Modern.war.art

Modern War

and its Effect on Art

World War I: Causes

Militarism: Cultures believed strength and power brought honor. Britain and Germany were in an arms race to create more deadly weapons and larger armies

World War I: Causes

Alliances: All the countries of Europe were trapped in a web of alliances – if your ally went to war, you had to follow

World War I: Causes

Imperialism: all European countries had scrambled for years to take colonies in Africa and Asia. Britain and France had vast empires, Germany was late to the game and rivalry was fierce

World War I: Causes

Nationalism: feelings of cultural supremacy and extreme patriotism gave rise to hatred of other cultures and over-confidence in one’s own ability to win

Mechanization of War

Machine gun: could shoot hundreds of rounds of ammunition a minute

Mechanization of War

Heavy Artillery: large, heavy, transportable cannon-like weaponry; could fire shells over 12 miles

Mechanization of War

Barbed Wire: used as protection to prevent opposing infantry from charging; could not be defeated by heavy artillery, but later would be defeated by the tank

Trench Warfare

All of the weapons of WWI were DEFENSIVE in nature, so very quickly the war became a stalemate: after 4 years of war, millions of soldiers were dead, and the two armies had not advanced more than a few milesTrenches were dug for miles

upon miles facing each other

No Man’s Land

The area between the trenches – periodically each side would send a charge through the center and the soldiers would be mowed down

Poison Gas

• Deadly chlorine gas and later mustard gas became lethal killers as they were unleashed upon opposing armies

• Gas masks became standard issue

Shell Shock

• Psychological Response to emotional trauma of the trenches and shelling

• Some symptoms: physical abnormalities (tics and tremors, impaired vision and hearing, and paralysis) to emotional manifestations (panic, anxiety, insomnia, and a near-catatonic state)

Dadaism

• Disillusioned artists reacting to brutality of WWI

• Embraced chaos and irrationality• Disgusted with convention and tradition

- these things had led the world into slaughter

• Not art but anti-art• Used shock tactics, outrageous

provocations

Dadaism - Techniques

• Used prefabricated materials

• Left many artistic decisions to chance

• Expanded definition of art to include the stuff of modern life—newspapers, magazines, ticket stubs, mechanical parts, food wrappers, pipes, advertisements, light bulbs, and so on.

Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, Hannah Hoch, 1919

Murdering Airplane, Max Ernst, 1920

The Dada Rooftop Studio, Rudolf Schlichter, 1922

German Expressionism

• Tried to show not how the world looked, but how the world felt - conveyed anxiety and yearnings

• Raw, provocative, exposed ugliness of reality

• Cynicism toward ruling classes, disgust with war planners, highly satirical

• Emphasized not strategies of generals, but effect on individuals who fought and died

Expressionist Techniques

• No attempt at realism

• Distortion of form/twisted objects

• Deployment of strong colors

• Odd juxtapositions

• Grotesque images

• Geometric shapes

• Exaggerated imagery

• surreal, eerie atmosphere, anti-heroic characters, and elements of evil and betrayal

Apotheosis of War, Vasily Vereshchagin, 1871

Card-Playing War Cripples, Otto Dix, 1920

Wounded Soldier, Otto Dix, 1916

The Trench Warfare, Otto Dix,

1932

Corpse in Barbed Wire, Otto Dix, 1924

Shock Troops Advance Under Gas, Otto Dix, 1924

The Grenade, Max Beckmann,

1915

Explosion, George Grosz, 1917

The Nameless Ones, Albin Egger-Lienz, 1914

Survivors, Kathe Kollwitz, 1923

The Widow, Kathe Kollwitz, 1923

The Mothers,

Kathe Kollwitz,

1923

The Parents, Kathe Kollwitz, 1923

The Mothers, Kathe Kollwitz, 1919

Starving Children, Kathe Kollwitz, 1920

World War II - Causes

• Treaty of Versailles humiliated Germany

• Enormous reparations and Great Depression sent German economy into a tailspin

• Hyperinflation, Unemployment, Desperation

• Germany turned to Adolf Hitler and Fascism

Fascism

• political movement that emphasized loyalty to the state and obedience to its leader who had absolute authority

• promotes extreme nationalism and militarism

• includes denial of individual rights

Mobile War

• Advances in technology: no more trench warfare

• Fast moving planes and tanks to attack, followed by massive infantry, along with radios for communication allowed for “lightning war” or blitzkrieg

• In France, 1940, Germans crushed combined forces of four nations in less than six weeks

Civilians as Targets

• Mobile war meant larger war zones (including residential areas near factories); Civilians were deliberately targeted by air forces

• Over 60 million people died in WWII; About 40 million of those were civilians

London, 1941

The Blitz

London children made homeless by German bombs

Liverpool, 1940

Firebombing of Dresden

Rape of Nanking

Atomic Weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The Holocaust

War Photography

The Ethics of Bearing Witness

Falling Man, 9/11, Richard Drew

Sebastiao Selgado, 1983

Dead Iraqi Soldier, Kenneth Jareke, 1991

Struggling Girl, Kevin Carter, 1993

Napalm Girl, Nick Ut, 1972

[Some photographers are] “far too busy with the compositional aspects of [their] pictures—with finding the ‘grace’ and ‘beauty’ in the twisted forms of [their] anguished subjects. And this beautification of tragedy results in pictures that ultimately reinforce our passivity toward the experience they reveal. To aestheticize is the fastest way to anesthetize the feeling of those who are witnessing it. Beauty is a call to admiration, not to action ….”

“The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself” – Eduard Steichen

“If we’re big enough to fight a war, we should be big enough to look at it.” – Kenneth Jareke

Questions for Discussion:

1.Can photographs give a voice to innocent victims without exploiting their suffering, invading their privacy, or stripping them of their dignity?

1.Do photos of atrocities turn us into voyeuristic spectators of others’ pain?

1.If we witness these images but take no action, are we complicit?