tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/war-art-10933/articles
War art – The Conversation
2023-06-05T05:59:25Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/206934
2023-06-05T05:59:25Z
2023-06-05T05:59:25Z
What should the Australian War Memorial do with its heroic portraits of Ben Roberts-Smith?
<p>On Friday, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/dismissed-legal-experts-explain-the-judgment-in-the-ben-roberts-smith-defamation-case-191503">Federal Court dismissed</a> Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation case against The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times. </p>
<p>Justice Anthony Besanko ruled the newspapers had established, by the “balance of probabilities” (the standard of evidence in a civil lawsuit), that Roberts-Smith had committed war crimes. </p>
<p>Following the ruling, much public debate has focused on what the Australian War Memorial should do with Robert-Smith’s uniform, helmet and other artefacts of his on display. </p>
<p>Greens senator David Shoebridge <a href="https://twitter.com/DavidShoebridge/status/1664140665666826240">called for</a> the removal of these objects from public display to correct the official record and “to begin telling the entire truth of Australia’s involvement in that brutal war.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1664140665666826240"}"></div></p>
<p>The topic of what to do with Roberts-Smith’s uniform and helmet was debated on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH1oVNVJP1k">ABC’s Insiders yesterday</a>: should the display be removed, effectively cancelled, or changed to tell the full story? </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dismissed-legal-experts-explain-the-judgment-in-the-ben-roberts-smith-defamation-case-191503">'Dismissed': legal experts explain the judgment in the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case</a>
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<h2>The case of the oil paintings</h2>
<p>It is not just these artefacts on display. The memorial also has two heroic oil painting portraits of Roberts-Smith by one of Australia’s leading artists, <a href="http://www.michaelzavros.com/">Michael Zavros</a>. </p>
<p>These paintings were commissioned by the memorial in 2014. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529980/original/file-20230605-16883-qhpzvv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529980/original/file-20230605-16883-qhpzvv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529980/original/file-20230605-16883-qhpzvv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529980/original/file-20230605-16883-qhpzvv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529980/original/file-20230605-16883-qhpzvv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529980/original/file-20230605-16883-qhpzvv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529980/original/file-20230605-16883-qhpzvv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529980/original/file-20230605-16883-qhpzvv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Michael Zavros, Pistol grip (Ben Roberts-Smith VC), 2014, oil on canvas, 162 cm x 222 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2092390">© Australian War Memorial</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2092390">Pistol Grip (Ben Roberts-Smith VC)</a> is a larger-than-life-sized depiction of Roberts-Smith, camouflage arms outstretched, mimicking the action of holding a pistol.</p>
<p>The smaller <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2092391">Ben Roberts-Smith VC</a> depicts him in ceremonial military uniform. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529982/original/file-20230605-23-pgn7xe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529982/original/file-20230605-23-pgn7xe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529982/original/file-20230605-23-pgn7xe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529982/original/file-20230605-23-pgn7xe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529982/original/file-20230605-23-pgn7xe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529982/original/file-20230605-23-pgn7xe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529982/original/file-20230605-23-pgn7xe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529982/original/file-20230605-23-pgn7xe.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Michael Zavros, Ben Roberts-Smith VC, 2014, oil on canvas, 30 x 42 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2092391">© Australian War Memorial</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>In an <a href="https://memoreview.net/reviews/the-anti-art-of-war-by-rex-butler-and-paris-lettau">article in arts criticism website Memo</a> yesterday, respected Monash University art historian Rex Butler and arts journalist Paris Lettau weighed into the debate. </p>
<p>Butler and Lettau say Pistol Grip is:</p>
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<p>threatening, over-bearing, macho, hyper-masculine, celebratory, and enormous, like the man himself – some 220 centimetres wide and 160 centimetres high.</p>
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<p>When Zavros created his large portrait it was a depiction of a soldier doing what he was trained – and venerated – for doing. </p>
<p>It is an aggressive pose that, given current developments, can be read in a much more sinister way. It touches on a far bigger question of how national institutions for the public memory of war address difficult and morally ambiguous moments in a national story. </p>
<h2>Moral and ethical ambiguity</h2>
<p>When the Canadian War Museum opened at its new site in Ottawa in 2005, its new displays included two paintings in their collection by Canadian artist <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-in-her-powerful-portraiture-military-artist-gertrude-kearns-pays/">Gertrude Kearns</a>. </p>
<p>The paintings, Somalia without Conscience, 1996, and The Dilemma of Kyle Brown: Paradox in the Beyond, 1995, dealt with one of the most shameful episodes in Canada’s military history, known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia_affair">Somalia Affair</a>. </p>
<p>In 1992, the Canadian Airborne Regiment was deployed as peacekeepers to Somalia. In 1993, 16-year-old Shidane Arone was found hiding in the Canadian base, believed to have been stealing supplies. He was tortured, and soldiers photographed themselves with the semi-conscious boy. Master Corporal Clayton Matchee and his subordinate Private Kyle Brown <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/7x75xg/remembering-the-somalia-affair-canadas-forgotten-abu-ghraib-moment">were charged</a> with his murder and torture.</p>
<p>Somalia without Conscience depicts Matchee posing with the beaten Arone, while The Dilemma of Kyle Brown depicts Brown symbolically holding two potential fates in his hands: a lightly coloured cube in his right hand, and a darkened cube in his left. It addresses an ethical grey area many soldiers face during active service when the hierarchy of command comes into direct conflict with conscience. </p>
<p>Following the opening of the new Canadian War Museum, the presence of Kearns’s paintings sparked <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=nltxDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT519&lpg=PT519&dq=%E2%80%9Cwas+not+only+telling+the+stories+of+heroism+and+courage+that+most+of+them+expected+to+be+told+but+also+stories+about+failures,+disappointments,+and+human+frailty%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=sfQZw_2qXL&sig=ACfU3U18i4X0ERdbg0wfOKXbnOIe1-5-pA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjXw6Sdk6v_AhXGVmwGHbRwDh0Q6AF6BAgJEAM#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Cwas%20not%20only%20telling%20the%20stories%20of%20heroism%20and%20courage%20that%20most%20of%20them%20expected%20to%20be%20told%20but%20also%20stories%20about%20failures%2C%20disappointments%2C%20and%20human%20frailty%E2%80%9D&f=false">intense debate</a>. Curator Laura Brandon received abusive emails from members of the public. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529986/original/file-20230605-23-vgma1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529986/original/file-20230605-23-vgma1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529986/original/file-20230605-23-vgma1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529986/original/file-20230605-23-vgma1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529986/original/file-20230605-23-vgma1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529986/original/file-20230605-23-vgma1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529986/original/file-20230605-23-vgma1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529986/original/file-20230605-23-vgma1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>The museum copped criticism from figures such as the head of the National Council of Veterans Associations, who <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/war-museum-s-paintings-anger-veterans-group-1.546113">called</a> the paintings a “trashy, insulting tribute” and urged a boycott of the opening of the new museum.</p>
