Kingston arts scene: Art and remembrance – The Kingston Whig-Standard

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With Remembrance Day just behind us, and not yet being in the throes of the festive season, it seemed like a good opportunity to reflect on the relationship of Art and War (or Art and Conflict, or Cultural Property and Conflict, depending on how one wishes to frame the subject). Is there such a relationship, you might ask — indeed there is. And while art and conflict may seem like uneasy bedfellows, they have marched alongside one another for nearly as long as both have existed. Not always in step, and not always from the same point of view, but together nonetheless.

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Historically speaking, we start seeing large-scale conflict in the region of Mesopotamia sometime before 4000 BCE, due in large part to the establishment of city-states there. With city-states came the need to protect and defend them, and a parallel rise of persons of influence and power who did the ruling and defending of said city-states in conflict. One of the earliest examples of a representation of war is the so-called “Royal Standard of Ur” of Sumer from about 2600 BCE, which has on one side (the “war side”) narrative bands depicting charioteers and infantry soldiers in battle trampling and capturing opposing forces, stripping them of arms and armour. On the opposite side of the Standard (the “peace” side), there are similar narrative bands showing the collection of war booty by the victors, and a victory banquet in progress in the top register. Like this object, many of the earliest examples of representations of conflict show the ruler of the conquering people larger than life and glorify their prowess in battle.

The depiction of the collection of war booty, which often consisted of the movable material wealth and cultural property of a defeated people, is significant, because the accumulation of art as the spoils of war is just one other aspect of the conjunction of art and conflict. One clear illustration of the practice can be seen in the “Spoils of Jerusalem” panel of the Arch of Titus in Rome (circa 81 CE), in which Roman troops loot the Second Temple there, which they afterwards destroyed. (The Second Temple replaced, as you might guess, the First Temple (a.k.a. Solomon’s Temple), which the Babylonians had looted and destroyed in 586 BCE.) War booty was sometimes used to enrich the treasuries of a conquering people and was also often used to pay troops for their service in war. The practice was condoned for centuries but was also questioned on moral grounds as early as the Classical Greek period. Nonetheless, the seizure of art as war booty continued into modern times — and likely continues, despite international treaties and policies against the practice — to the enrichment of many of the world’s most prestigious galleries and museums. One has only to look to the Louvre in Paris (the foundation of its vast collections consisting of war booty collected by Napoleon’s troops in the late 18th and early 19th centuries) and the scrutiny of many of the world’s galleries with respect to Nazi War Art and its possible repatriation to get an idea of the scope of the activity.

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There are, fortunately, efforts being made to repatriate some portions of art looted from one culture and in the possession of another, but it can be a thorny endeavour for a variety of reasons. For example, how does one return artwork to a culture or entity that no longer exists? And is the cultural property perhaps better off remaining in an institution that can care for it properly? The act of repatriation may also be politically motivated — just as the act of the destruction of cultural property in times of conflict may be. Think of the destruction by the Taliban of the seventh-century Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 — a means of demoralizing local cultures and causing outrage in the international community. The destruction of cultural property (often artwork, monuments or architecture) to oppress a people and erase cultural memory is a practice that goes back to ancient times, and is one that continues today.

Not that the association of art and war is all negative — indeed, conflict has been the catalyst for many new types of artistic expression and movements. In particular, many of the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century (such as expressionism, vorticism, cubism, etc.) were more effective at capturing and illustrating aspects of modern warfare than were more traditional and staid styles of representation. In fact, it has been suggested that it is truly only artists who can accurately relate what being at war is actually like — visually, emotionally, psychologically and physically — through the power of imagery that words cannot begin to match.  Canadian artist W. Thurston Topham’s impressionist painting “Moonrise over Mametz Wood” of 1916 has been described by veterans as an “eerily accurate impression of the Somme battlefield in 1916.” As well, starting in the First World War and continuing in the Second World War, many nations, including Canada, established Official War Art programs. Many of a country’s notable artists were sent overseas to record and represent the conflicts and were indelibly marked by the experience. It has been argued, for example, that the art of some members of Canada’s Group of Seven was influenced more by the blasted landscapes of war in Europe than by the austerity of Canada’s North, as has so often been stated. Canada continues to invite artists into theatres of conflict, with some moving imagery coming out of such collaborations as a result.

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While the subject of art and war may seem to be a gloomy one (and this essay has merely scratched the surface of the topic), many beautiful and even humorous objects have resulted from the association. Art produced as a result of war is a testament to the enduring human spirit and the act of creativity, which may help us to understand events and experiences of the past.

Kamille Parkinson earned a PhD in art history from Queen’s University and is presently a writer, burgeoning copywriter and art historian at large. You can find her writing at Word Painter Projects on Facebook and can contact her at wordpainterprojects@gmail.com.

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