Chapter 4

 

 

 

  Chapter fourth

                                                      CONCLUSIONS                                                                                   

                                                                  

 

 So what is the position of artists in representing war now?

It is a difficult question to address, as Angela Weight says; ‘The Committee had long discussions about it. We didn’t feel we could make a decision right now, the situation’s changing all the time.’

According to Alison Holt ‘the work of Keane did make an impact’. He thinks that an artist can bring another dimension to the understanding of the conflict.

That is true, but the problem is that photographers and independent media reporters are not allowed to be in the hot spots, only going where they are told to be, so they don’t have freedom to report, it is not possible to think that artists would have a different treatment.

Angela Weight maybe has found the solution as she says; ‘Artists use modern media and maybe artists don’t need to go there. The concept of the eyewitness is no longer as important, because you cannot witness this because you cannot get close to it. War is now happening at a distance and, in a sense, the art will happen at a distance as well’.

However artists have used modern media since the Spanish Civil War, the 1st war to be photographed using new technology and that instead of restraining the artists’ involvement, encouraged it. But, yes it is dangerous, no more than it was before, in a war there is always a chance to be killed.

 Issac Julien takes a different approach related to the representation of war. He said; ‘a more conceptual approach might be more useful for thinking behind what are quite horrid events, he continues saying ‘that it is not possible to use irony, especially after September 11 changed our ways of looking’.

In my opinion war hasn’t change so much, at least concerning to the consequences which are that innocent people are killed, raped, wounded and so on.

And in that case a conceptual approach will not have an understandable meaning for the vast majority of people.

This can open a different debate, and it is the meaning of art and to who it is intended. If art should have a social commitment or just be art for arts sake and be discussed in the artistic intellectual arena.

 What has changed is the nature of war, now the enemy is almost invisible and can be anywhere, there are no more front lines and even war is not declared ( the last war declared by the USA was in 1941against Japan) since them the country has been involved in almost interrupted conflicts.  

Angela said that ‘We’ve been moving away from the concept of an official war artist. It has unfortunate connotations of control and censorship and something rather restrictive.’ She continues, saying that ‘The Committee commission artists because they have a certain quality of imagination and way of thinking, and you want them to be free to express that.[1]

That could be true, but the Committee selects the artists according to the nature of their work and whether it fits in with the establishment views.

The Imperial War Museum (ARC) commissioned the young Glasgow based artist Graham Fagan to record his impressions of the 1999-2000 Kosovo conflict; where the label war artist was absent from any official documentation.

The eventual outcome of the work (IWM collection) was Theatre- a DVD projection of a stylized piece of allegorical theatre involving characters whose body language and speech alternately shift between aggression and polite greeting.  Paul Seawright, photographer whose works avoid militaristic images and Langland & Bell, minimalist conceptual artists were sent to Afghanistan[2] and none, as far as I know, were sent to Iraq.

In any case, painting has been losing relevance since 1945, figurative painting in particular, which is ignored by the mainstream art world as Peter Howson says, it is impossible for him to hold an exhibition in a major London gallery.

He blames the Tate Gallery and Michael Serota, accusing the art world of corruption ‘The galleries that sell the things to the Tate- there are only four or five of them- all are in there with the Tate. They have friends of the gallery in the patrons of the Tate and on the Buying committees and they protect themselves. Nearly all the critics are in the bag and dealers like Charles Saatchi prosper from it.[3]

 

So if the art trends are dictated by the art critics and dealers, and the educational system follows the tide, it may be claimed that they all support the same objectives and separate art, from its social implications and promote the individual and conceptual.

 

Approaching the final conclusion, the discussion is about which medium is more relevant now, comparing photography and painting; Nathan Coley says; ‘Artists are commissioned to document and mediate what has happened. In the case of war, despite instantaneous photographic technology the camera really does lie, so artists have an important role as ambassadors of truth’.[4]

 

According to James Nachtwey ‘the strength of photography lies in the ability to evoke a sense of humanity, if war is an attempt to negate humanity, them photography can be perceived as the opposite of war and if it is used well it can be a powerful ingredient in the antidote of war.

In a way, he continued ‘if an individual assumes the risk of placing himself in the middle of a war in order to communicate to the rest of the World what is happening, he is trying to negotiate for peace. Perhaps that is the reason why those in charge of perpetuating a war do not like to have photographers around.’

So because not everyone can be there, he explains, is because photographers go there and risk their lives to show them, to reach out and grab them and make them stop what they are doing and pay attention to what is going on- to create pictures powerful enough to overcome the diluting effects of the mass media and shake people out of their indifference- to protest and by the strength of that protest to make other protest.[5]

 

A very powerful example of his work is a photography taken in Tejutepeque , El  Salvador, 1984.

                     32                                                                                               

 

According to the French photographer Luc Delahaye working in Bosnia commenting about Howson work he says:

 I would like to do such work, but I cannot. I am beginning to realize that I am limited, that I am in a way misrepresenting the war here. I always have to look for strong moments, and I do not pay attention to the weak moments. They are the most important really, the ordinary things. I am always more bored that excited in this country, .Howson can represent those weak moments, that tense boredom common to all wars, in his work and bring out their significance.. in a way that a photographer cannot. Howson also can go beyond the strongest moments putting his imagination like any camera can do.[6]

                                                               

So that leads one to think that art is still or even more relevant than ever to counter mass media propaganda. If photography is more relevant than painting a straight answer could be yes, because we are more familiar with the immediacy of the image and despite some arguments is more accepted as representation of truth.

Moreover photography and photomontage could be more influential on people’s understanding of the reality of war.

