Hi Andy et al,
What a great contribution to this thread - war art in general is fascinating and deeply moving no matter what the medium.
Thinking about painting in the Spanish Civil War we obviously see
Picasso's 'Guernika' as the archetypal image. But I'm not sure this is quite the case, for a start one doesn't think of Picasso as a 'war artist' as such. Moreover, I'm not sure but I think that Guernika was Picasso's only war painting, and, furthermore, it can also been seen as a protest about the nature and threat of 'modern' warfare in general as much as about the specific incident, or even the Spanish Civil War in particular - although I accept that this is probabaly more pertinent to later 'career' of the painting itself as an icon.
Goya, on the other hand, although an established portrait artist to the Spanish Court from about 1783, is equally remembered for his series' of realistic war paintings, The Black Paintings and especially The Disasters of War, which are what you are referring to I guess, painted during and after the Spanish War of Independence (1808-14) - known to British historians as the Peninsular war. I came across a collection of these, and the
Capricios, by accident when I first visited the Prado in Madrid. The experience was profound to say the least and I think of it still, around twenty years later!
Sadly, Goya was long gone by the time of the Civil War we are talking about in this thread, but that doesn't stop the importance of war imagery in history. I wonder if one of the features of the Civil War was the emerging power of Photo-journalism, which, if not actually invented, stikes me as coming of age at this time: the images left by the likes of
Robert Capa still hold in the collective memory I think, or maybe just in mine!
I don't know of any newsreel images of the Civil War that have anything like the impact of the huge archive from Second World War though -I wonder if this is due to the technology, i.e. robust lightweight movie cameras, not being up to scratch at the time. Or, more cynically, media moguls not considering the War sufficiently important to commit such a new, and presumeable expensive, resource for perhaps scant commercial returns (newsreels, such as Pathé News were lucrative commercial enterprises).
Developing this point a little further: I wonder if many wars generated, or are best remembered, by specific artictic media or genres? The poetry of the Great War strikes me as being essential to understandimng the experience and impact of the war on its generation, likewise epic poems, such as Tennyson's
Charge of the Light Brigade paints a profoundly different picture of warfare!
The art of war correspondents is well known to have developled enormously in the Spanish Civil War, as the earlier posts in this threat readily testify, but these also raise isues of the effectiveness, of lack, of censorship in various theatres of war -the paucity of correspndence from the Nationalist side of the front lines is important here I think.
Moving on a few generations, a little closer to home - "About time!" I hear you cry! - the Vietnam war is now remebered best, perhaps, in terms of the genre of anti-war movies such as
Apocalyse Now or
Coming Home, which had an an enormous impact on the thinking of one contemporary young adolescent
Phew! I'd better get off this one now before my brain needs a service!
Thanks one again Andy for such a thought proviking idea!
Regs
Simon
