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\t\tPablo Picasso\u2019s \u201cNight Fishing at Antibes\u201d (1939) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (all photos Hakim Bishara\/Hyperallergic)<\/p>\n
A quick perusal of the headlines these days is enough for one to conclude that dictators don\u2019t die but multiply, and that history doesn\u2019t repeat itself \u2014 it vomits in its own mouth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The year is 1939. It\u2019s a balmy August night, lit by a big, yellow moon. Two fishermen in a boat are earning their keep out there off the shore of Antibes in southern France. One of them aims at a large, curmudgeonly fish with a pitchfork, the other tries his luck with a fishing line. A cautious crab keeps a safe distance. <\/strong>Gas lamps reflect on the water\u2019s surface and flicker into the air. A girl on a bike observes the whole scene from a high dock while licking an ice cream. She\u2019s there with a friend, it seems.\u00a0<\/p>\n Luxurious Monaco is less than an hour away by car. Beachy Nice is even closer. Everything looks fine and lovely. But beneath these calm waters swirl malignant tides that portend the onset of a Second, much deadlier World War just a few weeks away.\u00a0<\/p>\n This scene in Pablo Picasso\u2019s \u201cNight Fishing at Antibes\u201d stopped me in my tracks during a visit to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on a hot Saturday afternoon in New York City.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Currently hung on a wall at a busy intersection connecting two escalators on the museum\u2019s fifth floor, it\u2019s nearly impossible to have a private moment with this Cubist masterpiece, much less heed its alarm that we\u2019re never really too far away from a third, infinitely more horrific World War, probably powered by AI.<\/p>\n \t\tThe painting is currently hung on a wall at a busy intersection on MoMA\u2019s fifth floor.<\/p>\n This sprawling piece (6.75 by 11.3 feet, or two by 3.5 meters) was acquired for MoMA in 1952 by Olga Hirsh Guggenheim, wife of industrialist-philanthropist Simon Guggenheim, brother of Solomon R. Guggenheim, who started his own eponymous museum on Manhattan\u2019s Fifth Avenue. The Guggenheims made their fortune from building a global mining and smelting empire, which reached its peak during the First World War. They, among others, have been accused of war profiteering<\/a> by gouging the price of copper, which was essential for the arms industry. Many in the family have abandoned the mining industry since then. Now we recognize them more as great patrons of the arts, just as we do many contemporary MoMA donors and board members accused of extractivism<\/a> and profiting off the military-industrial complex<\/a>.<\/p>\n And isn\u2019t it an interesting coincidence that 1939, the year Picasso made \u201cNight Fishing at Antibes,\u201d is also the year he loaned \u201cGuernica\u201d (1937), his most famous anti-war painting, to MoMA for safekeeping after the outbreak of the war in Europe? Such is history, a turning wheel of irony. The people collecting and safeguarding the anti-war art are often the same ones selling the bombs.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tThe people collecting and safeguarding the anti-war art are often the same ones selling the bombs.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/image00002-1200x900.jpeg\")
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