Art and War

One hundred years ago, the First World War broke out. For the countries involved in it, nothing would be the same again. Ahead of a series of debates the British Council is running with the BBC, the first of which will be held in Sarajevo on 22 June, Nihad Kreševljaković, director of the Sarajevo War Theatre, explains why people in crisis regions risk their lives to go the theatre.

Visual and cultural analysis of Meiji shōnen kaiko 明治少年懐古 (Reminiscences of a Meiji youth, 1944), an illustrated book that nostalgically recalls Japan's late nineteenth and early twentieth century period of modernization. The book is in the Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and is featured on The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book website. My commentary, along with a complete set of readable images of the book, may be found here: http://pulverer.si.edu/node/440/title/1.

This sumptuously illustrated volume, edited by eminent war historian Joanna Bourke, offers a comprehensive visual, cultural and historical account of the ways in which armed conflict has been represented in art. Covering the last two centuries, the book shows how the artistic portrayal of war has changed, from a celebration of heroic exploits to a more modern, truthful depiction of warfare and its consequences. Featuring illustrations by artists including Paul Nash, Judy Chicago, Pablo Picasso, Melanie Friend, Francis Bacon, Kathe Kollwitz, Yves Klein, Robert Rauschenberg, Dora Meeson, Otto Dix and many others, as well as those who are often overlooked, such as children, women, non-European artists and prisoners of war, this extensive survey is a fitting and timely contribution to the understanding, memory and commemoration of war, and will appeal to a wide audience interested in warfare, art, history or politics. Introduction by Joanna Bourke, with essays by Jon Bird, Monica Bohm-Duchen, Joanna Bourke, Grace Brockington, James Chapman, Michael Corris, Patrick Crogan, Jo Fox, Paul Gough, Gary Haines, Clare Makepeace, Sue Malvern, Sergiusz Michalski, Manon Pignot, Anna Pilkington, Nicholas J. Saunders, John Schofield, John D. Szostak, Sarah Wilson and Jay Winter.

Art and war have gone hand in hand since the concept of war. From photographers to painters, writers, and scribes, documentation of war has been prevalent throughout time. Whether it be prefacing or recapping, literature has played an pivotal role in the perception of war. While pre-World War I Europeans were aware that Europe was on the brink of war, literary works such as Lay Down Your Arms, The War in the Air, and Manifesto of Futurism depicted mixed feelings of excitement, apprehension, and contempt for the horror that was to follow.

The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the Spring and Autumn period in 5th century BC. The work, which is attributed to the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, is composed of 13 chapters. Each one is devoted to a distinct aspect of warfare and how that applies to military strategy and tactics. For almost 1,500 years it was the lead text in an anthology that would be formalised as the Seven Military Classics by Emperor Shenzong of Song in 1080. The Art of War remains the most influential strategy text in East Asia. It has a profound influence on Eastern and Western military thinking, business tactics, legal strategy and beyond.

Artistic responses to Australia’s war effort were diverse and engaging. Soldiers sketching what they experienced of the 1915 Gallipoli campaign produced some of the earliest images of the conflict. During the war, the first official art scheme was established and employed Australian artists to capture a particularly Australian experience of the fighting. Unofficial responses, primarily created by women artists, offset the narrow official representation of the conflict, including the war experience behind the lines. However, it was during the interwar years that many of the most iconic images of Australia’s war experience were created.

This thesis addresses the development of the pictorial genre known as the ‘victory picture’ (Ch. desheng tu 得勝圖, zhangong tu 戰功圖) in 19th century China. Largely associated with production under the patronage of the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736-­‐95), victory pictures were thought to have been confined to the imperial milieu. However, my research has revealed that such pictures found expression in late Qing popular culture through the medium of sheet-­‐prints (often erroneously referred to as ‘New Year Pictures, nianhua 年畫).
An analytical framework has been established by bringing together hitherto isolated bodies of material in different institutions in several countries. The woodblock prints that form the primary basis of this thesis have mostly come from the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; the British Library, the British Museum and SOAS in London, and the Shanghai Library and Shanghai History Museum.
This thesis focuses on popular prints depicting scenes from the Sino-­‐French War  (1884-­‐85),  the  Sino-­‐Japanese  War  (1895)  and  the  Boxer  Rebellion  (1899-­‐ 1901), in particular, those from the urbanized Jiangnan-­‐Shanghai region and its publishing and distribution networks in South China. This locates them vis-­‐à-­‐vis the contexts of modernity, the development of news reportage and mass media and  the  treaty-­‐port  environment.  It  examines  why  the  victory  picture  was  so prevalent at a time when the Qing armies faced constant defeat.
With the rise of naval power, and the theatre of war shifting to the sea, I also examine how a new iconography for war was developed through these popular prints, as maritime art was largely unfamiliar in China. As the prints  were widely circulated and copied, the phenomenon of their seriality over time and space is also examined. The victory print is thus not only understood as a picture but as an object, specific to its period and medium. Finally, the print itself serves as a primary source: its rubric yields valuable information for a new understanding of the popular print mar

