A Taube by C.R.W. Nevinson
1916 / Oil on canvas / 25”x30” / Imperial War Museums, UK
Self-Portrait, 1911
Ypres after the First Bombardment, 1916
Anti-aircraft Defences, 1940
Tag Archives: War
Love & War~ May 28
In Flanders Field-Where Soldiers Sleep and Poppies Grow / Robert Vonnoh
1890 / Oil on canvas / 58”x104” / The Butler Institute of American Art
In Flanders Fields By John McCrae
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
^^ (Learn more by clicking on hyperlinks) ^^
The Birthplace of “In Flanders Fields”
How the poppy became the symbol of sacrifice
A Wall Of Poppies On The National Mall Honors Fallen Soldiers
Dedicate a digital poppy online:
Love & War~ May 26
Dorothea Lange
Biographies:
International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum~ http://www.iphf.org/hall-of-fame/dorothea-lange/
PBS~ http://www.pbs.org/video/2365971488/
Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) documented the change on the homefront, especially among ethnic groups and workers uprooted by the war. Three months after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the relocation of Japanese-Americans into armed camps in the West. Soon after, the War Relocation Authority hired Lange to photograph Japanese neighborhoods, processing centers, and camp facilities.
Lange’s earlier work documenting displaced farm families and migrant
workers during the Great Depression did not prepare her for the disturbing racial and civil rights issues raised by the Japanese internment. Lange quickly found herself at odds with her employer and her subjects’ persecutors, the United States government.
To capture the spirit of the camps, Lange created images that frequently juxtapose signs of human courage and dignity with physical evidence of the indignities of incarceration. Not surprisingly, many of Lange’s photographs were censored by the federal government, itself conflicted by the existence of the camps.
The true impact of Lange’s work was not felt until 1972, when the Whitney Museum incorporated twenty-seven of her photographs into Executive
Order 9066, an exhibit about the Japanese internment. New York Times critic A.D. Coleman called Lange’s photographs “documents of such a high order that they convey the feelings of the victims as well as the facts of the crime.”
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/wcf/wcf0013.html
Shorpy~ http://www.shorpy.com/dorothea-lange-photographs
National Archives~ https://www.archives.gov/news/articles/japanese-internment-75th-anniversary
National Park Service~ https://www.nps.gov/manz/learn/photosmultimedia/dorothea-lange-gallery.htm
(Learn more by clicking on hyperlinks)
Love & War~ May 24
Victory Gardens
During World War I, Liberty Gardens (and later, Victory Gardens) grew out of the government’s efforts to encourage home gardening among Americans, both to express their patriotism and
to aid the war effort by freeing up food production for soldiers.
As part of the (World War II) effort, the government rationed foods like sugar, butter, milk, cheese, eggs, coffee, meat
and canned goods. Labor and transportation shortages made it hard to harvest and move fruits and vegetables to market. So, the government turned to its citizens and encouraged them to plant “Victory Gardens.” They wanted individuals
to provide their own fruits and vegetables.
Americans were encouraged to grow their own to ensure everyone at home had enough to eat…There were 20 million gardens everywhere from rooftops and empty lots to backyards and schoolyards. 40% of produce, which made over 1 million tons, consumed in America was grown in victory gardens. People learned how to can and preserve so the harvests lasted all year.
(Learn more by clicking on hyperlinks)
Love & War~ May 22
Sir Winston Churchill by Ernest Hamlin Baker
1949 / Gouache, ink and graphite pencil on paperboard / 11 3/4”x10 1/2″
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Ernest Baker, born in 1889 in Rhode Island, was a self-taught illustrator. Most of his works were covers for Time magazine, although he was responsible for eleven covers for Fortune magazine between 1929 and 1941.
Beginning in 1939, Baker produced over 300 covers for Time during his seventeen-year tenure with the magazine. He was described by Time publisher, Ralph Ingersoll, as an artist who could do anything.
http://www.askart.com/artist_bio/Ernest_Hamlin_Baker/28830/Ernest_Hamlin_Baker.aspx
In December of 1949, Winston Churchill was chosen by Time magazine as the “Man of the Half-Century”, celebrated in a 16-page supplement which was contained in the January 2nd issue of 1950. Baker did the cover illustration for that issue.
Describing Mr Churchill as “the man of the half -century,” Time magazine says: “No man’s history can sum up the dreadful, wonderful years 1900-50. Mr Churchill’s story comes closest …. Sometimes wrong, often right, he fought his way toward the heart of every storm.”
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22801530
(Learn more by clicking on hyperlinks)
Love & War~ May 20
Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Maya Lin’s original competition submission for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Architectural drawings and a one-page written summary, 1980 or 1981.