<p>Discussing this controversy in 2007, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1354856507072860?journalCode=cona">Brandon said</a> what upset veteran communities was that “their” museum:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>was not only telling the stories of heroism and courage that most of them expected to be told but also stories about failures, disappointments, and human frailty. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Brandon remained steadfast the museum needed to address the messy ambiguities of war and, despite pressure, kept Kearns’s paintings on display for the duration of the exhibition. </p>
<h2>The complexity of contemporary art</h2>
<p>Brandon’s curatorial decision to display Kearns’s Somalia paintings strike at the heart of what is special and important about contemporary war art in a national museum.</p>
<p>Contemporary art presents ethical and moral complexity, grey zones and a range of perspectives. This is vital in a healthy liberal democracy. </p>
<p>While Brandon’s choice to show Kearns’s Somalia paintings attracted criticism, the museum remained committed to telling a story that is difficult, ethically and morally complex, and uncomfortable for Canadians. </p>
<p>To remove Zavros’ portraits from display would remove the now-untenable hero narrative that once surrounded Roberts-Smith. But doing so would also rewrite public memory by effectively erasing an important part of why and how Roberts-Smith was revered. </p>
<p>These portraits now represent a morally complex story that needs to be addressed by our national war museum. </p>
<p>To remove the portraits would miss a valuable opportunity to debate important questions about how we construct hero stories.</p>
<p>So, how could these portraits still be shown in future? </p>
<p>Zavros’ portraits were already complex works. </p>
<p>Following Friday’s announcement, it is more important they are seen in all their additional multi-layered and problematic complexity. </p>
<p>The portraits show us how we create the nation through the stories we tell ourselves, and how dynamic that narrative can be. The portraits present a valuable opportunity to show narratives of war – like the stories of our own lives – are never simple, consistent and coherent. </p>
<p>The portraits should be displayed in ways that address this complexity, capturing the evolving story of Roberts-Smith in explanatory wall text. There is an opportunity here to not simply “correct” the official record, as Shoebridge suggests, but to have a deeper conversation about the role of hero narratives in diverting attention away from more important public debates about Australia’s involvements in conflicts. </p>
<p>Maybe this could be addressed in the art the memorial commissions in future. </p>
<p>The most compelling contemporary art works – and the most valuable museum displays in our national institutions – are those that consider our complex stories, raise important and self-reflective questions, and challenge simplistic narratives. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-defence-force-must-ensure-the-findings-against-ben-roberts-smith-are-not-the-end-of-the-story-206749">Australian Defence Force must ensure the findings against Ben Roberts-Smith are not the end of the story</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206934/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Prof Kit Messham-Muir is the lead Chief Investigator on the ARC Linkage Project Art in conflict: transforming contemporary art at Australian War Memorial, in partnership with the Australian War Memorial and National Trust (NSW), leading a team of investigators from University of Melbourne, UNSW and University of Manchester. Art in Conflict was funded by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council. Art in Conflict (LP170100039) received a Linkage Project grant of $293,380 and in-kind contributions from the Australian War Memorial. Former Canadian War Museum Curator Laura Brandon was a keynote speaker at the War, Art and Visual Culture: Los Angeles symposium in 2019, as part of the Art in Conflict project. The opinions expresssed here do not in any way reflect those of the Australian War Memorial. </span></em></p>
To remove the portraits would miss a valuable opportunity to debate important questions about how we construct hero stories.
Kit Messham-Muir, Professor in Art, Curtin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/112943
2019-03-05T19:15:52Z
2019-03-05T19:15:52Z
A noisy, passionate show from an artist in a hurry, Quilty has just one emotional pitch
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262006/original/file-20190304-92298-o46hjs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Installation view: Quilty featuring Pancreatitis (Kenny), The Last Supper (Bottom Feeder) and Farewell virginity by Ben Quilty, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2019.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Grant Handcock. </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>At 45, it is no longer a question of whether <a href="http://www.benquilty.com">Ben Quilty</a> is the next big thing in Australian art, but of how big will he get – a Storrier, a Whiteley or a Nolan?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.agsa.sa.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/quilty/">Quilty</a> is a large exhibition of monumental paintings, selected by the curator Lisa Slade, mainly from work made by the artist over the past six years. After its inaugural showing at the Art Gallery of South Australia, as part of the Adelaide Festival, it will tour to the state galleries in Brisbane and Sydney.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262077/original/file-20190305-92295-1nh3jyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262077/original/file-20190305-92295-1nh3jyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262077/original/file-20190305-92295-1nh3jyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262077/original/file-20190305-92295-1nh3jyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262077/original/file-20190305-92295-1nh3jyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262077/original/file-20190305-92295-1nh3jyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262077/original/file-20190305-92295-1nh3jyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262077/original/file-20190305-92295-1nh3jyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Ben Quilty, Australia, born 1973, Self-portrait after Afghanistan, 2012, Southern Highlands, New South Wales, oil on linen, 130.0 x 120.0 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Private collection, Sydney, Courtesy the artist, photo: Mim Stirling. L/BQ/9-1</span></span>
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<p>To call it a survey show may be a bit of a misnomer for apart from a couple of early Torana paintings – Quilty’s emblems of masculinity personified in a car – most of the show consists of huge slabs of paint. Some commemorate the artist’s service as an official war artist in Afghanistan, others his ultimately futile campaign to save the lives of Bali Nine pair Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.