Den genetischen Code neu schreiben, mit Gedanken Geräte steuern, das Handeln fremder Menschen vorhersagen – einige Menschheitsträume sehen in unseren Tagen ihrer Verwirklichung entgegen, so scheint es. Diese Entwicklung wird einerseits getragen von Zuversicht und Enthusiasmus angesichts der Möglichkeiten, die damit eröffnet werden. Andererseits aber rufen sie Skepsis hervor und lösen Ängste aus, sei es aus Sorge über die Folgen, sollten ihre Verheißungen eintreten, sei es aus Sorge über ein mögliches Versagen in der Praxis. Je näher solche Vorstellungen ihrer Realisierung entgegengehen, desto intensiver und kontroverser werden die Debatten darüber. Ihre Virulenz führt die aktuelle Kunst in einer beeindruckenden Fülle und Breite vor.
Die Auseinandersetzung mit den ambivalenten Möglichkeiten, Erscheinungsweisen und Auswirkungen der Technik gehört zu den zentralen gesellschaftlichen Gegebenheiten seit dem Beginn der Moderne, als im Zuge der industriellen Revolution die Mechanisierung die Arbeits- und Lebenswelten der Menschen ebenso vollständig transformierte wie sie das Bild von Stadt und Land verändert hat. Ihrer historischen und gesellschaftlichen Bedeutung entsprechend, nimmt die Frage nach dem Verhältnis des Menschen zur Technik breiten Raum in der Kunst ein. Vom industriellen über das elektronische zum heutigen digitalen Zeitalter haben Künstlerinnen und Künstler auf die Herausforderungen des technischen Fortschritts auf unterschiedlichste und vielfältige Weise reagiert.
Eine herausragende Rolle spielt in diesem Zusammenhang die Thematisierung des Janusgesichtes der Technik im Werk des Malers Franz Radziwill (1895-1983). Die Faszination für den menschlichen Erfindergeist, der sich in Formen und Funktionen der technischen Geräte und Objekte manifestiert, neue Möglichkeiten des Handelns und der Erfahrung eröffnet und zugleich zu einer völlig neuen Gestaltung der Lebenswelt führt, durchzieht sein Werk genauso wie die bedrohliche Dimension des Technischen, die zu einem Gefühl der Entfremdung von der natürlichen Lebenswelt und der Versachlichung der menschlichen Beziehungen führt.
Ausgehend vom umfangreichen Bestand an Werken Radziwills in der Kunsthalle Emden, aus eigenem Besitz und der Sammlung Claus Hüppe, schlägt die Ausstellung den Bogen von seiner Zeit bis in die unmittelbare Gegenwart. Von den Beschwörungen des technischen Fortschritts bei Radziwill bis zu aktuellen künstlerischen Positionen reflektiert sie in exemplarischer Weise die Auseinandersetzung mit drängenden Fragen, die sich aus den technischen Innovationen seit dem letzten Jahrhundert ergeben. Im historischen Vergleich demonstriert sie die Paradigmenwechsel ebenso wie die anhaltende Aktualität und Virulenz einiger schon bei Radziwill akuter Themen – von der Entwicklung industrieller Produktions-, Transport- und Kommunikationssysteme, den Auswirkungen des technischen Fortschritts für die Umwelt bis zur derzeitigen algorithmischen Verarbeitung und Vernetzung von Information und der Rekombination und Synthese von Leben.
Deutlich wird, wie Künstlerinnen und Künstler zunehmend über Reaktion und Reflexion der Prozesse hinausgehen und sich selbst Kenntnisse wissenschaftlich-technischer Innovationen aneignen und das Feld ihrer Anwendungen im Hinblick auf ihre ästhetische und gesellschaftliche Relevanz mitbestimmen.

