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World War I in popular culture

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Contemporary sand sculpture rendition of the iconic Australian War Memorial in Canberra, Australia.

The First World War in art and literature encompasses works created during the years of conflict and works about or arising from that period of world history. In addition to the range of works created during 1914-1918, there are well-known examples of books about the war, like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's August 1914, which could only have been crafted some years later. John Galsworthy's perspective was quite different in 1915 when he wrote

Those of us who are able to look back from thirty years hence on this tornado of death — will conclude with a dreadful laugh that if it had never come, the state of the world would be very much the same. It is not the intention of these words to deny the desperate importance of this conflict now that it has been joined ....[1]

The war and its aftermath continues to remain a potent focal point for a fresh perspective and evaluation -- as in, for example, the "relentlessly picturesque" 1994 film Legends of the Fall starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Julia Ormond, and Henry Thomas.[2]

Art in war

After 1914, avant-garde artists began to consider and investigate many things that had once seemed unimaginable. As Marc Chagall later remarked, "The war was another plastic work that totally absorbed us, which reformed our forms, destroyed the lines, and gave a new look to the universe."[3] In this same period, academic and realist artists continued to produce new work. Traditional artists and their artwork developed side by side with the shock of the new as culture reinvented itself in relationships with new technologies.[4] The Cubist vocabulary itself was adapted and modified by the Royal Navy during "the Great War."

British marine painter Norman Wilkinson invented the concept of "dazzle painting" -— a way of using stripes and disrupted lines to confuse the enemy about the speed and dimensions of a ship.[5] Wilkinson, then a lieutenant commander on Royal Navy patrol duty, implemented the precursor of "dazzle" on SS Industry; and in August 1917, the HMS Alsatian became the first Navy ship to be painted with a dazzle pattern.

The Cubists aimed to revolutionize painting — and reinvented the art of camouflage on the way.[6] The art of war recognizes the values of art in war.

Art

John Singer Sargent's Gassed presents a classical frieze of soldiers being led from the battlefield -- alive, but changed forever by individual encounters with deadly hazard in war.

The years of warfare were the backdrop for art which is now preserved and displayed in such institutions as the Imperial War Museum in London, the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, and the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

Painting

Among the great artists who tried to capture an essential element of war in painting was Society portraitist John Singer Sargent. He and others were commissioned as official war artists by the British Ministry of Information. In his large painting Gassed and in many watercolors, Sargent depicted scenes from the Great War.[7]

Wyndham Lewis

British painter Wyndham Lewis was appointed as an official war artist for both the Canadian and British governments, beginning work in December 1917 after Lewis' participation in the Third Battle of Ypres. For the Canadians he painted A Canadian Gun-Pit (1918, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa) from sketches made on Vimy Ridge. For the British he painted one of his best known works, A Battery Shelled (1919, Imperial War Museum)(see [1]), drawing on his own experience in charge of a 6-inch howitzer at Ypres. Lewis exhibited his war drawings and some other paintings of the war in an exhibition, "Guns", in 1918.

Alfred Munnings

An unlikely war artist was Sir Alfred Munnings, who is best known as a painter of purebred racehorses; but he turned his painter's skills to the task of capturing images of the Canadian Cavalry Brigade in the war.[8] His mounted portrait of General Jack Seely (later Lord Mottistone) on his charger Warrior achieved acclaim.[9] Forty-five of his canvasses were exhibited at the "Canadian War Records Exhibition" at the Royal Academy,[10] including Charge of Flowerdew's Squadron at Moreuil Wood in March 1918. Lieutenant Gordon Flowerdew of Lord Strathcona's Horse cavalry, was awarded the Victoria Cross for leading the attack.[11]

Less well known are paintings which feature teams of work-horses in the staging areas behind the front lines with the Canadian Forestry Corps.[12] The artist later recalled these days in his autobiography:

My next move was unexpected and unlooked-for. Amongst the officers who came to have a look, as the news spread that my pictures were to be seen on the walls of ... [headquarters] ..., there were two colonels, both in the Canadian Forestry Corps ... persuading me that I must go with them and see the companies of Canadian Forestry who were then working in the many beautiful forests of France ....[13]
The forest of Conche in Normandy was my first experience of painting with the Forestry. Then came the area of the forest of Dreux, one of the finest in France, taking up fifteen square miles of ground... Each company had a hundred and twenty horses, all half-bred Percheron types, mostly blacks and greys. A rivalry existed between the companies as to which had the best-conditioned teams. I painted pictures of these teams at work, pictures of men axing, sawing down trees...[13]

John Nash

Over The Top, 1918, oil on canvas, by John Nash, Imperial War Museum.

