue of Harper’s Magazine is a photomontage by Penny Gentieu of Guernica draped in blue, while the March 17 issue of the New Yorker (the issue with Seymour Hersh’s article on Richard Perle) has a cover designed by Harry Bliss, and called “Setting the Stage”:

The two covers are eerily similar, and both call to mind the complete draping of Guernica on January 27 at the United Nations. It was then that Colin Powell was to brief the press about the possibility of war on Iraq and the tapestry was deemed “inappropriate” so it was covered up. The two magazines picked these covers on the eve of war with Iraq, and I can only surmise that it’s because we are about to witness carnage similar to what happened in the 1930-40s, and that we are only shown part of the picture because it would be “inappropriate” to do otherwise. But that’s just my interpretation. I could be wrong.
I’ve actually seen Guernica in vivo. It was in the fall of 1998 during a visit to Spain. At the time, Guernica was part of a Picasso retrospective (can’t remember if it was at the Prado or at some other museum.) It’s quite a painting to behold, almost overwhelming in its intensity. Legend has it that when a Nazi officer asked the painter “Did you do this?”, Picasso’s response was: “No, you did.”
I wonder who we’ll be sending “No, you did” notes to, in a few years.