Art
takes on a whole new significance in wartime. War and the nationalist
myth that fuels it are purveyors of low culture--folklore, quasi-historical
dramas, kitsch, sentimental doggerel, and theater and film that
portray the glory of soldiers in past wars or current wars dying
nobly for the homeland. (Hedges, p.62) |
War and the Arts: Artistic Responses to War throughout History
In the June 2008 issue of Between the Columns, English lecturer Michael Olmert says that "Humanities give you a chance that nothing else does--to do personal archeology." Mining the depths of personal experience, and even the broader cultural history, artists capture moments and impressions, thoughts and feelings in the timecapsule of their medium. They give us a mirror, even though worn by time often pierces the soul in the quality of its reflection. Looking into expressions and impressions of past wars, one can find thought-provoking insight on the current situation, and sometimes even cameraderie of spirit with the artist's reactions.
The University of Maryland's Semester on War
Movies |
Our list of films concerning war |
Music
Young,
Neil. Living With War. (Reprise / Wea) 2006
The Canadian music hall of famer and former member of Buffalo Springfield
and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young is responsible for hits like Southern
Man, Heart of Gold and Harvest Moon. But on his newest record, to be
titled Living with the War, Young is taking a page from Bob Dylan and
putting together an album of protest songs against the actions of American
President George W. Bush. One of the tracks on the upcoming release,
which as of yet has no release date, is said to feature the single
Let's Impeach the President whose subject is fairly obvious. Not a
stranger to protest music the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young tune Ohio
was written in reaction to a protest against the Vietnam War. (Amazon.com)
Britten,
Benjamin. War Requiem. (Decca) 2006
On May 30, 1962, Britten debuted his War Requiem at the consecration of the new
Coventry Cathedral. The church had been bombed out during World War II and Britten
conceived the Requiem as a great prayer for peace. For his text, he chose a mixture
of the Latin Mass for the Dead and the poems of Wilfred Owen, a young English
soldier who had been killed in World War I. The Requiem was an instant success
with the British public and its appearance marked a second peak in Britten's
public esteem.
(Musician
Guide)
Penderecki,
Krzysztof. Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. (EMI)
1994
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for
52 strings was composed at the turn of 1959 and it won the 3rd prize at
the G. Fitelberg Composers' Competition in Katowice in 1960. The
piece immediately aroused a tremendous interest around the world,
and won the composer a widespread popularity. The piece represented an
attempt to apply the sonoristic technique and rigors of specific counterpoint
to an ensemble of strings treated unconventionally as to the manner in
which the tone was obtained. "While reading the score" - Zielinski
wrote in 1961 - "one may admire Penderecki's inventiveness and coloristic
ingeniousness. Yet one cannot rightly evaluate the Threnody until
it has been listened to, for only then does one face the amazing fact:
all these effects have turned out to serve as a pretext to conceive a profound
and dramatic work of art!" The expression of this music was received
by the audience in terms of solemnity and luridness, thus making its later
classification as "threnody" fully justified. On the 12th of
October, 1964, Penderecki wrote: "Let the Threnody express
my firm belief that the sacrifice of Hiroshima will never be forgotten
and lost."
Poetry
International War Veteran's Poetry archives. (IWVPA) The International War Veterans' Poetry Archives website is a living and growing memorial, dedicated to all warriors who paid the supreme sacrifice for their Country during all occasions where, whilst wearing the uniform of their country, they were placed in harm's way.
Modern War Poetry. This collection is dedicated to the victims and events of September 11th, 2001 -those of the World Trade Centers, The Pentagon, Shanksville Pennsylvania, and all those who defend liberty and justice. Not since the attack on Pearl Harbor have Americans known war on our homeland, and most of us cannot remember what it is to be at war.
Poets against the war (PAW) continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Pratt, John Clark. Vietnam
poetry. Essay.
Poetry that documents the attitudes toward the Vietnam War--as well as the origins,
development, and conduct of the war--is both pervasive and significant. Although
only a few poems by French writers reflect that country's involvement, the Vietnamese
tradition of poetic expression produced a large body of work, both personal and
political, written by soldiers and civilians of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
(DRV) and the Republic of Vietnam (RVN).
