Questioning the role of the war artist (Friday 7 September 2007)
Barbara Knezevic
 |
| Steve McQueen: from For Queen and Country, 2007; image held here |
With the impending end of the tenure of Steve McQueen as the Imperial War Museum’s official war artist, his performance is coming under the spotlight. For example, Ruaridh Nicoll interrogates the role and purpose of war art, proposing that ‘Without Risks War Art is simply Reportage’ (The Observer, Sunday August 19, 2007).
Nicholl begins by discussing McQueens’ predecessor, Peter Howson, the Glasgow-based painter who was stationed as official war artist during the conflict in Bosnia. Apparently Howson was so disturbed by his experience that he “turned to drink, drugs and latterly, religion.” Nicholl remarks that Howson’s resulting paintings, while brutal and violent, also featured events that he did not witness. This obviously called into question the integrity of this work, and “damaged his reputation.”
McQueen has been quoted voicing his frustration at his cloistered experience in Basra, stating "I knew I'd be embedded with the troops, but I didn't imagine that meant I'd virtually have to stay in bed. It was ridiculous. We went to see some schools the army was rebuilding. I could talk to the guys but that was it." (Adrian Searle, The Guardian, Monday March 12, 2007)
In his article, Nicholl contends that this lack of first-hand frontline experience means that appointed war artists are not in any position to create work that reflects the realities of combat. “If the access to conflict is increased, the empathy the artist feels for the soldiers will increase with it. By risking more, the army gets more, and we will get more.”
My opinion is this. What appears to be lacking in this analysis is the acknowledgement that as a result of the changed nature in which war has been waged in the last century, reflexively the art that purports to be representative of these conflicts must also change.
There no longer exists the trench warfare of WW1 or hand-to-hand fighting of WW2, which produced representational, figurative vistas of the horrors of war, seen in the work of Otto Dix, George Grosz or William Orpen. War is fought from greater distance, often through the laser sight of a helicopter gunship, and with roadside bombings and the added terror of ‘friendly fire’. Also note, those fighting (at least the coalition soldiers) are no longer conscripts, but professional soldiers. These factors doubtlessly change the parameters of what is termed ‘war art’.
McQueen’s distance from the ‘frontline’ is perhaps merely the reality of modern warfare. Perhaps the frontline as we formerly understood it no longer exists, or at least is so unclearly defined in conflicts like that in Iraq that it is not only extremely dangerous for artists to venture into guerrilla-type war zones, but also does not provide any more necessary insight into the brutality of this type of war.
Journalists and photographic correspondents are ensconced and ‘embedded’ in the midst of crossfire, there to report and represent the conflicts in this very literal way to the television networks and newspapers. This is not a role that the artist should be expected to assume; it is right to say that this approach is merely reportage. Which is why it could be said that it is redundant to argue that artists should enter the frontline, whereever that may be.
McQueens’ description of his experience in Iraq recalls the mediated torpor of the modern soldier, American troops firing to the soundtrack of Metallica’s Enter Sandman or the Bloodhound Gang’s The Roof is on Fire, as seen in Michael Moores’ Farenheit 9/11. It also recalls the inert Sam Mendes film Jarhead, in which troops are seen languishing in utter boredom in the first Gulf War.
Or consider Baudrillard’s ‘The Gulf War did not take place’:
Baudrillard thinks that language has broken free from its moorings and now proliferates out of control. The best one can do is show how every proposition can be shown to be no more true than its opposite. The 'evidence' of the Gulf War taking place can also 'prove' the opposite. That what took place was not a war at all, but something else -- the spectacle of a massacre. Or that the 'place' that the war 'took' for those of us who watched it on TV was an imaginary place, an orientalist fantasy of mad Arabs and imperial splendour. The war took the space of our televisual imaginations. ('The Gulf War did not take place', McKenzie Wark, 28 July 1995, www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/001205.php)
So, in fact McQueen’s Queen and country, with its multiple images of the fallen on postage stamps, may be more representative of the ‘mediated’ experience of modern combat than any graphic lithograph or piece of photojournalism. The duplicated images of British soldiers killed in combat are undoubtedly a gesture by the artist to honour the dead. But through the use of the postage stamp and the use of repetition, McQueen conveys the anonymity of the individual soldier, reduced to a sign, and caught in the apparatus and bureaucracy of the military. The actual experience of the soldier is notable by its omission; one feels the randomness of the deaths of these individuals. What is expressed is the remnants of combat, the pictures of young people in uniform who will not return home. Perhaps above all else, the viewer can feel the presence of the ‘war artist’ grappling with his altered role.
Most recent news items:
• Gormley good? (Wednesday 29 August 2007)
• Postcard entries now online (Thursday 16 August 2007)
• Art and conflict x 2 (Tuesday 14 August 2007)
• Art and the homeless, in Barcelona and Dublin (Friday 27 July 2007)
For a full list of news items, click here.
Latest reader
feedback:
News item 624
The idea of exhibiting a group of objects bought on eBay, though ...
News item 617
It'd be interesting to see how many visitors attended the gallery...
News item 603
re. Comment 2 - most people who get turned down for grants have t...
News item 603
'sour grapes aside, what are culture ireland up to?' i think we n...
News item 606
hang on a minute... surely the feller who won the prize at art st...
News item 603
As someone who received a grant from Culture Ireland this year, f...
News item 602
try and make work that doesn't topple over in future!...
News item 595
My objection is to the way the words 'young' and 'emerging' are s...
Do
you have an opinion on this article? If so, please click here for our comments form.
| No reader feedback so far - awaiting your input! |
Back
to top of page