Josep Renau (Valencia 1907-Berlín 1982) es, sin duda, uno de los grandes creadores del arte español contemporáneo, pero también uno de sus artistas más singulares, polifacéticos y comprometidos. En ámbitos artístico-culturales muy diferentes, compaginó con clara conciencia y dedicación la pintura, el muralismo, la ilustración, el diseño gráfico y el fotomontaje, conformando una brillante y atractiva trayectoria vital y creativa, que es también la de una progresión. Progresión, por un lado, respecto al compromiso y el activismo socio-político del artista –esencialmente ligados a la línea comunista– y, por otro, respecto al vínculo de su plástica con la renovación y la vanguardia; pero, igualmente, condicionada por las diferentes situaciones de los tres países que enlazó su vida, su creatividad y su peregrinaje: España, México y la otrora República Democrática Alemana. Lugares éstos que también enmarcan las principales etapas del recorrido aquí ofrecido: la etapa formativa en su Valencia natal (1907-1931), la concienciada etapa republicana y bélica (1931-1939), la productiva etapa del exilio mexicano (1939-1958) y, finalmente, la comprometida y esperanzada etapa berlinesa (1958-1982), plena -tras retomar el contacto con España en 1976- de reencuentros, proyectos y actuaciones en el entorno cultural de la transición.
http://hdl.handle.net/10261/76554

Apart from nation-acclaiming images produced by regime-friendly artists, and war drawings produced by soldier-artists on the front, few Vietnamese artists have dared the American War’s critical assessment from inside the country.
This essay analyses a recent participative installation by Bui Cong Khanh, as well as earlier pieces by Vu Dan Tan and Dinh Q Le, to explore how visual art can tackle the complex private-public question of war, history and memory in Vietnam and beyond.

The Swiss/German painter Paul Klee had a long history of affinity for the art of children. As the scholar O. K. Werchmeister notes, it is perhaps “one of the most salient features in the artist’s work.” Whether it was through his deliberate use of a naïve, awkward, and childlike style, or through the depiction of games, animals, and toys within his subject matter, much that appears within Paul Klee’s work is clearly centered within the realm of children’s art. In fact, one of the seminal child-related motifs found within Klee’s images is that of puppets and puppetry. This paper examines a particular moment with respect to Klee’s depiction of puppets. Specifically, it considers a series of pen and paper drawings Klee produced in 1938 in which the theme of the “unstrung” puppet is deployed by the artist as a political and social metaphor. In addition to the analysis of these drawings, the paper also considers several important paintings produced by Klee during this same time period - Outbreak of Fear III and A Woman for the Gods - which I argued continued the development of the fractured puppet motif. In the mid 1930’s Klee was diagnosed as suffering from scleroderma, and would subsequently die from myocarditis in June of 1940. Previous art historical scholarship has sought to interpret many of the images produced by Klee during this time, including the aforementioned drawings and paintings, as personal statements by the artist about his own impending mortality. However, I argue that these pictures were a direct response by Klee to Nazi violence. Paul Klee had left Germany following Hitler’s rise to power. His work was vilified as “degenerate art” by the Nazis at the 1937 entartete Kunst exhibition, and hundreds of his paintings and drawings were seized. It was during this exact time period that the German fascists initiated what would become a new trend in warfare - the aerial bombing of civilians. On April 26th of that same year, the Nazi Condor Legion undertook the terror-bombing of Guernica in support of Franco’s forces. Seen as a response to this carnage, Klee’s “unstrung” puppet images can be understood as an attempt by the artist to overlay the idea of modernist abstraction with the human destruction of war. In effect, Klee’s broken puppets ask: is this severed head, scattered hand, and broken body an evocation of the abstract modernist dynamism of the human form? Or, are we looking at the crushing result of an aerial bombing? I show that, through the deployment of these late 1930’s puppet images, Klee reaches the point at which modernist aesthetics, and notions of the beautiful in art are themselves problematized by the events of history.