As the artist John Roberts says commenting on Peter Kennard’s work ‘Kennard is one of the very few artists- the only one, it might be said- who has had a direct effect on recent British politics. His photomontages are everywhere’.

33

 

   Truly his work has been fly posted and used in almost every anti-war demonstration in Britain from the 1960s onwards; and have been seen by hundreds of thousands of people, making a bigger impact than a painting hung in a gallery usually for a short period of time or even more impact than photographs which apart from being in galleries and in a few magazines, don’t have the impact of being on the streets, where everybody can  see them.

34

 

‘London changed for me in the years of CND. The photo- montages I made for the disarmament movement were out in the street, stuck on walls, up in town halls, on badges and in newspapers. I could spot my work around the City being used in campaigns rather than only being shown to people in galleries’.[7]                           35

                                                            

                                                      

Another artist is following that path, now using Photoshop, his name is Leon Khun, based in London and producing striking images from the last two years, collaborating with ‘Stop the War Coalition’ and part of a collective of artists named ‘Artists against the war’;[8] one of his best images is titled ‘ Mad Dogs and Englishmen…’.                                          

                                                                                                                                                                                  

 

 As a final conclusion, maybe photomontage is the path to follow in order to make an impact, and Peter Kennard as its best current exponent; the artist therefore to research, following the tradition started by Grosz and Heartfield.

 

But what we don’t know is the future and if as Howson says, ‘real painting will come back again’.[9]

 

As we are living in a more complex world and our governments are using the same strategy of instilling fear in their citizens as Goering explained, so the response to that policy should require a bigger involvement in the art world as a way of bringing out the truth in order to counteract the official propaganda.

Which medium is more relevant maybe is not important, probably the answer is that photography, painting, photomontage and literature (information), every possibility should be used in order to bring out the truth and to achieve a world where peace and solidarity instead of war and individuality being the ultimate goals.

 

 

 

[1]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/newsnight/1621878.stm( see appendix full interview)2.

[2]web report: Iraq, The Art Of Darkness, http://www.sundayherald.com/review ( see appendix N 3)

[3] see full article appendix N: 4

[4] Visual art: www.sundayherald.com/review

[5]http://www.war-photographer.com/warum_e.htm(see appendix  N 5

[6] Peter Howson, Bosnia pp 13-14.

[7] www.peterkennard.com                                                                            

[8] see appendix N 6.

[9] An unthinkable concept Sunday  heraldhttp://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/smgpubs/75399732.html?did=75399732&FMT=ABS&FMTS=FT&desc=An+unthinkable+concept%3f full article Appendix N: 6

  

     List of illustrations

    1-      ‘Your Country needs you’. Art and propaganda.

2-      ‘I Want you for the American army’. Art and propaganda.

3-      BOCCASILE. Art and propaganda.

4-      Basra victim, pamphlet Stop the War Coalition.

5-      ‘Freed’. Felix Nieto .Triptych, oil on canvas.2003. 

6-      Mussolini. Art and power.

7-      ‘The Third of May 1808’, Francisco de Goya 1814. Oil on canvas.345x266cm.Prado Museum,Madrid.  http:www.artprints-on-demand.co.uk/noframes/goya/execution rebels.htm

8-      ‘Ni por esas’ ,Goya. The disasters of war.

9-      ‘Esto es peor’. Goya. The disasters of war.

10-  ‘Grande Hazaña!’,.Goya The disasters of war.

11-  ‘Que hay que hacer mas?’. Goya. The disasters of war.

12-  ‘We are making a new world’.  Nash Paul. IWM pamphlet.

13-  ‘Wounded’. Otto Dix 1924 Etching and aquatint. ( Art against war p 64)

14-  ‘Trench Suicide’. :// www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/

 15- -  ‘Matches sealer’.Dix Otto..php?page =/de /sammlungen/gem/klamod_dix.htm&logo=2

         

16-‘War’   The Trench. Otto Dix, Triptychon Der Krieg (War Triptych), 1929-32, tempera on wood, central panel 204 x 204 cm, side panels 204 x 102 cm each, Gemäldegalerie Neue Meister, Dresden.  http://www.art-ww1.com/gb/texte/099text.html

 17- ‘Guernica’. Picasso and the war years.

 18- Vietnam poster 1966, New York. ( Picassos Guernica p 193)

19 -Badge.

20-  ‘Peace II’. Grosz George 1946 Oil on canvas canvas (p 95 Art against war)

 

21-  ‘What are we fighting for?’. Kokoschka Oskar 1943 Oil on canvas (p 94 Art against war)

22-  ’War’ .Pollock Jackson.  Pen and ink and colored pencil. 1947 (p 94 Art against war)

23-  ‘Napalm I’. Golub Leon. 1969 Acrylic paint (p 117 Art against war).

24-  ‘War baby’. Andrews Benny. 1968.Oil and collage (p 117 Art against war).

25-  ‘Girl accidentally napalmed by South Vietnamese planes’. Ut Nick. 1972. The camera at war.

26-  ‘We are making a new world’. Keane John. Gulf.

 27-   Images from the road to hell> Turnley Peter. http://www.saynotowar.info/links.htm ( the unseen  Gulf war by  Peter Turnley.)

28-Images from the road to hell> Turnley Peter.

29- . Images from the road to hell> Turnley Peter

30 - Croatian and Muslim. Howson Peter, Bosnia.

31- Crusader. Howson Peter, Sunday Herald.

32- Tejutepeque, El Salvador. 1984 Natchwey James ( p 146)

33- Kennard. Leaflet.

34- Kennard. (Art against war.) p 124.

35- Mad dog and English man. Khun, Leon. 2002. Postcard.