![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
But all I'm seeing is red and I can't help but be mad at it
Rabbit, rabbit! It is snowing steadily into the streetlight. I believe it is expected to go on snowing for some time. I have a cold and have therefore had the kind of day where I spent the night awake and the morning working through bright and greying light and finally passed out in the late afternoon. This series of articles on the Siege of Gondor from a perspective of military history, logistics, and tactics significantly improved the earlier portion of my day. I am also thinking about how I disagree with the assertion at the end of this review about the paucity of great visual art of war.
no subject
I'm not sure I do disagree that there isn't much, but I think I disagree that there should be more. I think visual art is a poor medium, because it's too easy to make it look less horrific than it is and should be, to have the effect of glorification - and since photography became widespread, anything accurate would seem gratuitous.
Art is appreciated. War shouldn't be. Photography is visual art too but nobody thinks of war photography that way because it's too confronting, too painful.
That photo from the Vietnam War of the burning little girl had as much impact as Guernica, if not more - but if someone painted that, it would seem over-the-top, for one thing, and gauche, for another.
And I'd argue that's how it should be.
no subject
There's also a nice set on war elephants.
Photography is visual art too but nobody thinks of war photography that way because it's too confronting, too painful.
Photography was my major point of disagreement, along with the kind of sketching and painting that I think is often classified as reportage rather than art. Also I'm not sure it's fair to say that just because a thing isn't Goya or Guernica, it doesn't count as serious art.
I am not sure I believe there should be less. Partly because if art is one of the ways that people deal with the things that have happened to them, then they have a right to use whatever medium is most effective, whether that's film or sculpture or words or ink. I agree that a lot of war art is used for propaganda. But I don't think that's its sole manifestation. There may be an inside/outside distinction here.
no subject
At that point though I kind of bow out of the discussion, because I'm somewhat cynical about a lot of modern art, and having no visual memory means I don't really look for visual art, or really understand the notion of using it to process trauma. I know a lot about art in historical context, and almost nothing about visual art produced in my lifetime.
I don't think something has to be Goya or Guernica. I honestly do think a lot of it is categorisation. (I'm not sure we disagree as much it seems.)
What, really, is the distinction between Guernica and that photograph of the burning child? They both were visual representations of an atrocity that had a genuine impact on subsequent historical events because of how people reacted to them.
The thing is, because we have so many photographs of things, now, manufacturing the images in other forms would seem superfluous at best, exploitative at worst, and paintings inevitably seem fictionalised, especially these days. I'm not sure there's as much of a place for it now.
War doesn't hide itself well. You don't need an artist to show you the inner truth of war. Photography is sufficient.
no subject
Why not? Some of the pieces discussed in the show were by Iraqi artists who lived through the Gulf Wars. I should perhaps have used other words than "deal with" because I did not intend to invoke strictly art as therapy: I meant more that if art is made out of people's lives and if their lives include things like wars, then the wars are obviously going to show up. But I would classify protest art as war art, too, because the subject is the same whether the aim is dissent or celebration. If the definition of war art is specifically documentary, then this conversation is moot, but it did not seem from the discussion in the review as though it was.
I know a lot about art in historical context, and almost nothing about visual art produced in my lifetime.
That's fair. I certainly couldn't talk about contemporary movements.
The thing is, because we have so many photographs of things, now, manufacturing the images in other forms would seem superfluous at best, exploitative at worst, and paintings inevitably seem fictionalised, especially these days. I'm not sure there's as much of a place for it now.
I do think we disagree on this point, because I think there is value in speaking on the slant, and non-photographic visual art is a way of accomplishing that. Photographs can lie, too.
(I also don't think we have to agree, just in case that's the sort of thing that needs to be said.)
no subject
In some ways I don't think art produced in the aftermath of war - even if it's "about" the war by someone who was there for it - is likely ever to be really and entirely about the war. Things always change and memory is unreliable.
But there is definitely value, and labels often get in the way of meaning, so.
no subject
no subject
Please let me know if you have any particular recommendations. I just read the Tolkien and, as mentioned above, the war elephants.
no subject
My understanding, at least, is that in an era before modern nation-states, where fighting forces have sworn their loyalty to individual leaders, how the Earl of Whatsis acts, personally, on the field of battle is vitally important – if he flees, he’s going to take his fighters (vassals or mercenaries) with him. If he’s killed, those fighters are no longer obligated to continue with the campaign; even if they wish to do so, they’re going to lose some time and momentum while the new chain of command gets sorted out and they swear new oaths of fealty. The whole “heroism of the commander affects the morale of the troops” isn't just a literary trope to boost the Earl’s ego.
no subject
The piece on Oaths did not contain much fact I didn't already know, but said it very well.
I'm partway through the series on Sparta. This *does* contain a lot I didn't know, and is written with admirable intensity and passion. I knew Sparta was not all it is (often) cracked up to be, but I had NO IDEA how comprehensively awful it was.
no subject
In the meantime, random, but have some collected amusing video game fixes.
no subject
Thank you!
In the meantime, random, but have some collected amusing video game fixes.
"Can no longer press the create Hungary button multiple times."
Also, "Adjusted value of bees."
no subject
I am sorry to hear that zombie cats can no longer adopt dwarfs, though.
no subject
Zombie cats need all the love they can get!
no subject
It's the 'great' that bothers me. Define!
Yeah,I know, I have my military historian hat on! :o)
no subject
no subject
As stated above: I'm pretty sure the bar isn't "if it's not Guernica or Goya, go home."
no subject
I think you can have your military historian hat on for both of the links I included, so go for it!
no subject
no subject
I understand that. The ideas were so good and so useful, though. I had never before had opportunity to appreciate Tolkien as a military writer, not just a writer who was also a veteran.
no subject
no subject
no subject
It's not a distinction I would have drawn, no. Especially since movies are also a visual medium. I still wouldn't have agreed, but I would have understood the parameters more if the reviewer had ruled out all visual media and left prose, poetry, music, etc.
no subject
What he seems to object to is the lack of narrative ("Novels, sure, and movies, which pick us up in one time and set us down, satisfied, in another.") so I suspect he would rule out music and some poetry as well. But again, insisting that art only has important things to say if it can do so through rounded storytelling is just a weird, weird stance, especially for a professional art critic! I sympathize with his stance at the beginning of the article – feeling overwhelmed by twenty years of war, wanting to hide from it rather than face it yet again – but I have no idea how he gets from there to his declaration at the end.
no subject
This is true. I'm also not sure that war is a narrative that gives satisfaction, you know?
In general, I'm just not sure what happened here.
What's a war?
https://nomorekidsincages.wordpress.com/
Amanda paints everyday, based on a quotation from an immigrant.
Re: What's a war?
I would not call them a war, but that does not mean that they are not atrocities. The Holodomor was a genocide; it did not need to be a war.