The Art of World War I

We were at an art exhibition entitled “Out of Chaos,” sponsored by the Jewish Museum of Art in London at the Courtauld Gallery. It wasn’t a huge show, some six smallish rooms, but if it lacked in quantity it more than made up for it in depth and quality. The idea behind the exhibition was to show 100 years of Jewish art in London.

A number of works in the exhibit caught my eye; one was a self-portrait by Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918). I was familiar with his work as a poet; he’s one of the so-called “World War I poets” who produced some wonderful poetry during the war. I wasn’t as familiar with his art. Eventually, I was able to get my hands on Whitechapel at War: Isaac Rosenberg and His Circle, an exhibition book for a show of the same name held in London and Leeds in 2008. And I learned that Rosenberg was not only one of the World War I poets, but also a member of a group of artists known as the “Whitechapel Boys.” (Another was artist David Bomberg, who was represented in the “Our of Chaos” exhibition with several paintings.)

At that point, several exhibitions began to converge – the First World War Galleries at the Imperial War Museum in London; this “Out of Chaos” exhibit at the Courtauld, and then one we saw just recently, at the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum in St. Louis: “Images of War, War of Images.”

It’s no surprise that there are a number of exhibitions, artistic and historical, about World War I; we are about right in the middle of the war’s centenary. What’s fascinating is that there were essentially three kinds of art that developed through and because of the war: “official art,” like that commissioned by the British military of artists like Paul Nash; paintings and drawings that artists who served in the war did, often to help them make sense of what happened; and the art used for what we can only call wartime propaganda.

Like the poets telling their stories in theor poetry, the World War I artists told their stories. Both poets and artists tried to make sense of a war that began with cavalry riding horses and quickly became a murderous assault by weapons technology in the stalemated trenches.

An excellent introduction to the “official art” and the “artists’ art” is Art from the First World War by Richard Slocombe and published by the Imperial War Museum in London. A small paperback (costing $20 in the U.S. but less than that if you happen to visit the museum in London), it includes some of the major works which resulted from the war, including some of the desolate battlefield scnes by Paul Nash, horrific landscapes by john Nash, and works by C.R.W. Nevinson, Wyndham Lewis, David Bomberg, and several other artists.

Whitechapel at War, noted above, focuses on a relatively small group of artists. It includes three essays on Isaac Rosenberg, the Whitechapel group collectively, one on how their works began to become known through print, and a final chapter a “Whitechapel Girl,” Clare Binberg, who was associated with the group but did not share their military experience.

A third good resource is Nothing but the Clouds Unchanged: Artists in World War I, edited by Gordon Hughes and Philipp Blom, which is the exhibition book for “Images of War, War of Images” show at the Kemper Museum. While the first two books focus on British artists, this one is more expansive, encompassing artists and art from all of the primary nations at war during the conflict – British, French, German, Russian, Italian, American and others. Like the exhibition itself, it goes beyond paintings and includes recruiting and war bind posters, magazine illustrations, photographs, and even how soldiers decorated their helmets. The essays (and illustrations) are packed with information on how the war was visually “told,” both during and after the conflict.

The “Images of War, War of Images” exhibition is in its final days at the Kemper – it closes Jan. 4. If you’re in or visiting the St. Louis area, it is well worth your time. 

Related:

“Some Corner of a Foreign Field” by James Bentley

Paul Cornish’s “The First World War Galleries”

Good Poems Can Come in Small Packages

Jane Potter’s “Wilfred Owen: An Illustrated Life”

The World War I Poets in the War

The Most Famous Poem of World War I

The Poetry of World War I

Brian Gardner’s “Up to the Line of Death: The War Poets 1914-1918”

The Poems the Soldiers Read in World War I

Top painting: “Gassed” by John Singer Sargent, oil on canvas (1919); Imperial War Museum, London.

Paul Cornish’s “The First World War Galleries”

Last fall, we were fortunate to be able to visit the Imperial War Museum in London. My back had decided not to cooperate with our vacation schedule. After spending essentially most of a weekend on the floor, I finally had enough of a recovery to rearrange our schedule.

Because it was the 100^th anniversary of the start of World War I, museums and other institutions had created programs and remembrances across the city, from the almost 900,000 ceramic red poppies in the moat of the Tower of London to musical programs and the newly opened World War I galleries at the Imperial War Museum.

A number of historians and others have observed that the 20^th century began with World War I and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The galleries at the war museum are evidence of how much truth there is in that observation. The “Great War” or “The World to End All Wars” caused the collapse of four empires (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey), changed the map of Europe, gave birth to communism, led in a straight line to World War II, and forced a reluctant United States to assume a position of leadership that most Americans did not seem to want.

The exhibition is striking, haunting, almost humbling, moving from the start of hostilities in August 1914 to Armistice Day on Nov. 11, 1918. Paul Cornish, curator of the museum’s Department of Exhibitions, has written the companion book for the large display, The First World War Galleries. It’s just as striking, haunting and humbling as the exhibition itself.

The book is not meant to be a definitive history of World War I; numerous other books tackle that challenge. Instead, Cornish provides an overview of the war, using highlights from the exhibition to explain what happened, and why.

He also provides interesting nuggets that go far in explaining what happened.

·       Of all the warring powers, the United Kingdom had the smallest land army, which was seriously depleted with initial fighting in Belgium. The arrival of the British expeditionary forces from India helped save the British army.

·       The Battle of the Somme, lasting from July to November of 1916, costing the British more than 20,000 casualties on the first day. The French were actually better prepared (and more experienced) to engage in the battle.

·       The war quickly became a war of technology – the use of armored vehicles (tanks); the use of poison gas, first by the Germans and then by the British; the war in the air with planes and dirigibles; even the use of metal helmets to protect against shrapnel (as Cornish says, armor returned to military gear).

·       Britain was shocked with the shelling of three English towns by German warships, and almost 1500 Londoners died in bombings by German planes and dirigibles.

·       In 1916, the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph died (he had reigned since 1848); his successor tried to negotiate with the Allied powers but Germany got wind of it and took over the Austrian army.

The First World War Galleries is a fascinating book, even apart from the exhibition itself. And it tells the story in text and illustrations of a war that helped shape much of the 20^th century.

Painting, top: The Menin Road by Paul Nash, oil on canvas (1919), Imperial War Museums, London (scene of the landscape after the Third Battle of Ypres).

Photograph: Chateau Wood in the Ypres / Menin road area by Frank Hurley, taken Oct. 29, 1918; Australian War Memorial, a scene similar to the that painted by Nash.