There are refugees and the life vests on Lesbos, Aboriginal massacre sites, Trump and the Last Supper as well as portraits of himself, his family and friends.</p>
<p>Missing are Quilty’s smaller and more intimate paintings, drawings and prints. Quilty is a remarkably prolific artist and the curatorial choice was made to focus on his more recent, “public manifesto” pieces. As the artist explained to me, “I left it completely up to the curator – the selection, the hang, everything”.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262007/original/file-20190304-92283-ttkhkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262007/original/file-20190304-92283-ttkhkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262007/original/file-20190304-92283-ttkhkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262007/original/file-20190304-92283-ttkhkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262007/original/file-20190304-92283-ttkhkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262007/original/file-20190304-92283-ttkhkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262007/original/file-20190304-92283-ttkhkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262007/original/file-20190304-92283-ttkhkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Installation view: Quilty featuring Self Portrait, the executioner and Myuran by Ben Quilty, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Grant Handcock.</span></span>
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<p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/myuran-sukumarans-artistic-voice-is-raw-premature-and-unsettling-71216">Myuran Sukumaran's artistic voice is raw, premature and unsettling</a>
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<p>Quilty outlines the narrative of the exhibition, </p>
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<p>My work is about working out how to live in this world, it’s about compassion and empathy but also anger and resistance. Through it I hope to push compassion to the front of national debate.</p>
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<p>It is a very “noisy” exhibition, where the works scream at you from the walls, proclaiming the urgency, passion and raw emotion of the narrative content, as well as the energy and exuberance of the young artist wishing to demonstrate his mastery of a painter’s bag of tricks. </p>
<p>Thick sensuous slabs of oil paint, endless <a href="http://www.rorschach.com/index.php?id=2">Rorschach blots</a> and the juxtapositioning of negative and positive spaces are some of Quilty’s favourite formal strategies. There is a prevailing sameness of medium and technique that runs throughout this exhibition.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262005/original/file-20190304-92301-13q1fp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262005/original/file-20190304-92301-13q1fp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262005/original/file-20190304-92301-13q1fp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262005/original/file-20190304-92301-13q1fp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262005/original/file-20190304-92301-13q1fp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262005/original/file-20190304-92301-13q1fp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262005/original/file-20190304-92301-13q1fp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262005/original/file-20190304-92301-13q1fp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Installation view: Quilty featuring Irin Irinji and Fairy Bower Rorschach, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">photo: Grant Handcock.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/johnbrack/">John Brack</a>, arguably the finest painter Australia has produced, related to me the experience of visiting the Louvre in Paris and being overwhelmed by the great halls of masterpieces all screaming at the viewer, “look at me, I’m a genius”. Finally Brack took refuge with the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians and the silence and eternal validity of their work. The “en masse” emotional pitch of Quilty’s exhibition, after a while, loses its ability to shock.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262078/original/file-20190305-92286-bqlo60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262078/original/file-20190305-92286-bqlo60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262078/original/file-20190305-92286-bqlo60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262078/original/file-20190305-92286-bqlo60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262078/original/file-20190305-92286-bqlo60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262078/original/file-20190305-92286-bqlo60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262078/original/file-20190305-92286-bqlo60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262078/original/file-20190305-92286-bqlo60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ben Quilty, Australia, born 1973, Captain Kate Porter, After Afghanistan, 2012, Southern Highlands, New South Wales, oil on linen, 180.0 x 170.0 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program Collection of Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art, Courtesy the artist, photo: Mim Storling. L/BQ/4-1</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Quilty ascribes to the philosophy that the artist is the conscience of society and it is up to the artist to take a stand and lead on issues that matter. In his case, these include the plight of refugees, global warming and the environment, the unfinished business of recognising Australia’s Aboriginal heritage and the bloodshed of the colonial period, and the mounting anxiety associated with living in the “post-truth” age.</p>
<p>Quilty’s Last Supper series of paintings had their origins in the unexpected victory of President Donald Trump in 2016. They are basically eschatological images dealing with a gathering of drunken, evil elders around a festive table set to mark the end of the world. While a grotesque image of a large man with a blonde wig may be discernible in some of the paintings, an attempt is made at universality, rather than specificity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262084/original/file-20190305-92292-15lufu8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262084/original/file-20190305-92292-15lufu8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262084/original/file-20190305-92292-15lufu8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262084/original/file-20190305-92292-15lufu8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262084/original/file-20190305-92292-15lufu8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262084/original/file-20190305-92292-15lufu8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262084/original/file-20190305-92292-15lufu8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262084/original/file-20190305-92292-15lufu8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ben Quilty, Australia, born 1973, The Last Supper, 2016, Southern Highlands, New South Wales, oil on linen, 204.0 x 267.0 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Private collection, Courtesy the artist.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These are possibly some of the more abstracted images in the exhibition where contorted masses of flesh and bone writhe as if some sort of surrealist anatomical monstrosity. </p>
<p>As the series progresses chronologically, the early thematic literalness is progressively abandoned as increasingly Quilty seeks to create an image of universal anxiety. These are some of the more successful paintings by the artist to date.</p>
<p>Quilty is an artist who appears to be always in a hurry. Passion and urgency inherent in the subject matter, perhaps may require a more distilled and deliberate technical resolution to increase the effectiveness as paintings. It is difficult to doubt the artist’s sincerity and commitment to the causes he champions, but one can question the technical resolution of some of the pieces.</p>
<p>If 15 years ago, images of a backyard Torana could be painted with gusto in thick impasto as a measure for male testosterone levels, the abandoned orange life vests of 2016, washed up on the island of Lesbos and presented as emblems of human sacrifice could, perhaps, call for an alternative artistic strategy. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262079/original/file-20190305-92301-1as8hm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262079/original/file-20190305-92301-1as8hm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262079/original/file-20190305-92301-1as8hm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262079/original/file-20190305-92301-1as8hm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262079/original/file-20190305-92301-1as8hm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262079/original/file-20190305-92301-1as8hm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262079/original/file-20190305-92301-1as8hm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262079/original/file-20190305-92301-1as8hm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ben Quilty, Australia, born 1973, Omid Ali Avaz, 2016, Southern Highlands, New South Wales, oil on linen, 130.0 x 110.0 cm; Gift of Paul Walker and Patricia Mason in memory of Omid Ali Avaz through the Art Gallery of South Australia Contemporary Collectors 2018. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gift Program, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, Courtesy the artist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Brenton McGeachie. 20183P84</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh and Chaim Soutine could all empower an inanimate object with the profound power of a spiritual icon. In Quilty’s huge series of life vests, the materiality of the object is perfectly conveyed in paint, but it is left to the beholder to value add to the experience through their imagination.</p>
<p>Quilty is an interesting phenomenon in the Australian art scene, my hope is that he will not be eaten up by the Sydney art machine, as has been so frequently the case for artists in the past. The hope is that he will be allowed, and will allow himself, to explore and find his true potential as an artist.</p>
<p><em>Quilty, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide March 2 – June 2, touring to Queensland Art Gallery + Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane 29 Jun - 13 Oct 2019 and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 9 Nov 2019 - 2 Feb 2020.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112943/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sasha Grishin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Ben Quilty is the next big thing in Australian art. Will he be allowed - and will he allow himself - to explore and find his true potential as an artist?
Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86768
2017-11-10T01:52:29Z
2017-11-10T01:52:29Z
Flowers, remembrance and the art of war
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194106/original/file-20171110-13296-gy6opb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Poppies at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/canberra-australia-march-18-2017-poppy-613609064">katatrix/shuttershock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Before 1914, flowers in everyday life spelt beauty, femininity and innocence; they were seen as part of women’s culture. But during the first world war, that changed. Men gathered posies of flowers on battlefields and dried them in honour of the dead, they turned to wild flowers as motifs for paintings and photographs, and they recognised in blue cornflowers and red poppies the fragility of life.</p>
<p>Historian Paul Fussell referred to the red poppy, <em>Papaver rhoeas</em>, as “an indispensable part of the symbolism” of WWI. When, on November 11, those who fought and died in WWI are commemorated, the sanguine colour of the red poppy, a flower that grew in profusion on Flanders Fields, is a vivid reminder to the living of the cost of sacrifice in war.</p>
<p>At the end of the conflict, artificial replicas of the Flanders poppy were sold in Allied countries to be worn in honour of the dead. Their resistance to decay became an embodiment of everlasting memory. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Artificial poppies left at the Waitati cenotaph in New Zealand (2009). The white poppy is used as a symbol of peace.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anzac_poppies.JPG">Nankai/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, the red poppy was not always adopted without criticism. After 1933, in opposition to the symbolism of it, peace ceremonies appropriated the <a href="http://www.ppu.org.uk/whitepoppy/index.html">white poppy</a>. Each flower expresses a different view on war: red embodies commemoration of sacrifice; white opposes political violence and remembers all war victims. </p>
<p>As living forms, as art, and as symbols, the wildflowers that soldiers encountered in WWI Europe help us negotiate the unimaginable enormity of war and deepen the solemnity of remembrance. </p>
<h2>‘We are the dead’</h2>
<p>Among the most affecting, but least talked about, Australian war paintings that officially commemorate and remember the fallen soldiers of the First World War, is George Lambert’s <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C176421">Gallipoli Wild Flowers</a> (1919). Painted while Lambert served as Official War Artist, the work is unusual for the absence of soldiers’ bodies shown in action or in death. Yet it alludes to both by the inclusion of an empty slouch hat and a cluster of battlefield wildflowers. At the centre of the array of blossoms is the Flanders poppy. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Lambert, ‘Gallipoli wild flowers’, oil (1919).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C176421">ART02838/Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The painting is a floral still-life. It exudes the melancholy of life stilled, and challenges popular conceptions that flowers are feminine, passive and beautiful. If the flowers in Lambert’s painting are beautiful, it is beauty tempered by the knowledge of human suffering. And they break with convention by relating to men, not women. </p>
<p>The dark centres of the poppies stare at us like the eyes of men who fought at Gallipoli. The message they communicate is the same one relayed by poppies in the lines of John McCrae’s mournful poem <a href="https://www.army.gov.au/our-history/traditions/in-flanders-fields">In Flanders Fields</a> (1915): “we are the dead”.</p>
<p>Other Australian artists deployed by the Australian War Memorial tried to render the same power, and the same symbolisms, as George Lambert’s wildflower still-life, although with less intensity. Will Longstaff, for example, painted <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C172234">Menin Gate at midnight</a> (1927), a monumental commemoration to men who were buried in unmarked graves on the Western Front in which the ghosts of the dead rise up among blood red poppies that grow in the same soil where their bodies decayed. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Will Longstaff, ‘Menin Gate at midnight’, oil on canvas (1927).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C172234">ART09807/Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Flowers and the battlefield</h2>
<p>On churned up war landscapes, masses of wildflowers covered <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/index.php/collection/C351426">derelict tanks</a> and blanketed the ground where the dead lay, juxtaposing cold metal and the destructive power of men with the organic growth and regenerative power of nature.</p>
<p>Such contrasts presented Frank Hurley, Australia’s Official War Photographer working in Flanders and Palestine from August to November 1917, with many of the war’s most powerful images. Hurley could not ignore the cruel irony of all that fragile beauty growing free in the midst of industrialised warfare, mass killing, and the corpses of the dead. </p>
<p>Hurley’s <a href="http://www.greatwar.nl/kleur/anemones.html">Lighthorseman gathering poppies, Palestine</a> (1918) is a rare colour photograph from the period. Hurley well understood the power of the poppy. He knew that for the image to become a national icon of comradeship, the flowers had to be coloured red because it is the poppy’s redness that made it the <a href="https://anzacday.org.au/the-poppy-is-for-sacrifice">official symbol</a> of sacrifice. Yet Hurley’s photo is pastoral, and in its vision of ideal life suggests the antithesis of war.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frank Hurley, Australian lighthorseman gathering poppies, colour photograph (c1918).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C979439">PO3631.046/Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It may also be that flowers have a particular power over our perception. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2928665?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Elaine Scarry</a> argues that the high colouration of a flower’s face is more perfect for imagining and storing images to memory than the faces of people. Official and unofficial WWI records lend support to Scarry’s theory. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/LIB34556">Cecil Malthus</a>, a New Zealand soldier at Gallipoli in 1915, found himself under attack, it was not the faces of the soldiers around him that he remembered, but the faces of self-sown poppies and daisies on the ground.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86768/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ann Elias does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The wildflowers that WWI soldiers encountered in Europe become symbols of remembrance and the fragility of life. The red poppy in particular is a powerful motif in Australian war art and photography.
Ann Elias, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/72679
2017-03-07T13:12:13Z
2017-03-07T13:12:13Z
The Imperial War Museum originally opened as a museum to end all wars – that didn’t last long
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158908/original/image-20170301-5525-1y6v571.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pawel Pajor / Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.iwm.org.uk/">IWM</a>, or the Imperial War Museum as it was known <a href="http://www.iwm.org.uk/sites/default/files/press-release/New_Brand_Press_Release.pdf">until 2011</a>, is Britain’s national museum on war. It presents a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/540123/56470_HC_434_Web.pdf">history of the whole country during wartime</a> since 1914, alongside its former empire and dominions. In 2017, IWM is celebrating its centenary. </p>
<p>During World War I, a process to found an official institution to document the ongoing conflict began. At the opening of the museum on June 9 1920, King George V <a href="https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/32003/supplement/8072/data.pdf">spoke of</a> the hopes which had fuelled the foundation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We cannot say with what eyes posterity will regard this museum, nor what ideas it will arouse in their minds. We hope and pray that as the result of what we have done and suffered they may be able to look back upon war, its instruments and its organisation as belonging to a dead past.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, these hopes were totally dashed by September 1939. While World War I may have created the institution, it was World War II which transformed it into the museum that exists today.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158384/original/image-20170225-22983-1bcizut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158384/original/image-20170225-22983-1bcizut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158384/original/image-20170225-22983-1bcizut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158384/original/image-20170225-22983-1bcizut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158384/original/image-20170225-22983-1bcizut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158384/original/image-20170225-22983-1bcizut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158384/original/image-20170225-22983-1bcizut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158384/original/image-20170225-22983-1bcizut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A view of the Army Gallery inside the Crystal Palace. © IWM (Q 17030)</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Founding: 1917-1920</h2>
