dissertation

PROLOGUE

The theme of war and the artists who have been involved in conflicts,

 either directly on the battlefronts, usually commissioned by institutions,

 and the ones who decided to express their opinions from the distance

of the front lines have played an important role in how society has

 seen wars.

War and art are both subjects which are present in the history of

humankind from the beginning of time.

Both of them have played an important role in the formation of cultures

 and societies and have had a direct incidence in how the World is

 formed now.

Through war empires and countries have been formed, creating borders

 and setting up economic and cultural differences among peoples.

Art has contributed greatly as a medium of communicating ideas and experiences and also as a medium of recording the activities of human

 beings.

                                        Chapter One   

                                    INTRODUCTION

 The main objective of this dissertation is to address the question of the

 relevance of painting in portraying war and its effects now that we are

living in the era of electronic communication.

I decide to approach the subject from two perspectives. One is to

research into war propaganda, seeing its evolution through the XX

Century and the subsequent wars; that is in order to understand the

methods in which states mobilize the population for war.

The second perspective will deal with the artists who have portrayed

consequences of war and or denounced them. This hopefully will give

us a broader perspective in how wars have been seen and also it will

explain why painting is still relevant or not in portraying wars.

I will look into the work of some of the most influential artists

works has touched the theme of war, starting with Goya, and going

through the most important wars and how artists have seen them. I

concentrate mainly on the painters,( Picasso, Dix, Grosz, Nash , Golub,

 Howson.. ), because I am a painter, but I will use photography as

 well when relevant.

So from Goya, and the Spanish Independence War, to the recent war

 in Iraq, part of the so-called war on terror, seeing how artists have

responded to those wars, either as a personal choice or by commission

from institutions.

This, in my opinion will be helpful in order to understand the changes

that art has experienced through the years.

These two chapters will lead to some conclusions, which will bring to

 light, at best, why wars are fought, who promotes them and if there

 is any hope for art and humankind to survive in the present conditions

 of infinite war. Analyzing the evolution of both approaches will be

 basic in order to understand the current state of art and the political

 arenas.

                                         Chapter Two    

                                    Propaganda at War

   The original use of the word propaganda was to describe the systematic

 propagation of beliefs, values or practices has been traced to the Seventeenth Century,

when in 1622 Pope Gregory XV named the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide

 ( Congregation For the propagation of the Faith), it was designed by the Vatican

 to counteract the dogma of the Protestant reformation.

 During the Eighteen and Nineteen centuries the term was used in reference to

 political or religious beliefs with a kind of neutrality; but from the First World

War the term took on its negative meaning. Information consciously used to

 produce a particular effect.[1]

     During the first half of the twentieth century the great political powers waged

 two world wars. Leaders of the combatant nations barraged their citizens with

 propaganda to evoke deep passions to fully support the war effort.

  Political propaganda has many objectives, Sarah Schleuning explains: to

 prepare the nation for war, encourage enlistment in the armed forces,

 promote wartime production, inform citizens about proper conduct, and

 assure people that the government is taking appropriate action.

     One strategy aimed to instill fear in citizens by demonizing the enemy,

dramatizing the consequences of defeat, and depicting war atrocities.[2]

  Propaganda is a vital weapon in warfare.  For example, in the recent Persian

Gulf War, Americans were stirred into hatred of the Iraqi regime by propaganda

which alleged that Hussein was stealing baby incubators.  Later, this propaganda

 was proven false, but not until it had accomplished its purpose. [3]

 Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in

England nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood.

But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is

 always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or

 a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship…Voice or

 no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.

That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and

 denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to

 danger. It works the same in any country. [4]

We are wrongly associating propaganda with totalitarian regimes

(Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy or Soviet Union) but they don’t have the

monopoly. The USA and Britain, to give two examples of western

democracies, have used propaganda during any conflict, covering the term as

 “information services” or “public education” and they are doing that in this era

 using different media. They don’t have to produce posters like before, even

 though they still do. Now they can reach a bigger audience through the mass

 media, such as television, usually owned by  Press Barons influenced

sometimes by governments, usually the other way around now a days; so

 newspapers and governments whatever their political position have a similar

 role, which is to maintain and preserve the status quo.

So posters in the past showing the enemy as evil and somehow not human,

stealing treasures, killing or raping women... have helped to mobilize

populations to wage wars.

