Harvest Of Death Analysis

Art is able to provide awareness of many types of issues. War and conflict is commonly depicted through art to promote peace and compassion. Ben Quilty is a war artist admired for exposing the profound physiological realities of war through the creation of his art. During a three week visit to Afghanistan, he spoke to many Australian servicemen and women about their experiences. He discovered the hardship of the people, and how much fear they live in. This is what influenced him to create portraits of people using vivid colours and intense brush strokes.

In Alexander Gardner’s Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War, the haunting image “Harvest of Death” catches one’s eye with the seemingly endless field of corpses. The jarring facial expression on the figure in the foreground draws one into the narrative of the piece. However, our initial understanding of the image’s narrative is limited to what we can see and what we know of the circumstances surrounding it. While we know it was taken during the American Civil War, by simply looking at the photograph, we cannot know who is depicted. In black and white, it is difficult to even tell what side of the conflict these fallen soldiers fought for. We can interpret the image for our own readings, but we cannot tell what the artist intended us to see or what message he wanted to impart with it. These unknowns, however, are addressed in the related text associated with the image. These short passages can tell us a great deal about the photographer’s intentions and influence the way we read the image. Through the excerpt, we not only learn the intended meaning of the photography, but we also learn about Gardner’s political intentions and the key points he wanted his viewers to note within the image. Published as a pair, Gardner used his text to contextualize his images and inform the way we perceive them. This is clearly illustrated in “A Harvest of Death” and its accompanying passage.

Whether it’s war or terrorism, children who want to grow securely is living amongst the affected nation. War is obliterating those talented individuals in their childhood who can radically transform the world itself. The two disputed countries may also have justifications to protect the welfares of their own people. There can be wealth and nuclear weapons to demolish this world as a whole. However, peacefully negotiated approach is coveted to compromise on each other. No country can rationalize weapons of mass obliteration and debacles. Often, it is a foolish decision of the pioneers of the country, making it a pretext for the combat. It’s the upright soldiers and their families who need to survive the demise and serious injuries from the weapons. For the last centuries, the spontaneous overflow of poetry has portrayed human emotions concerning wide range of universal issues. Both the poets Donald Bruce Dawe and Wilfred Owen exemplify this cataclysm of losing your families and the conditions the soldiers face, through their notable poems Homecoming and Dulce et Decorum Est.

Art in World War I was observed in many forms, from photography to art movements on the home fronts of many countries. What many people did not realize is that art was also used in the war for battle. Propaganda and camouflage were crucial to the success on the battlefield and they were used and produced in ways not normally seen in history before. Propaganda had existed before WWI but was used heavily in this war and was often negatively themed, to promote involvement in a war against the evil enemy. Complex camouflage of machinery, ships, and uniforms also arose during the Great War, and this

World War I was a war that shocked the world and brought about new emotions that created a large wave of “-isms” as well as the “lost generation” of writers. Modern art was catalyzed by World War I and without a thorough study of the various forms of art that resulted from it, modern art and the tremendous effect that World War I had on the people of the world cannot be fully understood. This historical investigation will cover a few aspects of the art that resulted from World War I so that a general idea of the emotions shared by the people of the world can be known. A few paintings that represent specific movements will be studied to understand the artistic movement. A number of museum exhibitions will be studied along with government websites, databases, and museum websites, especially from the Museum of Modern Art.

Painters enormously manipulated the truth in their portraits they painted since they aimed to present a specific meaning or feeling to their observers. One of the results, paintings of America`s wars especially before the Civil War had a

His experiences helped him recreate “'the horrific, the desperate, and the unimaginably real qualities” (Fox 250) of the war as well as “manifestation of dehumanisation: madness, mutilation, horrific wounds, putrescent corpses, rapes, civilian casualties, sexual depravity, wretchedness” (Fox 250). Dix believed that all art is exorcism, which is the expulsion of an evil spirit and in his works, he attempted to oust all the horrible and sinful ways of the war and society during his time. In his paintings, he displayed fallen soldiers, decaying bodies, collapsed buildings, bleeding wounds, and other overwhelmingly violent and gruesome details of battle (Fox 256-260). His paintings also portrayed the strict gendered idea during the two World Wars that fighting and war were tests of masculinity and power. At first, Dix’s works consisted only of quick sketches and drawings. His satirical portraiture only came about after the war as a way of expressing his disagreement with the ways of the war. Unlike many war-related artworks at that time, Dix focused solely on the victims of battle and the consequences of war, not on the enemies or the

Some of the colors seem out of place. The variation in color may be a result of the author emphasizing certain areas of the sculpture. Most notably, the artist selects to present the sculpture in three-dimensions, using this technique to accentuate and magnify the combatants and their physical attributes. Certain parts of these dimensions seem to stick right out at you, giving the viewer a good impression of the violence and hatred of war.

The exhibit contained upwards of 20 photographs and at least 60 paintings. One of the most agreeable things about the works of art that I witnessed is that collectively, they assisted in recounting the sentiment that gripped the country during the war that threatened to sunder it. One could almost feel the initial enthusiasm as the war broke out, that was swiftly prolonged by numerous clashes over a period of years. There were works that alluded to an impending war, ones that depicted that war, and numerous ones that hinted at a hoped for ending in which the mightiness of the country would someday be restored.

To begin, I’ll be discussing question number one. Clearly, the artist Richard Caton Woodville had an “ambivalence regarding the war,” as Francis K. Pohl states

The point of the poem was to deliver the horrors of war to the public

The other thing interesting about the painting was the setting of the picture. Unlike most paintings this one was set inside a frame that resembled a barrier. This was very creative and gave the viewer the sense that all these soldiers are trapped in this vortex of unending bloodshed.

Numerous people have no idea about the relationship between the World War and artistic. The relationship between art and war was long ignored by historians, it's now coming to light just how meshed they really were. Why don’t we hear more about the wartime contributions of these famed modernists? Perhaps this is because of the “negative relationship many artists… [had] with the military” ("The Forgotten History of How Modern Art Helped Win World War II.").

The work I chose from the Missouri Historical Society is Thomas Benton’s Prelude to Death. Based on Appelbaum published in the Missourian, “Benton painted this soon after the United States entered World War II and it shows the first embarkation of American soldiers for Africa” (2011). In the painting, I am mainly focusing on the usage of shape, value and the color. This painting mainly depicts a scene that soldiers are getting ready to go on board for fighting against the World War II. They all wear on uniforms and most likely have already lined up in an order.

When we look back at history, the driving force of change in the world usually comes in the form of war. By looking at the art of ancient civilizations we can understand how their culture viewed the different aspects of war and battles. Two great examples of art that represents a civilization’s view of warfare are the Standard of Ur and the Alexander Mosaic.