In 1979, Congress grants a Vietnam War veterans’ committee the right to build a memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., dedicated to American soldiers killed in the conflict in Vietnam. The committee puts the design out for competition convening a blue-ribbon panel of architects, sculptors, and landscape architects to evaluate more than 1,400 submissions. When the winner is announced, no one is more surprised than the student architect herself, Maya Lin, a 20-year-old Yale undergraduate. The panel is moved by the simplicity, honesty, and power of Lin’s design: a V-shaped, sunken wall of black stone, with the names of those killed in action engraved in chronological order. To search out a loved one, a mourner will walk along the monument and find the name among the 57,661 listed. Lin describes the Memorial thus: “I went to see the site. I had a general idea that I wanted to describe a journey…a journey that would make you experience death and where you’d have to be an observer, where you could never really fully be with the dead. It wasn’t going to be something that was going to say, ‘It’s all right, it’s all over,’ because it’s not.” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/flashpoints/visualarts/thewall_a.html
For her life’s work, Lin was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2009, and a film about the artist, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, won the 1994 Oscar for best documentary. Lin has served as a board member of the National Resources Defense Council and a member of the World Trade Center Site Memorial design jury. In 2016, she was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama. https://www.biography.com/people/maya-lin-37259
Spotlight: Maya Lin~ https://www.archdaily.com/774717/spotlight-maya-lin
(Learn more by clicking on hyperlinks)
Love & War~ May 18
Mathew Brady
Mathew Brady is often referred to as the father of photojournalism and is most well known for his documentation of the Civil War. His photographs, and those he commissioned, had a tremendous impact on society at the time of the war, and continue to do so today. He and his employees photographed thousands of images including battlefields, camp life, and portraits of some of the most famous citizens of his time including Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee.
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/mathew-brady
The Civil War as Photographed by Mathew Brady~
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/brady-photos/
“Mathew Brady: Portraits of a Nation” by Robert Wilson~
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/mathew-brady-9781620402030/
Portraits by Mathew Brady~ http://www.mathewbrady.com/portraits.htm
(Learn more by clicking on hyperlinks)
Love & War~ May 16
The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West
On September 13, 1759, during the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) [known in the United States as the French and Indian War], the British General James Wolfe achieved a dramatic victory; Wolfe was fatally wounded during the battle, but his victory ensured British supremacy in Canada.
Benjamin West, Self-portrait 1770
Besides the original, at least four other additional versions of The Death of General Wolfe were also produced by West. The primary copy of The Death of General Wolfe is currently in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, with further examples at the Royal Ontario Museum (Canadiana art collection), as well as the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The fourth copy produced resides at Ickworth House, Suffolk, England. Each reproduction had its own variation in the depiction of Wolfe’s death. A fifth autograph copy was commissioned by George III in 1771 and is still in the Royal Collection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_General_Wolfe
(Learn more by clicking on hyperlinks)
Love & War~ May 14
Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller
“Peace Halting the Ruthlessness of War”
1917 / Bronze cast sculpture / 14”x16 3/4”x9”/ Private collection
In May, 1917, Meta Warrick Fuller took second prize in a
competition under the auspices of the Massachusetts Branch of the Woman’s Peace Party, her subject being “Peace Halting the Ruthlessness of War.” War is personified as on a mighty steed and trampling to death numberless human beings. In one hand he holds a spear on which he has transfixed the head of one of his victims.
(Learn more by clicking on hyperlinks)
Download a pdf file of “AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN The Life and Art Of Meta Warrick Fuller” here: http://www.danforthart.org/assets/forms/meta_fuller_catalog_1984-5.pdf
Love & War~ May 12
“The Apotheosis of Athanasios Diakos” by Konstantinos Parthenis
c.1933 / Oil on canvas / 150”x150” / National Art Gallery and Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens
Konstantinos Parthenis (1878-1967), Greek painter
Athanasios Diakos was a hero of the Greek War of Independence*. Prior to the war he entered a monastery and was ordained a deacon (“diakos” in the Greek language). One day a Turkish pasha came to his monastery and made some crude remarks about his good looks. Diakos slew him and fled to the mountains. He join a band of klephts under Odysseus Androutsos, who made him second in command. Eventually, he headed his own band. ≈ In April 1821, Omer Vrioni, the commander of the Turkish army, advanced with 9,000 men from Thessaly to crush the revolt in Peloponnesus. At the ensuing Battle of
Athanasios Diakos
Alamana, Diakos’ men fought for several hours before they were overwhelmed. The wounded Diakos was taken to Vrioni. Vrioni offered to make Diakos an officer in his army but Diakos refused and replied “I was born a Greek and I will die a Greek”. ≈ Vrioni then ordered that Diakos be impaled on a spit and roasted over a fire. As he was about to die onlookers heard him sing “Look at the time Charon chose to take me, now that branches are flowering, now that the earth sends forth grass” referring to the Greeks’ uprising against the Turks. http://wiki.phantis.com/index.php/Athanasios_Diakos