The article focuses on the drawings and oleography of Ferdinand Quiquerez titled Crossing the Sava River at Brod (1878/79), a visual metaphor of the Austro-Hungarian occupation (and administration) of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The composition shows the citizens of various religions and confessions in Bosanski Brod, festively awaiting Josip Filipović, commander of the Austro-Hungarian army, in the afternoon hours of July 29, 1878, the day when the occupation began. Even though Quiquerez’s composition has been considered as construed and untruthful, a figment of his imagination rather than a depiction of the actual event, a report of a correspondent of the official gazette Narodne novine shows that this is not the case. Wishing to eternalize the occupation of Bosnia, Quiquerez did not focus on the warfare between the Austro-Hungarian troops and the Muslim population of Bosnia and Herzegovina, like the illustrators working for the European (especially German and Austrian) magazines of the time. He did not choose as his motive the heroism of Austro-Hungarian soldiers or the cruelty of Bosnian-Herzegovinian rebels, but decided to show how the Austro-Hungarian army, after three years of bloody uprising against the Ottoman Empire, brought peace and concord between the three religious groups living there, and eventually the European, Western civilization. Even though treating the Bosnian people as the Others with regard to the Austro-Hungarian army, and even though stereotyping and exoticizing them, he also showed sympathy for them and emphasized the need of unity. The oleography made after Quiquerez’s work was published by Bothe in Zagreb. Its publication should be seen in the context of military propaganda, which was omnipresent at the time: it celebrated the victories of the Austro-Hungarian army as a rare institution that remained common to the entire monarchy after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise. It also celebrated General Josip Filipović, who came to be considered as a sort of Austro-Hungarian national hero for his successful occupation.

Članak govori o crtežima i oleografiji Ferdinanda Quiquereza Prijelaz Save kod Broda, nastalima 1878. – 1879. godine, koji predstavljaju vizualnu metaforu Austro-ugarske okupacije (i uprave) Bosne i Hercegovine. Kompozicija prikazuje kako građani Bosanskog Broda svih vjeroispovijesti svečano dočekuju u popodnevnim satima 29. srpnja 1878., na dan kada je počela okupacija, zapovjednika austrougarskih trupa Josipa Filipovića. Iako se pretpostavljalo kako je Quiquerezova kompozicija konstruirani nevjerodostojan prikaz, proizašao iz slikareve mašte, a ne stvarnog događaja, izvještaj dopisnika zagrebačkog službenog dnevnika Narodnih novina, odaje nam da to ipak nije slučaj. Odlučivši ovjekovječiti zauzimanje Bosne Quiquerez se ne usredotočuje, poput ilustratora koji su radili za onovremene europske (ponajprije njemačke i austrijske) ilustrirane časopise, na borbe između austrougarskih trupa i muslimanskog dijela stanovništva Bosne i Hercegovine, ne odabire za svoju temu junaštvo austrougarskih vojnika, niti svirepost bosanskohercegovačkih ustanika, već odlučuje prikazati kako nakon tri godine krvavog ustanka protiv osmanske države Austro-Ugarska nosi Bosni mir, slogu između triju glavnih konfesionalnih skupina koje u njoj obitavaju te, konačno, zapadnu, europsku civilizaciju. Iako tretira bosansko stanovništvo kao Druge, u odnosu na austrougarske trupe, iako ih donekle stereotipizira i egzotizira, nesumnjivo s njime i simpatizira, te naglašava važnost njihova zajedništva. Oleografiju je prema Quiquerezovu djelu izdao zagrebački izdavač Bothe. Njezino izdavanje treba promatrati u kontekstu u to vrijeme široko raširene vojne propagande. Djelo je veličalo uspjehe austrougarske vojske, jedne od rijetkih institucija koja je i nakon Austro-ugarske nagodbe bila zajednička za cijelu Monarhiju. Veličalo je i generala Josipa Filipovića koji će postati svojevrsnim autrougarskim narodnim junakom zbog uspješno provedene okupacije.

En 1939 tuvo lugar el conocido desenlace de la guerra civil española y el inicio entre los derrotados de un éxodo masivo, que afectó en enorme grado a la intelectualidad y la creatividad que venían creciendo con brillantez en la España de las dos últimas décadas. México, que también estaba forjando una fuerte personalidad cultural, fue uno de los más destacados y nutridos refugios para estos derrotados, que fueron encontrando en el país posibilidades de acomodo y desarrollo profesional. Al cumplirse setenta y cinco años de ese río de sangre española que hacía su aparición en el entorno mexicano, volvemos sobre los artistas que incluyó este peregrinaje y su inscripción en una nueva escena artístico-cultural.
http://hdl.handle.net/10261/116458

Susan Sontag in her 2003 book Regarding the Pain of Others suggests that images of war and destruction can be interpreted as aesthetic objects--that there is “a beauty in ruins”. A landscape of war is still a landscape. A painting depicting war is still a piece of art. Lee Miller’s photographs taken during the latter years of World War Two demonstrate this argument--that images of war can be justified as being aesthetic artefacts through the photographer’s creative use composition and form and by considering the image within the context of the Surrealist Andre Breton’s theory of “convulsive beauty”, his idea that anything can be deemed beautiful even the most disturbing or horrific of subjects. A scene of death and destruction can, therefore, be transformed into something beautiful, something aesthetic by convulsing it into its apparent opposite.