But also speeches and lies have been used. It seems that everything is valid

to bring people along; a good example of this last affirmation is the following

 speech by Hermann Goering during the Nuremberg Trials after WW II.

  Wartime propaganda attempts to make people adjust to abnormal conditions,

and adapt their priorities and moral standards to accommodate the needs of

war.[5]

According to Eric Hobsbawm, Art has been used to reinforce the power of

political rulers and states since the ancient Egyptians, though the relationship

between power and art has not always been smooth. He pointed out that there

 are three primary demands from power to art: First is to demonstrate the glory

 and triumph of power itself, memorials and public art in general, second the

conversion of art in spectacle making the viewer participate as a kind of

 theatrical ritual, the Mall in London (1911) is an example, public spaces to

stimulate mass patriotism. The third demand is the service of art as educational

 or propaganda, to inculcate the state’s values system.[6]

War Memorials and cenotaphs are used to remember the soldiers who died

defending supposedly moral values; so people will not forget that those soldiers

 died defending their countries and that we should be proud of them, when the

 truth is more complex than that.

This last demand is possibly not relevant now, because art is no longer a

priority in the educational system, and, art in general, is not concerned with

 social  issues but with individuality.

So once power needed art, not any art, but one that served and propagated

those values, Social Realism and classical figurative art were the norm in The

 Soviet Union and in Nazi Germany. Fascist Italy was opened to avant-garde

art through the Futurists, who took a clear stance in promoting violence and

war.

 The Futurists Balla and Depero announced in 1915 the advent of a

“metallic animal”, a new creature which could speak, shout and dance

 automatically. They promise to construct millions of these in preparation for

 ‘the vaster war.’[7]

One exception could be the art produced in the first years of the Russian

Revolution which promoted the arts, providing artists with studios but also

 giving them the freedom to explore and create.

On the other hand art needs power, because artists need to sell their work,

 before working for kings and the economically privileged, in other words,

patronage had been a necessity of survival; that was true for the court painters

 in the past and was true for the Official War artists.

 Under Stalin in the Soviet Union the state became the patron and directed art

 towards a mass audience. Another consideration can be made about art which

 has been used as propaganda, even though it wasn’t made for that purpose, it

 is Abstract Expressionism, which was promoted in the USA in order to

 counteract Social realism. Abstract expressionism and Jackson Pollock as its

 most prominent figure, was launched as the triumph of freedom and USA

 values, so it was used as a powerful weapon during the cold war.[8]

During the 1^st World War some of the most influential images were to be seen

 in Poster art and those that served to recruit personnel like, ’Your country

 needs you’1914 and the American version ‘I want you for the U. S. Army’

 from 1917.Both images create a sense of duty of the citizens towards the state.

 1 2 3 

Another tactic was appealing to religion or beliefs, and also portraying the

 enemy as a inhuman and savage like the  one produced by the Italian Gino

 Boccasile from 1941-45.

Taking as an example the USA during the Second World War, in 1942 the

Office of War Information was created, distributing posters in runs of 1500000,

posted 100,000 messages in public spaces each month. Films reached 8.5

 million viewers every month. In an average week in American cinemas 50

 million viewers watched official information shorts, and by 1943 nearly

 one-third of Hollywood productions were war-theme movies. The US

government’s information policy combined this prolific production of war

 imagery with rigorous censorship that affected all areas of the media.

 Thousands of images were sent to magazines and newspapers but only the

ones considered suitable to be shown to the public managed to be printed,

 this process transformed the visual evidence into propaganda. [9]                                                                   4

But that filter is still relevant in our days. In 1991 during the Gulf War an image

 was sent from the carnage that the American troops inflicted on the retreating

 Iraqi troops in the so- called Death Mile” an image of a man reduced to ashes

 was sent to the British Media: only one newspaper published the photograph

 “The Guardian”.

A painting after that picture was made on March 2003 in order to awake

people’s consciousness of the consequences that the imminent war would

 bring.The painting was made to be held in a student exhibition; finally it was

 excluded from the show; different reasons were given.