<p>The idea of the museum came about at a bleak time for Britain. In 1917 the country’s strategic situation abroad was precarious while at home society reeled from the effort of waging total war. Morale had sunk very low. Past research suggests that the war museum was founded in reaction to this dire situation: both to <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Museums_and_the_First_World_War.html?id=v76LEm-Tc2wC">counter war weariness</a> within the population and to <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vczxxPKNr8oC">commemorate the sacrifices</a> made by all people for the country.</p>
<p>Both needs would undoubtedly have featured in the final decision to go ahead with the project. But the argument that the operational requirement of countering war weariness was its driving force feels most convincing. When Sir Alfred Mond MP proposed the idea to the War Cabinet, the British government had just undergone a political coup, with the new prime minister, David Lloyd George, asserting himself by reorganising Britain’s institutions and rejuvenating its war effort. </p>
<p>Further evidence that the initiative was operationally driven lies in its initial budget – just £3,000 – and that during 1916 all national museums were closed to save money. State orchestrated commemoration would certainly not have been a top priority at this time.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158385/original/image-20170225-22978-x0ary4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158385/original/image-20170225-22978-x0ary4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158385/original/image-20170225-22978-x0ary4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158385/original/image-20170225-22978-x0ary4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158385/original/image-20170225-22978-x0ary4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158385/original/image-20170225-22978-x0ary4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158385/original/image-20170225-22978-x0ary4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158385/original/image-20170225-22978-x0ary4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A view of one of the art galleries inside Crystal Palace. © IWM (Q 17028)</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Following the cabinet’s approval, an organising committee was created. Its main concern was to amass the institution’s collections. Collection subcommittees were formed, each with a specific focus, the range of which highlights the organisers’ aspirations to found a museum that was representative of the national effort. </p>
<p>It has <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Social_History_in_Museums.html?id=LrPZAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">been argued</a> (in the early 90s) that this work was the most all-encompassing documentation programme ever undertaken by a cultural heritage institution. The material collected encompassed objects that would previously have been considered by many curators as valueless: trophies, for example, or photographs, personal effects and artwork produced by everyday people. The collection essentially became ethnographic, a snapshot of a nation locked in war.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.britishpathe.com/video/victory-exhibition/query/Victory+Exhibition">The museum opened in June 1920</a>, initially at the Crystal Palace, in Sydenham, south London. Of course, by this stage, the original aim of countering war weariness had been annulled with the end of the war. An attempt to define the museum as a national war memorial had also flopped. </p>
<p>And so the organisers redrafted the project’s purpose. Now, the idea was to create a museum that covered the whole British Empire and its dominions, so raising the instiution’s profile. Accordingly the name of the museum changed from the National War Museum to the Imperial War Museum – the word “imperial” signifying its broader international remit, rather than subject matter.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158382/original/image-20170225-23000-4v9enl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158382/original/image-20170225-23000-4v9enl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158382/original/image-20170225-23000-4v9enl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158382/original/image-20170225-23000-4v9enl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158382/original/image-20170225-23000-4v9enl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158382/original/image-20170225-23000-4v9enl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158382/original/image-20170225-23000-4v9enl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The principle site of IWM, housed in the former Bethlem Royal Hospital building since 1936.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Philip W. Deans 2016</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reinvention: 1939-1946</h2>
<p>Over the interwar years IWM changed little, apart from several relocations. In line with the king’s opening speech, it focused on the “war to end all wars” (as World War I was then known), commemorating its sacrifices and championing the message that war is folly. But World War II quashed the concept of the war to end all wars, and threatened IWM with cultural irrelevancy. Reinvention became essential for its long-term continuance.</p>
<p>When World War II broke, IWM closed to the public. But the museum did not stop working. Leslie Bradley, IWM’s director general at the time, pushed to convince its trustees and the government of the need to document the new conflict. Eventually, the museum received the permission needed and, in December 1939, started collecting.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158386/original/image-20170225-22992-1p19c50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158386/original/image-20170225-22992-1p19c50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158386/original/image-20170225-22992-1p19c50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158386/original/image-20170225-22992-1p19c50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158386/original/image-20170225-22992-1p19c50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158386/original/image-20170225-22992-1p19c50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158386/original/image-20170225-22992-1p19c50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158386/original/image-20170225-22992-1p19c50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A view of an aircraft engine, Supermarine Spitfire and rocket projector and rockets in the first exhibition held by IWM following its reopening during 1946. © IWM (D 29424)</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With limited resources, IWM focused initially on collecting ephemera such as posters, information pamphlets and other documentation. At the same time it tried to enrol the services and government departments into earmarking and saving artefacts for exhibition after the war. This was not an easy task – these bodies were concerned with more pressing matters. But by the war’s conclusion, sufficient cooperation had facilitated a range of impressive material. <a href="http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030005003">One such accession</a>, made early in the process, was the “<a href="http://www.britishpathe.com/video/chamberlain-sudeten-crisis-1938/query/Chamberlain+Sudeten+Crisis+1938">piece of paper</a>” signed by both Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler not long before hostilities began. </p>
<p>IWM reopened in 1946. In galleries once reserved for the “Great War”, artefacts of a newer, more terrible conflict shared the space. The museum of the “war to end all wars” was no more, and a museum which would eventually cover all Anglo-Commonwealth conflict since 1914 was born. Since then, new museums have opened in Duxford and Manchester. HMS Belfast and the Churchill War Rooms are also part of the IWM family.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158387/original/image-20170225-22983-685i2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158387/original/image-20170225-22983-685i2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158387/original/image-20170225-22983-685i2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158387/original/image-20170225-22983-685i2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158387/original/image-20170225-22983-685i2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158387/original/image-20170225-22983-685i2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158387/original/image-20170225-22983-685i2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158387/original/image-20170225-22983-685i2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A view of what is described as ‘enemy relics’, also in the first exhibition held by IWM following its reopening. © IWM (D 29423)</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Conceived partly as a propaganda tool, IWM must have defied some initial expectations in reaching the age of a hundred. Through doing so, it has become one of the most important institutions on war perpetrated by Britain, the Commonwealth and other countries during the 20th and 21st centuries. Beyond its propensity to adapt, perhaps the dark underbelly of IWM’s success is people’s innate interest in conflict. As Dian Lees, the current director general <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/jul/10/imperial-war-museum-reopens-first-world-war">has said</a>: “War … is always going to be fascinating to a certain section of the audience, and our job is to broaden that audience.” </p>
<p>Where IWM will be in another hundred years remains to be seen. But in an increasingly uncertain world, one can conjecture that the interest in it across the UK and further afield will not subside anytime soon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72679/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip W. Deans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Imperial War Museum was founded to do a very different task to that of today.