This paper will discuss how Miller’s war photographs can be interpreted as aesthetic by analysing how Miller uses her knowledge of art--through the creative use of composition and form and the application of Bretonian Surrealism--and by arguing that a war photograph often involves a hybrid-aesthetic, justified by its interpretation as a combination of art and historical documentation. Miller’s photographs taken at the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps, therefore, not only inform and act as crucial documentary evidence that the holocaust existed, they also show scenes photographed with a great sensitivity, a need to inform, technical excellence and the presence of a “surrealist eye”.

Digital and data technologies are actively transforming the archives of contemporary warfare. Bringing together a range of scholarly perspectives and artistic practices, (W)archives investigates digital archiving as an integral technology of warfare and how artists respond to these changes. Throughout the book, the (w)archive emerges as a term to grasp the extended materiality of war today, wherein digital archiving intersects with images, bodies, senses, infrastructures, environments, memories, and emotions. The essays explore how this new digital materiality of war reconfigures the archival impulses that have shaped artistic practices over the last decades, and how archives can be mobilized to articulate political demands, conjure new forms of evidence, and make palpable the experience of living with war.

Contributions by DANIELA AGOSTINHO, HEBA Y. AMIN, ARIELLA AZOULAY, SVEA BRAUNERT, ANTHONY DOWNEY, SOPHIE DYER, ANDERS ENGBERG-PEDERSEN, SOLVEIG GADE, CRISTIÁN GOMEZ-MOYA, SOFIE LEBECH, AIMÉE ZITO LEMA, KATHRIN MAURER, KEVIN MCSORLEY, DIMA SABER, ORAIB TOUKAN, SARAH TUCK, LOUISE WOLTHERS, ARKADI ZAIDES

https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/warchives/

在阅读王雁女士撰写的《我的父亲沙飞（典藏版）》2 的过程中，我关
注到沙飞的三个“很特别”的地方：第一，鲁迅葬礼之后，他并不满足于摄
影记者的职业身份，而是有着更为个性化、理想化的自由追求——接连办了
两场个人展览。即便是到晋察冀边区后，他的艺术家身份意识也一直存续着。
第二，沙飞的媒介敏感性和职业素养。以往的研究多集中于他投身摄影后的
从业经历，但本文特别关注了此前长达10 年的报务员经历，这一职业履历
对沙飞的摄影生涯究竟意味着什么？我试图将电报、画报和摄影这三种媒介
结合起来，试图理解他的媒介意识的独特性。第三，鲁迅葬礼是战前中国最
重大的政治事件之一，沙飞的媒介意识和职业素养正是在这一场合获得了充
分激发和释放，在短短半年间完成了从电报向新闻摄影，继而向宣传摄影的
媒介转化。我特别关注了这期间在沙飞周边——也是中国现代美术运动的最
前沿所发生的媒介竞争现象，结合对他影响深刻的家族成员——司徒乔等人
的艺术实践，考察沙飞身份意识的构成及其矛盾性的由来。

Se presenta y estudia la figura del historiador de la escultura y gestor político del patrimonio artístico y cultural español Ricardo de Orueta y Duarte (Málaga, 1868-Madrid, 1939), viejo republicano, afín a los institucionistas, promotor del uso profesional de la fotografía y el “excursionismo”, miembro destacado del Ateneo de Madrid y la Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, tutor de la Residencia de Estudiantes, copartícipe y puente entre noventayochistas y novecentistas e investigador sobre escultura del Centro de Estudios Históricos de la Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas, quien a la llegada de la II República estuvo al frente de la Dirección General de Bellas Artes en dos importantes períodos (1931-1933 y 1936), impulsando notables medidas revitalizadoras de los museos, archivos y bibliotecas y una trascendente labor legislativa para la salvaguarda, protección y promoción del rico patrimonio español, entre la que destacaron medidas tan importantes como el artículo 45 de la Constitución de 1931, muy influyente en la legislación de otros países, o la perdurable Ley del Tesoro Artístico de 1933, que estuvo en vigor sin grandes modificaciones hasta 1985.
http://hdl.handle.net/10261/103059

