Images Of War

[poliphilo]

I’ve been looking at art of the First World War. Nothing changes. The artists tried to show things as they really were and officialdom tried to stop them.

C.W.R Nevinson put a little picture of dead Tommies into an exhibition in 1918. http://www.art-ww1.com/trame/090text.html. He was told to remove it. Instead he covered it over with brown paper and wrote "censored" across it. The War Office issued him with a reprimand. Not only was it forbidden to show pictures of dead bodies, it was also forbidden to draw attention to the rules that forbade it.

Nerves were very raw. When Frank Brangwyn was commissioned to paint murals in Westminster Palace in the mid 20s one of his offerings was this boys own image of tanks going into action. http://www.art-ww1.com/trame/022text.html. It was rejected as too morbid.

William Orpen painted this picture as a comment on The Peace of Versailles. http://www.art-ww1.com/trame/097text2.html. The nation refused to buy it, so he painted out the ghostly soldiers. http://www.art-ww1.com/trame/097text2.html. Actually I think the second version is an improvement, but it's nice to know that with the process of time and the thinning of the paint the two spooks are now beginning to show through.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Good morning!

Our artists are shamans, too--they show us their visions, they interpret the times, and, like Oracles, they tell it like it is.--it's amazing, what artists do.

I can imagine the rage that prompted the "censored" tag. I'm glad the artist had the courage.

I do think there are artists who cross the line to deliberately be provocative, shoving The Man around. I'm thinking of Piss Christ. I think less of this art than of Picasso's , which I think was surely a visionary work.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ah, Guernica!

Did you read how the copy that hangs in the United Nations building had to be covered over "to protect it" when Powell was there making the case for war?

Picasso was outraged by the bombing of civilians. These days we're supposed to take it in our stride.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I didn't know they covered over the UN copy, but it doesn't surprise me.

Picasso's vision was the Real War, not the PR war being spun by Powell.

Like John the Baptist yelling at--who did he yell at, Herod?

Unseemly.

I liked the first sad painting you linked, because I could feel the artist's sorrow there.

When we get war photos, so often they are intended to be uplifting--the men raising the flag at Iwo Jima. But what I remember are the other photos--the girl running in terror in Vietnam.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It would have been too ironic if Powell had had to stand there making the case for war with Picasso's great image of the cost of war behind his head.

These people fear art. They fear the image. The impulse that banned Nevinson's image of dead soldiers is exactly the same impulse that led Bush to try to censor images of coffins returning from Iraq.

[archyena.livejournal.com]

Well, it's the images that make things real and sometimes more than real. Until then you can call everyone "nattering nabobs of negativism" and get away with it. Numbers can be massaged, we can focus on "rebuilding," we can talk about whatever goals that are currently polling well at the moment; but it is very difficult to argue with bodies and coffins. Policy debates with the dead tend to be onesided.

[morrison-maiden.livejournal.com]

I really like all of those. I also admire C.W.R Nevinson for stating what the war office was doing, even if they denied it. I understand how important it is to be free with your art. I wrote a poem in school once, about the school shootings at Columbine High School. I wanted it to be in our literary magazine, but they said I had to write a disclaimer for it. Now granted, that wasn't really censorship, but it made me upset that we can't just give something at face value, and let others interpret it however they like. I think the disclaimer might have just limited it's meaning.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A disclaimer? What an odd idea. How did they want you to word it?

I'd be intersted to see the poem.

[morrison-maiden.livejournal.com]

They just wanted me to explain what I felt when I wrote it, and just to explain that I'm not for or against the people who were responsible. It was sort of a sarcastic ode to the people who bullied the shooter(s). I'll have to put a scan of it online so you can read it :)

[morrison-maiden.livejournal.com]

Actually, I just found the literary magazine, and I realized that they never even published my disclaimer. I remember it was damn good too :(

Lol

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

So they published the poem straight. I guess they got cold feet at first and then realised they were being silly.