Bartleby Treasury of War Poetry 1914-1917. Book Online. A Treasury of War Poetry British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917
First World War poetry. (First World War.com) Prose, poetry, poet features.
Roberts, David. War poets and poetry of today and the First World War. Contemporary war poets and poets of the First World War: poems and biographies.
Civil war poetry and song. Confederate poetry, music of the war, union poetry.
War Poetry of the South. Book Online.
To Light Us to Freedom and Glory Again: Civil War Poetry with a Purpose. (Library of Congress Poetry Resources) Poetry written during the Civil War was used as a vehicle for individuals to express their opinions and attitudes. Using the Library of Congress's online collections, this videoconfernce explores how poetry written by soldiers and citizenry from the North and the South helped unify citizens, inspire troops, memorialize the dead, and overcome the anger and resentment of both sides in the aftermath of the war.
Sculpture/Memorials
Czappa, Bill. A
Never Ending War Sculpture (2008).
This is a ship floating on a sea of nails that is being sawed by a hacksaw with
a wooden blade, while a hammer bears down on it. The smoke from the ship is baseballs
signifing loosing fun time when you are at war. The war may just be strugling
with an artwork or a real war. The saying on the scroll says, I hammered and
sawed aimlessly through the night, Each nail like a war with battle ships sunk,
the sawdust as usless as bullits struck."
Muir, James. Civil
War Sculpture: Allegorical Sculpture & Monuments
in Bronze.
"Allegorical Art" is a term James Muir
uses to describe his work, which is filled with symbology to help
create a heightened social, political and spiritual awareness. "The
allegorical symbolism in my sculptures bridges the centuries of history
to make contemporary statements about the human condition, in order
to exemplify the highest qualities of man. My work speaks of Duty,
Honor, Courage, Liberty and Justice, but above all, it speaks of Truth
and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit."
Edwards, Daniel. Iraq War Memorial (2007). The "Iraq War Memorial" features Prince Harry - who is alive and well - laid out before the British flag with a bouquet of red roses filling his helmet.The inspiration came from what he was willing to risk," Edwards said. "It's an idea of bravery."
Johnston, Barry Woods. Freedom
from War. Bronze, (1973).
This sculpture is part of the modern collection of the Vatican Museum in Rome.
The work evolved out of the years of the Vietnam War. Waves of war clash, sweeping
humanity into despair. Also at the point of clash is a cross being raised by
another group of figures lead by a figure of Christ.
Lin, Maya. Vietnam Veteran's
Memorial (1982).
Deliberately setting aside the controversies
of the war, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial honors the men and women
who served when their Nation called upon them. The designer, Maya Lin,
felt that "the politics had eclipsed the veterans, their service and
their lives." She kept the design elegantly simple to "allow everyone
to respond and remember."
First World War Sculpture A collection of First World War sculpture by various artists. Various materials.
Rogers, John. Council
of War group statue (1868).
Sculptor once very popular whose "Rogers
Groups" were prized objects in many a Victorian parlor in ordinary
homes across the country. He was extremely popular from c. 1863 to the
early 1890's. Lincoln, Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of
War, and General Grant. This was patented c. 1868 to 1878. It sold for
$25.00 in 1878, and for $20.00 from 1882-1895. This was a high price at
the time, and the statue was
considered one of his most popular groups. There were at least 60 copies
extant.
Egyptian
Seated Sekhmet Lioness God of War Sculpture Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
(26th Dynasty 600 B.C.) Her name meant "The Mighty One". Her nature
being that of a Goddess of War, she accompanied the King to battle
and was often described as his mother. She spread terror everywhere.
Sekhmet was represented as a lioness or as a woman with lion's head.
Her weapons were arrows "with which she pierces hearts" and a fiery
glow emanated from her body. The hot desert winds were regarded as
the Goddess's hot breath. She was connected with the fire-spitting
Uraeus of the King and thereby became the "Eye of Ra". Sekhmet was
also regarded as the one "Great of Magic" whose knowledge of sorcery
gave her a place in the service of healing.