This essay explores Käthe Kollwitz’s anti-war graphic work in the context of the German, and later, international No More War movement from 1920 to 1925, where it performed an important role in anti-militarist campaigns, exhibitions and publications, both in Germany and internationally. Looking at Kollwitz’s production closely, we discover a deeply pragmatic artistic strategy, where the emotionality of Kollwitz’s famed prints was the result of tireless technical, formal and compositional investigation, contrived to maximise emotional impact. By choosing the easily disseminated medium of printmaking as her main vehicle and using a deliberately spare but powerful graphic language in carefully chosen motifs, Kollwitz intended her art to reach as broad an audience as possible in engaging anti-war sentiment. In connection with the leading anti-war voices of the time, including French Nobel Prize-winning writer Romain Rolland and the founder of War Resisters’ International, Helene Stöcker, she deployed her work to reach beyond the confines of the art gallery and into internationally distributed posters, periodicals and books.

Visual and cultural analysis of Nihon no shiro 日本の城 (Japanese Castles, 1944), a book containing text by architectural historian Kishida Hideto and woodblock print illustrations by artist Hashimoto Okiie. The book is in the Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and is featured on The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book website. My commentary, along with a complete set of readable images of the book, may be found here: http://pulverer.si.edu/node/429/title/1.

From 1964-5, Robert Morris made a series of lead relief sculptures, which have received little attention the literature on his practice, although they comprise one of the largest bodies of work in his oeuvre.  This article argues that the leads express key epochal anxieties from 1960s America regarding materiality, labour and social abstraction.  It tracks a consistent ambivalence within the leads, which oscillate between presenting invisible forces or troubling abstractions, and resisting them through literal materiality or nostalgic associations.  The leads - and related works including Morris's performance War (1963) - are linked with socio-political issues including the 'military industrial complex' and the rise of automation.  Morris's reliefs are also contextualised in relation to his better known minimal sculptures, broad trends amongst his contemporaries, and the work of Marcel Duchamp and Jasper Johns.


http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8365.12193/full

This thesis focusses on the representation of militarised airborne drones and night vision technologies in paintings by Australian contemporary artists, George Gittoes and Jon Cattapan. Drawing on substantial primary research, including extensive interviews with both artists, the argument is developed through a cross-disciplinary framework that incorporates discourse from art history, critical theory, cultural studies, and political theory. Particular attention is paid to debates surrounding increasingly autonomous, persistent surveillance, and rapid response targeting capabilities associated with airborne drones and night vision technology.

Gittoes and Cattapan have both lived or worked in war and conflict zones; Gittoes in numerous zones since 1986 when he went to Nicaragua during the Sandinista Revolution (1979-1990), and Cattapan in Timor Leste in 2008 as Australia’s 63rd official War Artist. Both artists have used night vision technology in conflict zones, and Gittoes has witnessed the deployment of airborne drones. Despite their conceptual and political affinities, their works have not previously been analysed together, and no detailed studies of their engagement with contemporary militarised technology have been undertaken. This thesis not only offers a significant addition to art historical understandings of the artists’ works, but also presents novel insights into the capacity of contemporary painting to critically engage with ethical and political issues associated with developments in militarised technology.

The structure of the thesis is in two parts. Chapter One, “George Gittoes: Scoping the Horror of War”, draws on Paul Virilio’s critiques of screen-based technology to examine how Gittoes’ paintings trigger questions about militarised drone vision. It contests the use of words such as seeing and vision when applied to contemporary militarised technology, offering Gittoes’ paintings as evidence that scope and scoping more aptly describe drone surveillance and targeting capabilities. In Chapter Two, “Jon Cattapan: Ghosts and Data Proxies, Disappearance and Reappearance”, Jean Baudrillard’s speculative writings on war and cyber technology are applied to Cattapan’s enigmatic paintings where dripped paint is overlaid with digital-like spectral markings. This chapter proposes that Cattapan’s paintings provide evidence of human disappearance through data proxy digital replacements, exposing the cyber-world as both battlefield and weapon. Throughout the thesis, theoretical critique is consistently paired with detailed and close visual analyses of key paintings by the artists.
Kathryn Fox