Philip W. Deans, PhD Candidate, Newcastle University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/67206
2016-10-27T09:51:35Z
2016-10-27T09:51:35Z
Paul Nash painted in the trenches – and I did the same in Afghanistan
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143430/original/image-20161027-11260-hf23v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">
Paul Nash, Battle of Germany, 1944. Imperial War Museum, London © Tate</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A new <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/paul-nash">Paul Nash show</a>, “the largest … for a generation”, is now open at London’s Tate Britain. It is appropriate timing in this period of World War I memorialising – Paul Nash is one of the UK’s best-known modern artists, an illustrator who turned to oils to produce some of the most iconic images of the world wars. His paintings were described by those who were there as having conveyed the atmosphere as no other artist could. He is an artist who reverberates particularly with me, as a sometime war artist myself.</p>
<p>War art is as old as war itself. There are <a href="http://www.academia.edu/6006077/Towards_a_Psychoanalytic_Interpretation_of_the_Execution_and_Battle_Scenes_in_the_Rock_Art_Panels_in_Cingle_de_la_Mola_Remigia_Ares_del_Maestre_Castell%C3%B3n_Valencia_Spain_">prehistoric cave paintings</a> in Spain depicting marching warriors. In the 16th and 17th centuries, artists started to produce responses to warfare <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/DO10.1963.5/">based on their observations</a> rather than simply ennobling the combatants. They produced works such as Pieter Brueghel’s <a href="https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/405787/massacre-of-the-innocents">Massacre of Innocents</a> or, in the 1800s, Francisco Goya’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/story/20140717-the-greatest-war-art-ever">The Disasters of War</a>, a series of etchings, 82 in all, through which he sets out to depict the brutality of war itself, often illustrating events he had witnessed.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143429/original/image-20161027-11239-jkadtq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143429/original/image-20161027-11239-jkadtq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143429/original/image-20161027-11239-jkadtq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143429/original/image-20161027-11239-jkadtq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143429/original/image-20161027-11239-jkadtq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143429/original/image-20161027-11239-jkadtq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143429/original/image-20161027-11239-jkadtq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1565–1567.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But despite this long tradition, the job of a war artist probably seems, to many, a curious calling. Why did Nash, a reluctant combatant whose injuries saw him back in Britain in 1917, request a return to the front line as a war artist?</p>
<h2>To the trenches</h2>
<p>With little exposure to the formal world of art, at age 16, Nash suggested to his father that he would like to pursue a career as an illustrator. He spent much of his urban upbringing in London seeking out nature and it was to nature and landscape he would always turn for inspiration. He always sought the “<em>genius loci</em>” – the spirit of a place. </p>
<p>He studied at Chelsea Polytechnic and earned his fees for the Slade by designing bookplates and illustrations. During his time at the Slade he visited the post-impressionist exhibitions showing the works of Van Gogh, Cézanne, Picasso and Matisse. Although he <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=drNENwAACAAJ&">claimed</a> he took no influence from the work, he did learn from them that in art, there are no rules. He learnt to make his own way within the landscapes and draw and paint what he observed as he felt it. Things progressed well for Nash but, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cpNPAAAAMAAJ">on the verge of commercial success</a>, World War I changed everything.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143312/original/image-20161026-11268-1xhks0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143312/original/image-20161026-11268-1xhks0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=728&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143312/original/image-20161026-11268-1xhks0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=728&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143312/original/image-20161026-11268-1xhks0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=728&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143312/original/image-20161026-11268-1xhks0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143312/original/image-20161026-11268-1xhks0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143312/original/image-20161026-11268-1xhks0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Nash, Spring in the Trenches, Ridge Wood, 1917, 1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Imperial War Museum, London
© Tate</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite feeling unsure about his attitude towards combat, Nash felt his involvement in the war inevitable and so joined the Artists’ Rifles in September 1914, aged 25. But he got on well with his training and after two years of home service longed to be at the front, so undertook officer training and landed in France on February 22, 1917, part of the 15th Hampshires. He sketched the trenches and shattered buildings as he, and his men, prepared for a fresh assault while longing for the “end of this awful unending madness”.</p>
<p>One night, Nash fell from a parapet and fractured a rib. In June, he was back in London while his fellow officers and men were slaughtered at the <a href="http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/messines.htm">Battle of Messines</a>. He realised that the accident had probably saved his life. Back in Britain, he worked with Christopher Nevinson and began to succumb to the influence of Vorticism, the British version of Futurism which focused on the modern, mechanisation, industrialisation and even the destructive effects of war.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143311/original/image-20161026-11247-15xfqqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143311/original/image-20161026-11247-15xfqqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143311/original/image-20161026-11247-15xfqqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143311/original/image-20161026-11247-15xfqqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143311/original/image-20161026-11247-15xfqqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143311/original/image-20161026-11247-15xfqqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143311/original/image-20161026-11247-15xfqqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Nash, Totes Meer (Dead Sea), 1940-41.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tate. Presented by the War Artists Advisory Committee, 1946</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Parallel lines</h2>
<p>It is at this point that my understanding of Nash and what set him on his course back to the front line hits a personal note. Nash had trained as a soldier and deployed overseas but his experience of the war up to his accident was, relatively speaking, uneventful. He now felt the need to experience the “real places” of war. He therefore sought a position as an official war artist, was successful and found himself in Flanders in October 1917. </p>
<p>Similarly, I had been serving with the TA Battery of 7 Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery and was involved in a number of call-ups (Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan). For various reasons, however, I had never been deployed. It was my art that allowed me to fulfil the need that many service personnel will recognise: to serve on the front line. In November 2011, after many months of applications and string pulling, I found myself on the front lines of Afghanistan as War Artist to 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143316/original/image-20161026-11236-1tvkqyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143316/original/image-20161026-11236-1tvkqyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143316/original/image-20161026-11236-1tvkqyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143316/original/image-20161026-11236-1tvkqyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143316/original/image-20161026-11236-1tvkqyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143316/original/image-20161026-11236-1tvkqyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143316/original/image-20161026-11236-1tvkqyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Afghanistan, 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Dan Peterson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nash made his way forward into the mud of Flanders after initially being held back by General Headquarters, who wanted him to operate from behind the lines. I, after initially being refused a place with the Brigade Reconnaissance Force on a combat operation, ended up doing just that two weeks later in the middle of a battle with Taliban insurgents in the dust and dirt of Helmand province. Nash sketched the landscapes of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/battle_passchendaele.shtml">Passchendaele</a>, trying to capture the <em>genius loci</em> of the nightmare environment. I drew the men of the Queen’s Dragoon Guards and their Afghan allies – trying to capture what lies within the expression.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143427/original/image-20161027-11247-xk3hwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143427/original/image-20161027-11247-xk3hwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143427/original/image-20161027-11247-xk3hwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143427/original/image-20161027-11247-xk3hwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143427/original/image-20161027-11247-xk3hwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143427/original/image-20161027-11247-xk3hwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143427/original/image-20161027-11247-xk3hwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143427/original/image-20161027-11247-xk3hwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Exhaustion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Dan Peterson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s hard to know whether years of training will prepare you for the day you enter a mud-walled compound as enemy bullets whistle overhead but in my case it would appear they had. It wasn’t initially to pen and paper that I turned in the fortification, but sandbag and shovel. But as I’m sure was the case for Nash, and many war artists before me, as soon as I could I put pen to paper to draw the exhausted features of a soldier some 24 hours into a combat operation. </p>
<p>It’s not so much the moments of combat that unnerve as the what-ifs, such as when 30 minutes after walking over a patch of ground an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) explodes under the tracks of a vehicle rolling over that same place.</p>
<p>These experiences of war and the need that drives an artist to request consideration to be placed within sketching distance of the combat have changed little since Nash’s time. Nash and his fellow war artists Muirhead Bone, Christopher Nevinson, Christopher Williams and John Singer Sargent sought to express the experience of conflict during the Great War and World War II after it. </p>
<p>And the likes of <a href="http://www.matthewcookillustrator.co.uk/content/index.html">Matthew Cook</a>, <a href="http://newsillustrator.com">Richard Johnson</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/mar/21/michael-fay-war-drawings">Michael Fay</a>, <a href="http://www.graemelothian.com/paintings/">Graeme Lothian</a> and myself have been through the same process, albeit some 100 years later. Separated by time and technology, wars are now fought very differently. But the need to express their effect on life and land remains the same.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/paul-nash">Paul Nash</a> is at Tate Britain until March 5 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67206/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The job of a war artist probably seems, to many, a curious calling. Here’s why Paul Nash and I were both drawn to the front line.
