Art During The Great War

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

A survey of the work of official war artists and others

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It was shown in the last chapter how at the beginning of the present century the art world was deluged with theories and ‘isms’, while several of the pictures illustrated afforded evidence that a sinister violence and subterranean unrest became manifest in European painting before it exploded in European politics and precipitated a great war. On the Continent—and to a slighter extent in England also—the ‘wild men’ of painting had betrayed in form and color that spirit of merciless aggression which eventually provoked Armageddon. The principal British contribution to the extreme left of modern painting was a development of Cubism known as ‘Vorticism,’ and it is not altogether without significance that the leader of this movement, Mr P Wyndham Lewis, should have begun in the early spring of 1914 a series of abstract paintings with titles taken from military textbooks. His ‘Plan of Campaign’, exhibited at London in June 1914, was based not on any vision of landscapes and figures, but on such a diagram of a battle disposition as we may find in any history book. The parallel lines and blocks stand for the divisions of contending forces, and the heavy blocks in the upper right hand corner are supposed to represent te extended left wing of one army outflanking and falling with superior on the right wing of the other army. This is the ‘plan of campaign’. Here again we have a curious premonition of the War expressed in paint. The case of Mr Wyndham Lewis typifies the general effect the War had on art. When a student at the Slade School Mr Lewis made himself remarked by the uncommon power of his drawing. Caught up in the vortex which swept so many ambitious young artists into the whirlpool of ‘abstract painting’ because of their desire to attain novelty at all costs, Mr Lewis was led in the years immediately preceding the War to paint ‘abstract’ pictures, incomprehensible to the multitude and difficult for even the initiated to understand. Then in 1918, after two years experience with the heavy artillery in France, he returned to London and returned to realism. ‘The Gun Pit,’ which he painted for the Canadian War Memorials, was no abstract picture, but a perfectly comprehensible painting based on vision, on his remembered experience with the big guns and of the big-built men who worked them.

The chief effect of the War on painting, therefore, was to bring about a return to realism, but it was a new realism modified, as we shall see, by certain principles derived from movements which, in themselves, appeared to be extravagant. Not only did the War restore to sanity many of the most promising of the younger artists, it also prepared the public to accept and understand their works. Youthful artists, who in peace time might have waited till middle age before their talent was recognized, became famous in a year or two. The wall of prejudice was broken down by the unparalleled unheaval of our normal world, so that even conservative minds were ready to consider impartially a new vision of new events. Further, though there was no slackness on the part of the younger artists in joining the colors, the artistic activity of Great Britain may be said to have reached its zenith during the years of War. Never before had so much official and State patronage been given to British artists, never before did the British public so clearly recognize that picture-making was not a mere pasttime but an activity which had its own function and purpose of usefulness to humanity.

As early as 1914-15 the first public recognition of the artist’s value to the State in war time came in connection with the recruiting campaign. ‘Art for art’s sake’ was dead and done with, but in its place was substituted a new gospel of ‘Art for the Idea’s sake.’ Art was recognized as an element of education and social progress, because nothing else in the world could impress an idea so vividly and lastingly on the human memory. During the first winter and spring of the War close on a hundred posters were commissioned from various artists by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, and 2,500,000 copies of these posters were distributed throughout the United Kingdom. In addition to these official posters, generous contributions were made to the campaign by several private firms. The recruiting posters issued by the London Electric Railways will be long remembered for their efficiency and artistic qualities, notably Mr Brangwyn’s ‘Remember Belgium’ and Mr G Spencer Pryse’s ‘The Only Road for an Englishman’. Later the use as a poster during the War Savings Campaign of a reproduction of Whistler’s portrait of his Mother—as a gentle reminder that ‘Old Age Must Come’—was significant of a growing belief on the part of Authority that the most artistic picture can make the widest public appeal.

Simultaneously with the appearance of the recruiting posters on the hoardings, came the war cartoons in the newspapers. It is impracticable to give a list of the British artists who did excellent work in this direction—every reader will remember notable drawings.

Meanwhile what of painting? It was said rather bitterly in 1916 that ‘no visitor to the Royal Academy would know that there was a war on.’ It may be admitted frankly that the exhibitions in these years looked much the same as those in years of peace. Pictures of the War were infrequent, and when present they were rarely successful. The failure of the older artists to grapple with the situation was neither surprising nor shameful. They did not possess the requisite experience. Some endeavored to the topical, and envisaged the War after their memory of Crimean pictures, changing the uniforms into khaki but repeating the old arrangements. But sword-waving officers, swaggering cavalrymen, and neatly brushed infantry were no longer convincing even to civilians. Standing before an Academy picture of a charge, a wounded New Zealander was overheard to remark: ‘That’s absurd! One man with a machine gun would wipe out the lot.’ New methods of warfare demanded new methods of painting for their efficient expression. The battle in art, as at the Front, was for the young, and the first man to capture the imagination of London by his war pictures was a young artist hitherto practically unknown.

Art During The Great War (continued)