Visual Art
Nash, Paul. Totes Meer. 1941. (English)
The scene is at the Metal and Produce Recovery Unit at Cowley, near Oxford
- an aircraft salvage dump during World War Two. "The thing (the salvage
dump) looked to me, suddenly, like a great inundating sea. You might feel -under certain circumstances- a moonlight night, for instance, this is
a vast tide moving across the fields, the breakers rearing up and crashing
on the plain. And then, no, nothing moves, it is not water or even ice,
it is something static and dead." The painting was made soon after the
Battle of Britain. Paul Nash had established his reputation
during World War One when his art became a strident and angry response
to the Western Front, using the destruction of the landscape as a metaphor
for the cost of the war. During the interwar years, his work adapted surrealism
to the English landscape, animating incongruous, surprising or unusual
objects within a traditional setting of urban or pastoral scenes. This
inter-relationship arouses a sense of a hidden, almost mystical ordering
of the land. Other notable works: The Ypres Salient at Night,
1917-1918, and A Howitzer Firing, 1914-1918, (BBC)
Picasso,
Pablo. Guernica. 1937 (Spanish)
It is modern art's most powerful
antiwar statement... created by the twentieth century's most well-known
and least understood artist. But the mural called Guernica is not at
all what Pablo Picasso has in mind when he agrees to paint the centerpiece
for the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 World's Fair.
For three months, Picasso has been searching for inspiration for the mural,
but the artist is in a sullen mood, frustrated by a decade of turmoil in
his personal life and dissatisfaction with his work. The politics of his
native homeland are also troubling him, as a brutal civil war ravages Spain.
Republican forces, loyal to the newly elected government, are under attack
from a fascist coup led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Franco promises
prosperity and stability to the people of Spain. Yet he delivers only death
and destruction. (PBS
Treasures of the World)
Sargent,
John Singer. Gassed. 1918 (American)
John Singer Sargent was an American painter by birth-right.
He loved his country yet he spent most of his life in Europe. He was the
most celebrated portraitist of his time but left it at the very height of
his fame to devote full time to landscape painting, water colors and public
art. He hiked through the Rocky Mountains with a canvas tent under pouring
rain to paint the beauty of waterfalls, and painted near the front lines
during World War I to capture the horrors of war. (JSSGallery.org)
Butler,
Lady Elizabeth. Scotland For Ever. 1881 (British)
The painting depicts the charge of the Scots Greys at the Battle
of Waterloo, 1815. (English
Open Access) Elizabeth Thompson, later Lady Butler, was perhaps the
leading painter of the military genre of the late nineteenth century. Her famous
quartet of paintings exhibited between 1874 and 1877 (Calling the Roll after
and Engagement in the Crimea - Her Majesty the Queen; Quatre Bras - National
Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Balaclava - City of Manchester Art Gallery; and
The Return from Inkerman - Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston upon Hull) established
her reputation but her subsequent works never quite achieved the fame of these
earlier pictures, in spite of such dramatic scenes as Scotland for Ever! and
The Defence of Rorke's Drift. She continued to exhibit
at the Royal Academy until 1920 but with few exceptions, all her pictures had
military themes particularly soldiers in battle.
Delacroix,
Eugene. Liberty Leading the People. 1830 (French)
This painting, which is a sort of political poster, is meant to celebrate
the day of 28 July 1830, when the people rose and dethroned the Bourbon
king. Alexandre Dumas tells us that Delacroix's participation in
the rebellious movements of July was mainly of a sentimental nature.
Despite this, the painter, who had been a member of the National
Guard, took pleasure in portraying himself in the figure on the left
wearing the top-hat. Although the painting is filled with rhetoric,
Delacroix's spirit is fully involved in its execution: in the outstretched figure
of Liberty, in the bold attitudes of the people following herm contrasted with
the lifeless figures of the dead heaped up in the foreground, in the heroic poses
of the people fighting for liberty, there is without a doubt a sense of full
participation on the part of the artist, which led Argan to define this canvas
as the first political work of modern painting. (WebMuseum)
Visual Art Links
Art of the First World War Memorial de Caen (1998). 100 paintings from international collections to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the First World War.
Art in War: Exploring a Painting. BBC (2005). One of the ways to achieve maximum pleasure from a work of art is to find out as much as you can about the subject matter, the artist and its historical context. What can be uncovered about Paul Nash's Totes Meer? Is there a deeper meaning? When was this painting commissioned? What was the commissioner's reaction when it had been completed? Is there a deeper significance in the subject matter? Select the topics to find out more.