British painter John Nash believed that "the artist's main business is to train his eye to see, then to probe, and then to train his hand to work in sympathy with his eye."[14]

The artist's most celebrated war painting is Over the Top (oil on canvas, 79.4 x 107.3 cm), now hanging in the Imperial War Museum, London. In this painting, the artist presents an image of the attack during which the 1st Battalion Artists Rifles (28th London Regiment) left their trenches and pushed towards Marcoing near Cambrai. Of the eighty men, sixty-eight were killed or wounded during the first few minutes.[15]

Nash himself was one of the twelve spared by the shellfire in the charge depicted in the painting. He created this artwork three months later.[15] The war artist crafted a chilling, harsh, vivid image. The painting offers a narrative of men moving forward despite the likelihood of not coming back alive:

As soon as our line, set on its jolting way, emerged, I felt that two men close by had been hit, two shadows fell to the ground and rolled under our feet, one with a high-pitched scream and the other in silence like an ox. Another disappeared with a movement like a madman, as if he had been carried away. Instinctively, we closed ranks and pushed each other forward, always forward, and the wound in our midst closed itself. The warrant officer stopped and raised his sword, dropped it, fell to his knees, his kneeling body falling backwards in jerks, his helmet fell on his heels and he remained there, his head uncovered, looking up to the sky. The line has promptly split to avoid breaking this immobility. But we couldn't see the lieutenant any more. No more superiors, then... A moment's hesitation held back the human wave which had reached the beginning of the plateau. The hoarse sound of air passing through our lungs could be heard over the stamping of feet. Forward! cried a soldier. So we all marched forward, moving faster and faster in our race towards the abyss.[16]

Arthur Streeton

Portrait of Arthur Streeton (1917) by George Lambert.
"Amiens, the key to the west" by Arthur Streeton, 1918.

Australian painter Arthur Streeton was an Australian Official War Artist with the Australian Imperial Force, holding the rank of lieutenant. He served in France attached to the 2nd Division.

Streeton brought something of the antipodes Heidelberg school sensibility to his paintings of an ANZAC battlefield in France.

Streeton's most famous war painting, Amiens the key of the west shows the Amiens countryside with dirty plumes of battlefield smoke staining the horizon, which becomes a subtle image of war.

As a war artist, Streeton continued to deal in landscapes and his works have been criticised for failing to concentrate on the fighting soldiers.

Streeton aimed to produce "military still life", capturing the everyday moments of the war. Streeton observed that, "True pictures of battlefields are very quiet looking things. There's nothing much to be seen, everybody and thing is hidden and camouflaged."

Sculpture

Charles Webb Gilbert

The casting of the figure atop the memorial at Mont St. Quentin memorial -- Charles Gilbert's studio in, Fitzroy, Melbourne.
The Mont St. Quentin memorial (c. 1925) commemorates the men of the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) and their contribution in the battle which was fought in this area.

This heroic sculpture was designed as a part of the Mont St. Quentin Memorial which was dedicated in the mid-1920s at Mont St. Quentin, France. The original memorial to the men of the 2nd Australian Division features an heroic bronze statue of an Australian soldier bayoneting a German eagle.[17]

A bronze plaque on the pedestal of the monument reads: 'To the officers, non-commissioned officers and men of the 2nd Australian Division who fought in France and Belgium in the Great War 1916, 1917, 1918.'

The statue on top of the memorial and the bas reliefs on its sides, which were sculpted respectively by Lieutenant Charles Web Gilbert and May Butler-George, were removed by the occupying German Army in 1940. They were later replaced with a new statue and new reliefs.[17]

Remembrance

Main article: War memorial
Main article: Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Iconic memorials created after the war are designed as symbols of remembrance and as carefully contrived works of art.

