World Affairs Institute

The Artists and WarAuthor(s): HENRY TURNER BAILEYSource: Advocate of Peace through Justice, Vol. 90, No. 6 (JUNE, 1928), pp. 385-386Published by: World Affairs InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20661949 .

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1928 THE ARTISTS AND WAR 385

The Artists and War* By HENRY TURNER BAILEY

ON" THE walls of the Egyptian

temples, written with a pen of iron, in the rock forever, are the records of the

triumphs of the Pharaohs. The earliest art from Babylonia pre

sents symbolically the imperialistic power of the city State with its talons in the backs of* conquered provinces, or with its hands holding nets filled with severed heads of its enemies.

The Parthenon itself, built after the Greek victory over the Persians, is deco rated with reliefs celebrating the victories of men over centaurs and with a pedi mantal group in memory of the contest of Athena and Poseidon for the lordship of Attica. The Victories of Olympia and

Samothrace, and Cheronia, the mighty

sculptures of the great altar at Pergamon, were all made to glorify military victories.

The triumphal arches of Borne, the

towering column of Trajan, with its hun

dreds of fighting men, to say nothing of

the statues and busts of world-conquering Caesars, are all monuments to glorify the warriors of antiquity.

Mohammedan conquerors built mosques and modestly affirmed therein "There is no conqueror but God." The princes of

Christendom, in thanksgiving for military victories, built churches and cathedrals and dedicated them to the Warrior Saints.

The great masters of the Benaissance

painted the Triumphs of Alexander, the Victories of Francis I, the Battle for the

Standard, the Surrender of Breda, Vic

torious Knights in armor, and Corona tions of Princes who had desolated whole

provinces with fire and sword.

In fact, almost until the dawn of the twentieth century, the artists of the world

glorified war. They were employed, by the powers who exercised lordship, to do

just that thing?to show the honor of

bravery, the picturesque elements in con

flict, the splendors of the triumph. European palaces and art galleries were

filled with works glorifying war by such men as Meissonier, Detaille, De Neuville, Menzel, Piloty, and scores of others. Be fore the eyes of the people men kept con stantly the vision of enthusiastic volun

teers, marching men, charging battalions, proud conquerors, glorious victors. War

appeared as patriotism incarnate, the

apotheosis of the human spirit in action, the supreme spectacle of civilization.

And then came Vassili Vereshchagin, the Bussian. "Beware," said Emerson, "when God lets loose a thinker on this planet," and beware again when that thinker is also a painter of compelling power. Vereshchagin, trained in the art academies of St. Petersburg and Paris, who had traveled extensively in his own

country, in Turkey, India and China, joined the Bussian army during the war with Turkey, was severely wounded, and came out of his personal experience with a passionate hatred for war in all its as pects, and a complete consecration of all his powers to hitting that thing hard. He produced three great cycles of paintings dealing with the horrors of war in India, in Turkestan, and in southern Europe. No one who has seen such pictures as "Blow ing Prom the Guns" in India, "Snow Trenches on the Shipka," or "After the Assault in Plevna" can ever forget them, or ever think of war again as anything but horror incarnate.

Of course, he offended the Czar. "Are you the man who painted me, sur

rounded by my advisers, conducting a

campaign from a hilltop at a safe dis tance?" asked the Czar, at a court recep tion.

Address at Cleveland Conference, May 7, 1928.

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386 ADVOCATE OF PEACE June

"Yes, Your Majesty," humbly replied the artist.

"Why did you do that?" angrily asked

the Czar, and slapped the face of Veresh

chagin. "Because, Your Majesty," replied the

dauntless man, "I always paint the truth."

Vereshehagin was the rock flung into the stream of modern painting which

changed its direction. He did not block the stream; he divided it. There is still a

dribble of art for the war lords, but the main stream flows in another direction. Weirtz of Belgium added force to the new

current, as no one can ever forget who has visited his museum in Brussels.

During the World War the outstanding leader in revealing the horrors of modern warfare was another Belgian, Raemakers. His telling cartoons had a world-wide cir

culation, and made so deep and universal an appeal to the hearts of mankind that no one of that generation will ever forget them or look upon war as anything but an

evil.

The poets of the world have taken sides with the artists in condemning war. "The Wine Press," by Alfred Noyes, may be cited as an outstanding example of their attitude. Modern warfare, as they see it, is a matter of the manipulation of auto

matic machinery, and other engines of

death, in such a way that personal initia tive and resourcefulness, personal skill and valor in self-defense, are reduced to the minimum. Under the vivid presentation of the poet, war becomes a terrifying nightmare, an orgy of insufferable agony and hideous death hitherto unequaled in the annals of omnivorous and insatiable lust.

Nevenson's illustrations of the World War making use of all the ugliness and violence of cubism, to portray with start

ling force the inhuman tortures of body and spirit Inseparable from modern mili

tary efficiency, are additional proof of the twentieth century attitude of artists to ward the age-long reign of the war god.

Consider also that splendid and terrible

painting by Pierre Fritel, entitled "The

Conquerors," or that brilliant and horrible

masterpiece by George Bellows, entitled "Edith Cavell," where heroic saintliness walks calmly to its doom at the hands of inhuman brutality. The list might be ex tended indefinitely to include "The Big Parade," "What Price Glory,1" and that

thrilling and heartbreaking story called

"Wings," to show that the artists of the world are no longer on the side of the

Juggernaut that for countless weary cen turies has crushed the common people be neath its merciless wheels.

In a recent number of the Cleveland

News, carrying an article by the ex-Kaiser, in which he attempts to stir up the old

passions by brandishing again the "Yellow Peril" before the eyes of the white race, appeared a cartoon by Winsor McCay, en titled "Brutality and Its Conquerors." A

great tree fills the foreground, from the limbs of which are suspended the bodies of countless men, hung by the neck until

dead; beneath them in the distance one sees the orderly ranks of a vast standing army at attention. Left and right caval rymen proudly sit their horses. Beneath the feet of the dead, and looking up at them strut the war lords, arrogantly satis fied with their handiwork. But above the thick foliage of the tree, white against the blackened sky, appear the calm, invincible faces of Gutenberg and Galileo, Descartes and Newton, Kepler and Copernicus and Bousseau. It is a significant sign of the times.

Out of Armageddon there has not come, so far as I know, a single great painting from the hands of any French or English or American artist glorifying war.

The artists, too, are tired of kings. Their sympathies are with the common

people. For the first time in history, free from imperialistic masters, the full weight of their vast influence is being thrown

against war and in favor of peace. They are educating the entire world to regard war as hell.

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