Washed It!

The State Department issued a travel alert Sunday for American citizens in Europe in light of increased U.S. and European intelligence that a large-scale Al Qaeda attack may be imminent.

Intelligence officials in the U.S. and Europe have said an increase in activity in recent weeks suggests that a small cell of potential terrorists hiding in North Waziristan, a Pakistani tribal region, are preparing an attack that could be as spectacular as the 2008 raids in Mumbai, India, that killed 166 people.

Plotters could be planning to use “a variety of means and target both official and private interests,” the State Department said, adding that Americans abroad should be careful on trains, subways and other transportation systems, and in visiting hotels, restaurants and tourist spots.

“U.S. citizens should take every precaution,” the travel alert said.

It is thought that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is behind the plot, and that if successful, it could become the largest terrorist action since the Sept. 11 attacks nine years ago.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are traveling in Europe at any given time — as tourists, college students and business professionals. But the State Department did not upgrade its alert to a warning, which could have led to widespread cancellations of airline and hotel bookings.

Nevertheless, many in Europe found themselves quickly aware of the situation.

With the Los Angeles Lakers and Minnesota Timberwolves in London preparing for a preseason game, the National Basketball Assn. promised to take “appropriate” measures to ensure their safety.

“The NBA is staying in contact with the U.S. Embassy, the CIA and Scotland Yard,” said Lakers spokesman John Black. “They are keeping us informed of the situation.”

European governments began warning of a possible attack last week.

In Britain, the threat of terrorism has been listed as “severe,” meaning an attack is highly likely. Britain’s Foreign Office also warned its citizens to be careful traveling in France.

French Defense Minister Herve Morin told Le Parisien newspaper that “the terrorist threat exists and could hit us at any moment.” But Morin said law enforcement officials were continuing to pursue would-be terrorists.

“Networks organizing themselves to prepare attacks are constantly being dismantled around the world,” he said. “It is good for the French to know this.”

The U.S. military in recent weeks has stepped up drone missile attacks on suspected hideouts in regions of Pakistan, and the U.S. is passing its intelligence to its European counterparts.

According to intelligence sources, the threat apparently arose after the arrest and interrogation of a German man of Pakistani origin who was being held at the U.S. air base in Bagram, Afghanistan. He is said to have provided information about the activities of half a dozen other men from Germany and England who were linked through Al Qaeda and were reportedly talking to other operatives in several European cities about upcoming strikes.

richard.serrano@latimes.com

U.S. issues travel alert for Europe amid threat of Al Qaeda attack

Pope Benedict XVI arrived Thursday in Britain to an enthusiastic reception by fellow Roman Catholics and promptly warned the country not to let rampant secularism swamp or destroy its Christian roots.

“The United Kingdom strives to be a modern and multicultural society,” the pontiff said shortly after landing in Scotland to begin a four-day tour. “May it always maintain its respect for those traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer value or even tolerate. Let it not obscure the Christian foundation that underpins its freedoms.”

The German-born pope cited the evils of Nazism as an example of the consequences of “atheist extremism.”

His exhortation, delivered at the British royal residence in Edinburgh, launched the first-ever state visit by a pope to this increasingly non-religious nation, which broke with Rome almost half a millennium ago under Henry VIII.

The current occupant of the throne, Queen Elizabeth II, was on hand to welcome the pontiff in a simple meeting Thursday morning that brought together two octogenarians who are both heads of state as well as leaders of their own separate strands of Christianity. The queen is the titular head of the Church of England.

Later, more than 100,000 well-wishers greeted Benedict as he traveled the streets of Edinburgh in his specially designed Popemobile, with his shoulders wrapped in a green Tartan scarf. Scattered protests made hardly a dent in the larger din of cheers and applause.

The pope also led tens of thousands of participants in an open-air Mass in Glasgow early Thursday evening under brilliant blue skies in the same park where his predecessor, John Paul II, met even larger, more rapturous crowds in 1982 on a pastoral visit.

That visit was generally more warmly received than this one, in part because of John Paul’s personal charisma and his status as a heroic crusader against communism. Benedict’s state visit, by contrast, has inspired strong opposition from human-rights activists, scientists, feminists, gay-rights advocates and critics of the Vatican’s response to widespread allegations of child molestation by priests and religious workers.

Speaking to reporters on the flight from Rome, Benedict acknowledged that the church had been too slow to remove abusive clerics and to protect their victims.

“The authority of the church wasn’t sufficiently vigilant and not sufficiently quick or decisive,” he said, adding: “How can we repair, what can we do to help these people overcome this trauma, find their lives again and find again the trust in the message of Christ?”

The pope is expected to meet with abuse victims during his visit. They and other critics say that the Vatican has been more concerned with damage limitation and covering up suspected abuse than with seeking justice for those subjected to it.

At his public appearances Thursday, the pontiff sounded one of the principal themes of his papacy and one of the clear goals of his visit to Britain, which is to call Europe back to Christian values and beliefs.

Expanding on his warning about the “aggressive forces of secularism” earlier in the day, Benedict urged attendees at the Mass in Glasgow to fight back against those “who now seek to exclude religious belief from public discourse … or even to paint it as a threat to equality and liberty.”

“Religion is in fact a guarantee of authentic liberty and respect, leading us to look upon every person as a brother or sister,” he said. “Society today needs clear voices which propose our right to live, not in a jungle of self-destructive and arbitrary freedoms, but in a society which works for the true welfare of its citizens and offers them guidance and protection.”

In many ways, the pope’s homily was a more diplomatic version of comments that landed one of his aides in trouble on the eve of the British visit. In an interview with a German journal, Cardinal Walter Kasper described Britain as a “Third World country” that is incubating an “aggressive new atheism.”