Junto a la pregunta por el vínculo de la belleza y el compromiso, se analiza y propone la recuperación conjunta de la trayectoria vivencial y creativa de Josep Renau (Valencia 1907-Berlín 1982), sin duda uno de los grandes creadores del arte español contemporáneo, pero también uno de sus artistas más singulares, polifacéticos y comprometidos. Dedicado a la pintura, el muralismo, la ilustración, el diseño gráfico, el cartel o el fotomontaje, su intensa evolución pasó, en una suerte de progresión respecto al compromiso socio-cultural y la renovación artística, por los ámbitos artístico-culturales de tres significativos países que fue enlazando su vida, su creatividad y su peregrinaje: España, México y la otrora República Democrática Alemana. Pero este compromiso, tan ligado a su evolución creativa, también progresó y varió, de modo que del compromiso impetuoso de la etapa española, pasó al compromiso de carácter endógeno de la mexicana y el exógeno de la alemana, transformándose desde los años setenta en una implicación funcional y adaptada al requerimiento social. Bajo tales condicionantes, en cualquier caso, en ese desarrollo generó una belleza contingente o compleja –“belleza comprometida” la hemos llamado–, cuyo rescate se debe procurar al mismo tiempo que el del artista.
[EN] Josep Renau and the restoration of a committed beauty.- Besides the question about the link between beauty and commitment, the paper analyses and proposes the restoration of both the existential and creative trajectory of Josep Renau (Valencia, 1907-Berlin, 1982), as one of the greatest Spanish modern painters without any doubt, but also a most singular, versatile and committed one. He was dedicated to painting, muralist painting, illustration, graphics and posters design or photomontage. His very intense development, in a sort of progression in relation to both socio-cultural commitment and artistic renovation, went through artistic and cultural stages of three significant countries binding his life, creativity and pilgrimage: Spain, Mexico and the former German Democratic Republic. Nevertheless, this commitment, so previously linked to his creative development, was simultaneously changing and varying from the impetuous commitment to the Spanish stage, to an endogen commitment of Mexican character and finally to the hexogen German stage, thus becoming from the seventies a functional implication adapted to the social requirement. At any rate, under such conditionings and during his development, he generated a kind of contingent or complex beauty –which we have called “committed beauty”-, the recovery of which must be undertaken while we also restore the figure of the artist himself.
http://hdl.handle.net/10261/90126

Most viewers have come to think of the installation of the Nymphéas, given by Monet to the French state and unveiled to the public in two specially designed rooms at the Musée de l'Orangerie on May , 1927 as the official crowning of Monet's career. This was not exactly the case. Monet's Water Lilies languished half-forgotten from the day of their installation to the late 1930s, then were damaged by water leaking through the vellum skylight and the Allied bombing in the summer of 1944. Not until 1, a quarter of a century after their installation, did the French state finally begin to restore the Orangerie.

First appearing in the Bible in Genesis 3:19 - “for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” - The concept of death is incorporated in the story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Death was inflicted on Adam and Eve as a punishment. However, it was deferred until “Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him” (Genesis 4: 8). This unemotional phrasing reveals the true nature of the act committed by Cain as an act of involuntary manslaughter.
The memory of the primeval event is inscribed in every photograph, painting or sculpture that strive to give expression to the place of the offender and offended in the society in which we live. The first lesson about the implications of our actions arises from each and every image and reminds us that we still haven’t learned all that is to be learned.

Visual and cultural analysis of Maekawa Senpan's Shitōchō  偲糖帖 (Remembered Sweets, 1945), a woodblock-printed compendium of sweets that was conceived of and executed during a period of severe wartime food shortage. The book is in the Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and is featured on The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book website. My commentary, along with a complete set of readable images of the book,  may be found here: http://pulverer.si.edu/node/455/title/1.