Dan Peterson, Lecturer in Illustration, Cardiff Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/41862
2015-06-18T05:20:40Z
2015-06-18T05:20:40Z
Waterloo won, war over: the painting that captures the moment
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85202/original/image-20150616-5835-awxe5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">David Wilkie, Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Dispatch, 1822.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Picture the scene: it’s the summer of 1815 and a cluster of veterans huddled around an old pensioner reading from a newspaper have just received confirmation of the Allied victory over Napoleon at Waterloo on Sunday 18 June. </p>
<p>You register various responses. There’s the ardent appeal of the Glengarry Highlander on the left, whose searching gaze and pointed hand gesture seeks further corroboration from the mounted light-horseman who has just delivered the paper. There’s the blithe self-satisfaction of the man seated at the table at the centre of the scene dining on oysters. The carefree expression of the mildly inebriated Irish light-horseman, relaying the news to the hard-of-hearing pensioner on his left. And then the gleeful attentiveness of the black foot soldier, leaning in to the Irishman’s right.</p>
<p>David Wilkie’s Chelsea Pensioners Receiving the London Gazette Extraordinary of Thursday June 22th, 1815, Announcing the Battle of Waterloo (1822), to give this well-known picture its full, temporally exacting, and declamatory title, is often cited by historians of the period, such as Linda Colley and Stephen Brumwell, as a set piece display of cheerful unanimity in the aftermath of war. The painting works exhaustively to weave almost every one of its approximately 50 subjects into the magic circle of enthusiasm emanating from the white heat of the newspaper.</p>
<h2>Vestiges of war</h2>
<p>There are just one or two instances of potential dissent. A mother wears an anxious expression as she scans the paper for the name of a beloved, her screaming infant giving symbolic vent to pains remote from this portrayal of near unalloyed joy. And a peg-legged ex-serviceman in front of the pub has a quizzical demeanour that seems at odds with the prevailing mood of celebration.</p>
<p>But whether or not Wilkie included these figures as subtle reminders of the violent underpinnings of national unanimity – the blasted, pierced, shot, crushed and trampled bodies on which victories are raised – one must attend very closely, and for a prolonged amount of time, to allow such impressions to cloud the scene. </p>
<p>What viewers are meant to and do in the main perceive in Wilkie’s painting is the sense of Waterloo as an unequivocal affirmation of national solidarity. The artwork stresses the involvement of men and women of all classes and from all corners of the British Isles and its imperial domains, as well as a decisive blotting out, manifested in the radiant glow of the London Gazette, of the ignoble realities of war. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85274/original/image-20150616-5810-1x6nxya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85274/original/image-20150616-5810-1x6nxya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85274/original/image-20150616-5810-1x6nxya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85274/original/image-20150616-5810-1x6nxya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85274/original/image-20150616-5810-1x6nxya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85274/original/image-20150616-5810-1x6nxya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85274/original/image-20150616-5810-1x6nxya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Alexander Hillingford, Wellington at Waterloo.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The dispatch</h2>
<p>The text that forms the focus of this composition is the <a href="http://www.wtj.com/archives/wellington/1815_06f.htm">Duke of Wellington’s dispatch</a>, written on June 19 and addressed to Earl Bathurst, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. In Wilkie’s painting the duke’s report is received with unqualified enthusiasm, yet at the time of its publication many readers were left perplexed by the document’s apparent obliquity. </p>
<p>Those left in Britain – women, workers, pensioners – only found out about the victory four days after the battle. Communication relied on newspapers, letters painstakingly travelling back by horse and boat. And so the <a href="http://www.wtj.com/archives/wellington/1815_06f.htm">long and circumlocutory missive</a> that announced the end of war may have been perplexing to many. </p>
<p>The first half of the dispatch focused on allied losses sustained in the action at <a href="http://napoleononline.ca/2011/03/battle-of-quatre-bras/">Quatre Bras</a> on the June 16. So it seemed, if anything, to presage defeat for the Allies. It was not until well over the half way mark that the description of the outcome of the engagement at Waterloo on June 18 confirmed the defeat of the French:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The attack succeeded in every point: the enemy was forced from his positions on the heights, and fled in the utmost confusion, leaving behind him, as far as I could judge, 150 pieces of cannon, with their ammunition, which fell into our hands.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some readers complained of the dullness of the duke’s description, noting its signal failure to convey the importance of Napoleon’s defeat, but others succumbed to its mounting power, recognising in the rousing final declaration the rhetorical equivalent of a nation’s long-delayed release from bewilderment and uncertainty. </p>
<p>Looking again at the pensioner reading from the paper at the centre of Wilkie’s composition, it’s clear from the direction of his gaze that this single, climatic phrase has just been uttered, and that it is Wellington who is responsible for the displays of enthusiasm, joy and relief circulating around the painting. And unsurprisingly – Wellington himself commissioned it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41862/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Shaw receives funding from the AHRC</span></em></p>
How did the bulk of those at home in Britain find out the news of Waterloo?
