From cave art on – art and war
FOLLOWING the marking of VE Day thoughts turn to war and the devastation it causes. Within art history, artists’ engagement with war and conflict can be traced back as a far as the first humans. Some cave paintings reveal images of combat with weaponry clearly indicated. Throughout history artistic depictions have recorded how humans have created conflict and the residual effects of this unfortunate aspect of life.
Not only have artists depicted these events, they have often been participants. During the nineteenth-century the Artist’s Rifles was formed as part of the widespread volunteer movement at the time. The group was organised by an art student named Edward Sterling in 1859 as a response to the possible French invasion after Felice Orsini’s attack on Napoleon III was linked to Britain. The group was made up of painters, musicians, actors, architects and others involved in the arts. Of course, many of these young lives were lost.
Artists on both sides have been killed in action, During WW1 the poet Wilfred Owen and the Austrian painter Franz Marc did not survive to see the end of the war. Sadly, Owen was killed in action one week before the signing of the Armistice, he was twenty-six years old. Marc, a key figure in the German Expressionist movement, was killed during the Battle of Verdun in March 1916 at the age of thirty-six.
The twentieth-century, when the two major world wars occurred, witnessed the first truly technological warfare when the use of mechanical weaponry became employed. This did not go unnoticed by artists who often abandoned traditional, realist methods in favour of abstracted, geometric forms. Artists such as Percy Wyndham Lewis and Jacob Epstein in Britain and, in Europe, Italian Futurists such as Umberto Boccioni depicted humanoid forms that were reduced to robot like machines – a reaction to the de-humanisation of such a merciless war.
Prior to WW2 Pablo Picasso painted his famous work Guernica as a reaction to the Spanish Civil War. A compelling, yet horrific image, it is another example of an individual trying to process the unfathomable nature of war. Undoubtedly, artists found (and still find) the need to express their emotions about war in visual form.
Powerful examples of such expressions are timeless reminders of the effect of conflict on human beings, for example, The Merry-Go-Round a painting from 1916 by Mark Gertler. On the face of it the painting depicts a ride at the funfair during WW1, painted when Gertler was on leave.
However, this is no ordinary funfair ride. The figures sitting astride the wooden horses are like machines (or perhaps “killing machines”), they are dressed in uniform (both male and female), their faces contorted with mouths wide open as if in mid scream.
Similarly, Felt Suit by Josef Beuys powerfully evokes the fragility of human beings in the face of war, it also has an uplifting message about the kindness shown to him by fellow humans. The piece consists of a man’s suit of clothing made out of felt material which was modelled on the artist’s own suit. It was made as a multiple of one hundred felt suits and dates from 1970. However, even though it was created a quarter of a century after the end of WW2, it is said to represent a poignant response to his experience as a fighter pilot when he was shot down and nearly died.
His life was saved by a tribe of Tartars who wrapped him in fat and felt. The experience obviously had a profound effect on him since for the rest of his life Beuys used the materials of fat and felt in his artworks repeatedly throughout his career. So strong was the association with them and the life-force – the thing that war so often cruelly takes away.
On television and in the media everyday there are reports on various conflicts around the world. It begs the question why celebrate the end of a war when there are currently more wars going on, more lives lost?
The reason to celebrate VE Day (and in August VJ Day) must be born out of optimism, if this is forgotten later generations might come to believe that war is a normal state of affairs. Artists of all kinds are crucial in this act of remembrance.
CATHY BELL