EN]The artist Miguel Prieto (1907-1956) worked in three main areas: painting-drawing, graphic design and set design. The latter was the one in which he demonstrated most interest in avant-garde and political commitment during the thirties, but due to his subsequent Mexican exile, has not been dealt with in recent research. This article, focused on his years in Spain, analyses his contributions to scenic design. Prieto’s first professional period, when he worked for the puppet theatre, coincided with the young Second Republic and then the convulsion of the Civil War. This popular genre was utilized for agitation, propaganda and the revolutionary theatre, and adopted both the classical repertoire and modern works by Alberti, Dieste, Lorca and other committed youthful intellectuals.
[ES]Las tres grandes vertientes en las que el pintor Miguel Prieto (1907-1956) plasmó su creatividad fueron la pintura-dibujo, el diseño gráfico y la escenografía. Esta última, que fue en la que más énfasis puso tanto en su acercamiento a la vanguardia y el compromiso socio-político de los años treinta, como en los años finales de su trayectoria en el exilio mexicano, no ha sido suficientemente atendida. Este artículo, centrado en esa etapa española, analiza y pone en valor la aportación a la escena de Prieto coincidente con esos momentos de construcción de la joven II República y la convulsión de la Guerra Civil, que principalmente se plasmó en la escenificación de espectáculos de guiñol (extraídos del repertorio clásico o expresamente escritos por Alberti, Dieste, Lorca y otros jóvenes inquietos), ya que su tradición y clara aceptación popular los convertían en adecuado instrumento para encauzar la agitación y propaganda que querían sembrar el teatro revolucionario y la creatividad más avanzada y comprometida.
http://archivoespañoldearte.revistas.csic.es/index.php/aea/article/view/483/480
http://hdl.handle.net/10261/44452

Compte-rendu. Après une présentation générale de l'ouvrage "Chanter, rire et résister à Ravensbrück. Autour de Germaine Tillion et du Verfügbar aux Enfers" (dont la direction scientifique est assurée par Philippe Despoix, Marie-Hélène Benoit-Otis, Djemaa Maazouzi et Cécile Quesney), on en propose une critique centrée sur la question de l'usage de la partition dans l'étude des musiques non notées (dont le Verfügbar aux Enfers est un exemple). On propose deux analyses de chansons tirées de l'oeuvre de Tillion et de ses compagnes de déportation. Ces analyses sont basées sur une transcription des airs. Elles illustrent les phénomènes affectifs, poétiques et éthiques que l'approche notée de cette musique permet de mettre en lumière.

Josep Renau (Valencia 1907-Berlín 1982) es uno de los grandes artistas de nuestro arte contemporáneo, especialmente por su influyente papel como cartelista, publicista y pionero introductor del fotomontaje político. Pero también desarrolló una destacadísima labor, con excepcionales medidas, como director general de Bellas Artes durante la guerra civil; siendo la primera ocasión en la que un joven artista de vanguardia dirigía un departamento ministerial de este tipo. El prolongado exilio al que luego se vio abocado (México hasta 1958, después Berlín oriental hasta que iniciara sus viajes a España en 1976), ha retrasado mucho el conocimiento bien documentado de este creador y, singularmente, de su gestión de la política artística y la propaganda durante tan complejo período. Con motivo de la celebración del centenario de su nacimiento y los veinticinco años de su muerte, se realizó la presente exposición –y se publicó este trabajo y catálogo–, que es una contribución al análisis y divulgación, a través del estudio y exhibición de la variada documentación de nuestros archivos estatales, principalmente de uno de los aspectos menos conocidos y más significativos de su trayectoria, como fue el de su papel al frente de esa Dirección General. Una etapa (septiembre 1936-abril 1938) durante la que, con gran protagonismo directo o indirecto de Renau, se llevaron a cabo en las tres capitales de la República (Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona) e incluso en el extranjero (destacando su contribución al Pabellón de España en París-1937), algunas de las actuaciones artístico-culturales más famosas y significativas del período bélico, tanto en el terreno de la salvaguarda, fomento y difusión de nuestro patrimonio artístico-cultural, como en el vinculado a la propaganda y el activismo socio-cultural. No obstante, esta etapa, que centra la exposición y concede un especial relieve al Pabellón de 1937 en París, fue consecuencia de otra precedente (abril 1931-septiembre 1936), planteada aquí como introducción y que abarca el período de puesta en marcha tanto de la joven República como de la progresiva maduración artística y la concienciación política del joven Renau. Del mismo modo, a esa etapa central sucedió otra durante la guerra (abril 1938-marzo 1939), en la que las dotes creativas de Renau fueron puestas directamente al servicio de la propaganda en el nuevo cargo que pasó a ocupar: Director de Propaganda Gráfica del Comisariado General del Estado Mayor Central, en estrecha colaboración con la Subsecretaría de Propaganda del Ministerio de Estado. Esta última etapa, planteada como epílogo de su anterior responsabilidad y complemento de su actividad durante el período bélico, despide la exposición añadiendo, de modo testimonial, un pequeño apunte de los acontecimientos posteriores: los juicios de responsabilidades políticas en el interior, el exilio, el regreso a España y los propios recuerdos del artista sobre aquella etapa de director general de Bellas Artes.
http://hdl.handle.net/10261/22601