Kasper’s remarks made front-page headlines here. The Vatican hastily announced that the cardinal, who was scheduled to accompany Benedict to Britain, would not be coming but insisted that his withdrawal was due to ill health rather than the controversy his comments caused.

The pope is due to spend Friday and Saturday in London.

henry.chu@latimes.com
Pope Benedict XVI urges Britain not to let secularism overshadow Christianity

“Chefs-d’Oeuvre?”

The question — “Masterpieces?” — posed by the inaugural exhibition at the Centre Pompidou-Metz is a matter of many opinions.

Four months after the quirky museum with a swooping white fiberglass and Teflon roof, designed by Shigeru Ban of Japan and Jean de Gastines of France, opened its doors in this little-known town 175 miles east of Paris, visitors continue to ask if the strikingly modern building near the majestic old train station resembles a Chinese straw hat, a hut for the Smurfs or a manta ray in flight.

The masterpieces query is a weightier matter and it comes with lots of historical baggage. Composed of about 800 works, the sprawling show is a think piece about the ever-changing meaning of a term coined in the Middle Ages to judge the work of craftsmen in the European guild system but often dismissed as quaintly irrelevant these days.

“I have no definitive definition of a masterpiece,” Laurent Le Bon, director of the Metz museum and curator of the exhibition, states in a publication accompanying the show, “but, in my view, it is a work that permits diverse interpretations, indeed contradictions.”

Critical reactions to the show include proclamations that it’s the most impressive assembly of 20th century art in all of Europe and accusations that it’s so confusing and anti-hierarchical as to be meaningless. In art historical circles, the exhibition has revived a debate about the concept of masterpieces. Interviews with curators indicate that there’s hardly a consensus on the subject, with some saying it’s a valuable way of measuring quality and others pointing out the flaws of any such system.

The Pompidou Center, a Parisian cultural powerhouse that houses the French National Museum of Modern Art, built the satellite in Metz to share its 60,000-piece collection with a city of about 200,000 people. But visitors expecting the Pompidou’s greatest hits are in for a surprise. What they get is an eclectic array of paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos, installations, architectural models, furniture and printed material.

An introductory section on the ground floor tracks the evolution of masterpieces “from Middle Ages to revolutionary genius” in works lent by various institutions. But the bulk of the show ending Oct. 25, which continues on three upper floors, is drawn from the Pompidou’s 20th century and 21st century holdings. The final display, “Masterpieces ad infinatum,” grapples with notions of uniqueness in an age of endless reproductions.

As the exhibition unfolds, major works by such stalwarts as Henri Matisse, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, Louise Bourgeois and Bruce Nauman share gallery space with examples by relatively little known European figures and a few sculptures from Africa, Asia and Oceana. The works on view rarely conform to conventional ideas about masterpieces as paragons of beauty or tours de force of skill and they aren’t necessarily the best examples of the artists’ output.

But pieces such as Bourgeois’ enormous installation “Precious Liquids” sum up essential themes — in her case, conflict between the artist and her father and bodily liquids that symbolize pleasure and pain. Other works mark zeitgeist moments that have influenced ideas about what a masterpiece might be.

Marcel Duchamp, who famously said that a masterpiece is created by the viewer, not the artist, is represented by his first “readymade,” a bicycle wheel mounted on a wood stool in 1913. Georgio De Chirico’s 1914 painting “Premonitory Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire” is a Surrealist tribute to a leading avant-garde poet and critic, portrayed as a classical statue wearing sunglasses.

Alain Jacquet’s 1964 painting “Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe” is part of his “Camouflages” series based on widely distributed reproductions of masterpieces from bygone times. His version of Edouard Manet’s celebrated Impressionist work recasts the luncheon on the grass as a poolside picnic obscured by a silk-screen pattern.

The most recently made pieces have yet to pass the test of time. A stunningly detailed photograph of commercial goods packed into a 99 Cents Only Store is a seminal image by Andreas Gursky. But it was made in 1999 by a German artist whose reputation and work continue to grow.

Experts’ views

Once upon a time, a masterpiece was a creation that met rigid standards of artistry and craftsmanship. These days, the term usually refers to the best work of an artist’s career or an example of outstanding creativity or skill, but there’s little agreement on the meaning and relevance of the term, particularly in modern and contemporary art.

Consider what a few Southern California authorities have to say in interviews and e-mail exchanges:

Douglas Fogle

Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs, Hammer Museum

That word has so many heavy connotations with connoisseurship and a certain attitude about art history, that one masterpiece comes after the other. There are great works, absolutely. In contemporary art, there are seminal or building-block works that changed everything. You can point to a Rauschenberg combine painting. “Monogram” is a great work in that way. You can point to Jackson Pollock’s first drip paintings.

It’s a masterpiece, whatever that means

There’s no doubt in Christian Vazquez’s mind why he was beaten up as he headed home from work late one night, and it wasn’t for the $10 the attackers stole from him.

“They were after me because I was a Mexican,” the 18-year-old said, his left eye still swollen shut from the assault July 31 while he was walking through Staten Island’s Port Richmond neighborhood. As his attackers punched him, they yelled, “Go home!” and anti-Mexican slurs, according to the police report, which had a familiar ring.

That’s because Vazquez was the 10th Mexican victim of a suspected hate crime in the neighborhood since April. “Why this is happening? If you ask 10 different people, you might get 10 different answers,” said Ed Josey, president of the Staten Island branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, during a march Aug. 6 led by religious and civic leaders to condemn the violence.