Philip Shaw, Professor of Romantic Studies, University of Leicester
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/27319
2014-06-16T20:36:32Z
2014-06-16T20:36:32Z
Battle lines: the onward march of war art in Australia
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/51279/original/gt5z4dyb-1402972868.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ben Quilty, Captain S, after Afghanistan, 2012, oil on linen, 140 x 190cm.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>War art, like war, changes with time – but not as much as we might like to believe. So what is its function, and how has it evolved over time? </p>
<p>Two current exhibitions – the travelling show <a href="http://www.awm.gov.au/exhibitions/quilty/">Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan</a> and <a href="http://www.artmuseum.uq.edu.au/content/conflict-contemporary-responses-war">Conflict: Contemporary responses to war</a> at UQ Art Museum chart the shifting role of both official and non-official war art. Unlike the Vietnam era, the focus today is less on direct protest and resistance than it is on uncovering the complex legacies of war for contemporary society.</p>
<p>On the eve of the centenary of the first world war (August 1) and in the wake of the ongoing war in Afghanistan, art continues to play a major role in understanding and remembering conflict. And at a time when discussion of commemoration in the Australian popular media is increasingly reductive and often jingoistic, the role of art is, if anything, more important than ever.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.awm.gov.au/">Australian War Memorial</a> continues to manage the <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/war_artists/artists/">official war art scheme</a> which involves an artist being embedded with Australian military forces in conflicts or peacekeeping missions for the purpose of creatively recording and interpreting the Australian experience of war. The war art scheme is now Australia’s longest running art commissioning program. It is also one of few such schemes to remain active anywhere in the world.</p>
<h2>Australia’s first war artist</h2>
<p>In May 1917, artist and political cartoonist <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dyson-william-henry-will-6074">Will Dyson</a> was retrospectively appointed Australia’s first official war artist.</p>
<p>Frustrated by Australia’s failure to emulate Canada’s official war art program (which commissioned a select group of artists to produce specific works during the first world war), he had volunteered to join the Australian Infantry Force as an artist and accepted an honorary position without pay. By the end of 1916 he was in France, where he witnessed some of the bloodiest fighting in history.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50813/original/v64zm63b-1402467549.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50813/original/v64zm63b-1402467549.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50813/original/v64zm63b-1402467549.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50813/original/v64zm63b-1402467549.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50813/original/v64zm63b-1402467549.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50813/original/v64zm63b-1402467549.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50813/original/v64zm63b-1402467549.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/50813/original/v64zm63b-1402467549.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Will Dyson, Dead beat, the tunnel, Hill 60, 1917, brush and ink, charcoal on paper, 50.2 x 44.8 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial collection</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When Dyson’s grim but powerfully empathetic drawings of everyday life on the Western Front arrived back in London their significance was quickly understood. </p>
<p>Despite this slow start, the official war art scheme quickly gained momentum and a total of 15 artists had been appointed by the end of the first world war. The scheme continued apace during the second world war (42 appointments), slowed in Korea (two appointments) and then faltered in Vietnam. </p>
<p>While two artists went to Vietnam in 1967, the deep unpopularity of the war combined with the requirement for official artists to participate in active combat (for the only time in the scheme’s history) to make it very difficult, if not impossible, to identify willing participants. After lying dormant for more than 30 years, the scheme was reactivated in 1999, since which time 11 artists have been deployed to East Timor, the Solomon Islands, Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Australia. </p>
<h2>Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan</h2>
<p>In 2011 the Australian War Memorial appointed Australian artist <a href="http://www.benquilty.com/">Ben Quilty</a> as the fourth and, as it turned out, final official war artist to Afghanistan. (He was preceded by Shaun Gladwell, Lyndell Brown, and Charles Green). Now on show in the travelling exhibition <a href="http://www.awm.gov.au/exhibitions/quilty/">Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan</a>, the paintings Quilty produced have much in common with Dyson’s work of a century earlier. </p>
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<span class="caption">Ben Quilty, Air Commodore John Oddie, after Afghanistan, 2012, oil on linen, 140 x 140 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Australian War Memorial collection</span></span>
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<p>Like Dyson, Quilty’s focus was neither major events nor heroic actions, but the experience of ordinary soldiers. And also like Dyson, Quilty’s deeply empathetic portraits emerged from the strong rapport he developed with the soldiers he met in the field. But while Dyson was concerned with the immediate experience of war, Quilty’s work focuses on its aftermath. </p>
<p>Here his familiar thick, layered and partially abstracted paintings convey the psychological impact of conflict. These works provide rare insight into the personal cost of war for a general public increasingly removed from actual military experience. In doing so they have assumed a powerful social agency. </p>
<p>Quilty’s commission has done much to shift post-traumatic stress disorder (a condition once rarely acknowledged) to the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2012/s3723112.htm">forefront of public discussion</a> of war in Australia.</p>
<h2>Conflict: Contemporary responses to war</h2>
<p>Quilty’s work can also be seen alongside that of other official and non-official artists in <a href="http://www.artmuseum.uq.edu.au/content/conflict-contemporary-responses-war">Conflict: Contemporary responses to war</a>, curated by Samantha Littley for the University of Queensland Art Museum. </p>
<p>The first of several contemporary war art exhibitions slated for the next year, this large show surveys the diversity of recent responses to war. </p>
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<span class="caption">Shaun Gladwell, POV mirror sequence (Tarin Kowt) (digital still), 2009-10, 2 channel synchronised HD video, stereo audio, 16:9, 8 minutes 22 seconds.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial collection </span></span>
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<p>Notable shifts marked in this show include a strong rise in new media practices. Using film and animation respectively, Australian artists <a href="http://www.annaschwartzgallery.com/works/biography?artist=86&c=m">Shaun Gladwell</a> and <a href="http://www.badenpailthorpe.com/">Baden Pailthorpe</a> explore warfare in the digital age. In particular, they trace conflict’s immediate public dissemination and complex mediation by traditional, online, and social media. </p>
<p>Both artists also point to the deep entanglement of military technologies with popular cultures (such as video games) and everyday life (such as the increasing civilian use of drones). </p>
<p>The Conflict exhibition also includes the colonisation of Australia in its curatorial statement and features often sardonic work by Indigenous artists including <a href="http://www.cofa.unsw.edu.au/about-us/staff/147">Joan Ross</a>, <a href="http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/287/Daniel_Boyd/profile/">Daniel Boyd</a> and <a href="http://www.mca.com.au/collection/artist/foley-fiona/">Fiona Foley</a>. The exhibition wades into a long contested debate currently being amplified by the forthcoming centenary of the first world war: acknowledgement of colonisation as warfare.</p>
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<span class="caption">Joan Ross, BBQ this Sunday, BYO 2011, digital animation, edition 17/20 5:01 min.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Collection of The University of Queensland, courtesy of the artist and Bett Gallery, Hobart. </span></span>
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<p>Also featured are a number of works that re-imagine the familiar form of the war memorial monument. (This is also the theme of another exhibition, <a href="http://monash.edu/muma/exhibitions/2014/concrete.html">Concrete</a>, currently at the Monash University Museum of Art in Melbourne.) Melbourne-based artist <a href="http://www.monash.edu.au/research/people/profiles/profile.html?sid=10386&pid=4213">Tom Nicholson</a>’s Comparative monument (Palestine) (2012), is a proposal for a memorial to both the Australian Light Horse participation in the 1917 Battle of Beersheba, and the Palestinian exodus from the same city in 1948. </p>
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<span class="caption">Tom Nicholson, Comparative monument (Palestine), 2012, offset printed posters, dimensions variable, Australian War Memorial collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist</span></span>
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<p>By remembering two very different but interwoven conflicts together, Nicholson highlights how the act of recalling one difficult history in the context of another can provide a platform for much-needed international unity into the future. </p>
<p>At a time when so many of our public commentators seem content to rehearse tired polemic, we can look to our artists for the nuanced analysis the difficult history of war deserves. </p>
<p><br>
<em><strong>The next stop on the <a href="http://www.awm.gov.au/exhibitions/quilty/tour/">Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan</a> tour is the John Curtin Gallery from August 2. <a href="http://www.artmuseum.uq.edu.au/content/conflict-contemporary-responses-war">Conflict: Contemporary responses to war</a> shows at the UQ Art Museum until September 7.</strong></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27319/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan Johnston works for the Australian War Memorial which manages Australia's official war art scheme. The Memorial is also the organiser of the exhibition 'Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan'.</span></em></p>
War art, like war, changes with time – but not as much as we might like to believe. So what is its function, and how has it evolved over time? Two current exhibitions – the travelling show Ben Quilty…
Ryan Johnston, Head of Art , Australian War Memorial
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.