War ask questions of us all …
This coming week is a poignant one in the Centenary to the First World War. The History Troupe will be making a contribution to the local commemoration of the impact this war to end all wars had upon our own community.
We have been working on the selection of poems, songs and images for Truths at Endsleigh on the 15th and, again at Kardomah94 on the 19th. We will add to the well-known Canon of British War poets such as Brooke, Owen and Sassoon many more from India, Kurdistan, China as well as others from Russia, Italy, Germany and Austria. As these were selected and we moved to the images I was struck by how powerful German artists had been as witness to the war. They did not rely on the old way of drawing and painting to make their point. They threw everything at the War in protest.
Kathe Kollwitz, whose son was killed on the front line, drew some of the most truthful images of War in pulling away from the front line and settling on the impact on Mothers; children, those left to cope during and long after the guns stopped. Otto Dix, who served on the front line, produced a collection after the war of grotesque images like a skull in no-man’s land; of a trench. Ludwig Kirchner painted a self-portrait of how the war had “unmanned him”. Helmut Herzfeld was so disgusted by the war and the patriotism that cranked up the stakes he changed his name to John Heartfield – a subversive use of the enemy’s language. George Grosz did exactly the same changing his name to that of St George.
The Dada movement was born in 1916, the year that General Haig took the decision to attack at the Somme – 19,000 were killed on the first day. This was the catalyst for protest in the Arts much like the anti-Vietnam Flower Power Movement to come. So incensed by the senselessness of it all they sent Dada Care packages to the front – perfectly ironed white shirts wrapped neatly in boxes.
By 1919, Dix was back home and painting of maimed war veterans begging hopelessly on crowded streets. There is a card game and the men use feet to hold cards. These are no longer men. They are collages.
These German artists have made a telling contribution to our understanding of the impact of this and any other war. They were rejected as decadent by the Nazis but their own abstractions on the canvas were closer to reality than any patriotic image of men marching to a war to end all wars. These images yelled where others whispered and, urge us to look wider than the mud and back to the struggle for social justice, gender equality and, peace that manifested itself in strikes across Europe during the war, conscientious objectors on all sides and, mutinies on the front itself.
Let’s not forget that just before the Somme, half the French Army had refused to go over the top. This was not an isolated incident.
War does not allow for business as usual. War destroys not just the men on the front line but much much more. These German artists ripped up the rule book and their realism was less abstract than the decisions taken by generals far removed from all reality but their own.
On the 15th at Endsleigh, we will commemorate but we will remember that war is not to be written
This coming week is a poignant one in the Centenary to the First World War. The History Troupe will be making a contribution to the local commemoration of the impact this war to end all wars had upon our own community.
We have been working on the selection of poems, songs and images for Truths at Endsleigh on the 15th and, again at Kardomah94 on the 19th. We will add to the well-known Canon of British War poets such as Brooke, Owen and Sassoon many more from India, Kurdistan, China as well as others from Russia, Italy, Germany and Austria. As these were selected and we moved to the images I was struck by how powerful German artists had been as witness to the war. They did not rely on the old way of drawing and painting to make their point. They threw everything at the War in protest.
Kathe Kollwitz, whose son was killed on the front line, drew some of the most truthful images of War in pulling away from the front line and settling on the impact on Mothers; children, those left to cope during and long after the guns stopped. Otto Dix, who served on the front line, produced a collection after the war of grotesque images like a skull in no-man’s land; of a trench. Ludwig Kirchner painted a self-portrait of how the war had “unmanned him”. Helmut Herzfeld was so disgusted by the war and the patriotism that cranked up the stakes he changed his name to John Heartfield – a subversive use of the enemy’s language. George Grosz did exactly the same changing his name to that of St George.
The Dada movement was born in 1916, the year that General Haig took the decision to attack at the Somme – 19,000 were killed on the first day. This was the catalyst for protest in the Arts much like the anti-Vietnam Flower Power Movement to come. So incensed by the senselessness of it all they sent Dada Care packages to the front – perfectly ironed white shirts wrapped neatly in boxes.
By 1919, Dix was back home and painting of maimed war veterans begging hopelessly on crowded streets. There is a card game and the men use feet to hold cards. These are no longer men. They are collages.
These German artists have made a telling contribution to our understanding of the impact of this and any other war. They were rejected as decadent by the Nazis but their own abstractions on the canvas were closer to reality than any patriotic image of men marching to a war to end all wars. These images yelled where others whispered and, urge us to look wider than the mud and back to the struggle for social justice, gender equality and, peace that manifested itself in strikes across Europe during the war, conscientious objectors on all sides and, mutinies on the front itself.
Let’s not forget that just before the Somme, half the French Army had refused to go over the top. This was not an isolated incident.
War does not allow for business as usual. War destroys not just the men on the front line but much much more. These German artists ripped up the rule book and their realism was less abstract than the decisions taken by generals far removed from all reality but their own.
On the 15th at Endsleigh, we will commemorate but we will remember that war is not to be written
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