                        5

 The history of modern propaganda is linked with the rise of mass culture, in

other words the mass production of images and messages by industrial

techniques. Stalin and Hitler recognized that the cinema would be a far more

 effective instrument of persuasion than paintings or traditional mediums; also

 they believed that the control of art was as necessary as the control of the

 economy.[10]                                                6     

    Portraits and sculptures of leaders were widely used, sometimes on a

monumental scale like one of Mussolini built by Italian troops in Ethiopia,

1936, as a symbol of the New Roman Empire.[11]

     In spite of the fact that Cinema was a very powerful weapon, one even

more powerful was about to take a fundamental role in portraying war

manipulating reality, from the 1950s, Television was in almost every home in

 most industrialized countries. It was in the 1960s and in the Vietnam War that

viewers started to see images daily of the conflict, but this was done in a

 particular way of interposing news that make war almost another item in the

 news program.[12]

 But the profusion of images had the opposite effect and the American viewers

 tired of seeing images of war and body bags returning home (around 70.000)

 created a strong anti-war movement that helped to end the war.

   By 1991 when the Gulf War broke out the world had the ‘privilege’ of

watching live the war, from the comfort of their sofas. In the United States

alone 160 million people watched it. For the first time war was broadcasted

 live with coverage in some cases of 24 hours a day.

Obviously, and learning from the Vietnam experience, the coverage was more

 carefully edited to not show images of the human consequences, only aerial

bombardments were shown and the suffering and unimaginable effects were

 avoided. This is done with the intention of portraying war as a smart and clean.

 Intelligent bombs only kill the enemy, without taking into account the civilian

 population.[13]

    ‘TV news bulletins broadcast blurred pictures of explosions on some

 indeterminate horizon or patch of darkened sky. Filmed from a great distance,

 so that any sense of their true impact is lost, they look more like fireworks

 than the lethal missiles’.[14]

One controversial issue is the artists who have portrayed war within the armies,

 the so called War Artists, which has influenced how war is seen, images of

heroic air battles and troops marching victorious or engaged in battles: only

showing the machinery of war and the positive aspects of it; friendship and

 sacrifice for their fellow citizens.

   Thousands of paintings and drawings were produced during the two World

Wars in Britain alone where even a ‘War Artist’ Advisory Committee’ was

formed, holding its first meeting on November 1939.

Its task was to choose and commission suitable artists to portray the war

activities. Some examples are, Stanley Spencer, John Piper, David Bomberg

or Henry Moore, (who declined the invitation to be an official War artist at the

 beginning of 1940); to name just a few of the most relevant; many of them

were veterans from the 1st WW.[15]

It can be argued that the work of these artists may be considered as

 propaganda according to the definition of the term propaganda given above:

 most of the work produced under the Committee can be considered as such

 because they focused the work into, at best, portraying the effort of the war

 activities avoiding any controversial imagery.

On the other hand they were officially commissioned war artists, with a clear

 brief on what they should paint, and often far from the battlefields.

Nevertheless they accepted and contributed to the glorification of war, with

some exceptions like Paul Nash who will be explored in the next chapter.

It’s always been problematic to identify propaganda, not for the intellectual

elite but for people in general, to whom the propaganda was intended. It was

 true before and is still true now where it is used through every possible

 medium and especially through the mass media.

But how can we identify whether the images shown are propaganda or not?

 The following article will offer some clues to that question in the most recent

wars.

This is the journalist Robert Fisk's guide to identifying war propaganda on

 your TV;

So here's a thumbnail list of how to watch out for mendacity and propaganda

 on your screen once Gulf War Two (or Three if you include the 1980-88

 Iran-Iraq conflict) begins. You should suspect the following:

Reporters who wear items of American or British military costume, helmets,

 camouflage jackets, weapons, etc.

Reporters who say "we" when they are referring to the US or British military

 unit in which they are "embedded".

Those who use the words "collateral damage" instead of "dead civilians".

Those who commence answering questions with the words: "Well, of course,

because of military security I can't divulge..." Those who, reporting from the

 Iraqi side, insist on referring to the Iraqi population as "his" (ie Saddam's)

people.

Journalists in Baghdad who refer to "what the Americans describe as Saddam

 Hussein's human rights abuses" - rather than the plain and simple torture we

 all  know Saddam practices.

Journalists reporting from either side who use the god-awful and creepy

phrase "officials say" without naming, quite specifically, who these often

 lying "officials" are.[16]

 Technological advances have transformed propaganda into one of the most

 effective weapons in the arsenal of the enemies of the truth..[17]