Literature

Main article: Media of World War I

E. M. Remarque's best-selling book about the First World War, Westen nichts Neues, was translated into 28 languages with world sales nearly reaching 4 million in 1930.[18] and the award-winning film which was based on that work of fiction have had a greater influence in shaping public views of the war than the work of any historian.[19]

Poetry

Wilfred Owen was killed in battle; but poems created at the front did achieve popular attention after the war's end,.e.g., Dulce Et Decorum Est, Insensibility, Anthem for Doomed Youth, Futility and Strange Meeting. In preparing for the publication of his collected poems, Owen tried to explain:

This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

This brief statement became the basis for a play based on the friendship between Owen and Siegfried Sassoon in 1917.

Drama

Novels

File:Hemingway farewell.jpg
First edition cover of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms -- 1929.

Movies

Among the notable movies which have been set during this period are such well-known films as:

Opera

Television

  • My Boy Jack tells the story of Rudyard Kipling's son, who volunteered to fight for "king and country" in France.[20] The made-for-television drama was broadcast in the United Kingdom in 2007 and in the United States in 2008.[21] Jack Kipling was killed in action in September 1915 after being in France for only three weeks; but he remained on the list of soldiers "missing believed wounded" for two years. The Kiplings were devastated -- not only by their loss, but also by the fact that their son's body could not be found. In 1916, Kipling's Sea Warfare was published, and the book contained a poem about his son Jack:
"Have you news of my boy Jack?"
Not this tide.
"When d'you think that he'll come back?"
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
"Has any one else had word of him?"
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing and this tide.
"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?"
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he didn't shame his kind
Not even with that wind blowing and that tide.
Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide,
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!
--Rudyard Kipling[22]

Notes

  1. ^ Galsworthy, John. "Art and the War" in Atlantic Monthly, p. 267.
  2. ^ Maslin, Janet. "Grit vs. Good Looks In the American West," New York Times. December 23, 1994.
  3. ^ Cohen, Aaron J. (2008). Imagining the Unimaginable: World War, Modern Art, and the Politics of Public Culture in Russia, 1914-1917, abstract.
  4. ^ Hughes, Robert. (1981). The Shock of the New, p. 15.
  5. ^ Fisher, Mark. "Secret history: how surrealism can win a war," The Times. January 8, 2006.
  6. ^ Glover, Michael. "Now you see it... Now you don't," The Times. March 10, 2007.
  7. ^ Little, Carl. (1998). The Watercolors of John Singer Sargent, p. 135
  8. ^ Norfolk Museums: Watering Horses, Canadian Troops in France, 1917; Art Gallery of new South Wales: A Canadian Soldier
  9. ^ Scott, Brough. "The mighty Warrior, who led one of history's last-ever cavalry charges," The Telegraph (London). March 23, 2008.
  10. ^ Sir Alfred Munnings Art Museum: the artist
  11. ^ Canadian War Museum: Charge of Flowerdew's Suadron; Dictionary of Canadian Biography: Gordon Flowerdew
  12. ^ Peter Nahum, Leicester Galleries: Archive: Draft Horses, Lumber Mill in the Forest of Dreux; Canadian War Museum: Moving the Truck Another Yard
  13. ^ a b Munnings, Alfred. (1950). An Artist's Life, pp. 313-315.
  14. ^ Victorian and Albert Museum: "A John Nash Walk"
  15. ^ a b Gregory, Barry. (2006). A History of the Artists Rifles 1859-1947, p. 176.
  16. ^ Art of the First World War: citing Barbusse, Henri. (1916). Le feu (Fire). Paris: Flammarion.
  17. ^ a b Australian War Memorial: Image number P02205.011, caption.
  18. ^ Strachan, Hew. (2000). The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War: A History, p. 313.
  19. ^ Strachan, p. 315.
  20. ^ PBS: My Boy Jack April 20, 2008.
  21. ^ Bellafante, Ginia. "A Different Kind of Kipling Adventure," New York Times. April 18, 2008.
  22. ^ PBS: "Rudyard Kipling Biography"

References

The World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C. shows the effects of the passing years.

See also

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