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Making the Invisible Visible Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Military Art in the 20Th & 21St Centuries

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Making the Invisible Visible Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Military Art in the 20Th & 21St Centuries View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Wilfrid Laurier University Canadian Military History Volume 18 | Issue 3 Article 6 3-27-2015 Making the Invisible Visible Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Military Art in the 20th & 21st Centuries Laura Brandon Recommended Citation Laura Brandon (2009) "Making the Invisible Visible Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Military Art in the 20th & 21st Centuries," Canadian Military History: Vol. 18: Iss. 3, Article 6. Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol18/iss3/6 This Canadian War Museum is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Canadian Military History by an authorized administrator of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. : Making the Invisible Visible Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Military Art in the 20th & 21st Centuries Making the Invisible Visible Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Military Art in the 20th & 21st Centuries Laura Brandon hellshock, combat stress, and A 1678 article is the earliest What is manifestly clear from Spost-traumatic stress disorder, reference to operational stress.1 the symptoms I have listed is that or collectively, operational stress, Author Johannes Hofer observed they are not only varied but also are are among a number of terms we Swiss mercenaries variously symptomatic of other conditions. have applied at various times to affected by dejection, melancholy, You can have, for example, an mental breakdown in wartime. So homesickness, insomnia, weakness, upset stomach from eating tainted how have artists depicted them and lack of appetite, anxiety, fever, and food, break into a cold sweat out of what are the challenges they have heart palpitations. If not sent home, fear, or have trouble remembering faced? This article briefly examines he noted, they died or went mad. details because you are old and have some of the very few 20th & 21st From this catalogue of symptoms Alzheimer’s. So how do the few century examples of artwork about later medical practitioners coined artists known to depict operational this subject in a Canadian context the generic term “nostalgia” with its stress do so in Canadian war-related of which I am aware. The artists underlying reference to the missed subjects? Is there a common and include contemporary Canadian comforts of home. Until the First recognizable iconography? I would portraitists Gertrude Kearns and World War, many doctors believed Elaine Goble, Canadian historical nostalgia was a physical and not a Résumé : Traumatisme dû au painter Charles Comfort, and British mental illness. At the beginning of bombardement, stress de combat, historical muralist Colin Gill. the First World War, some applied the trouble de stress post-traumatique word “hysteria” to those considered to (TSPT), voilà des expressions appliquées à des dépressions nerveuses survenues : Shellshock, combat stress, and be under mental strain. It was caused, suite à la tension subie lors d’un conflit. post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) they said, by a lack of willpower, Ce sont des blessures mentales et non are terms we have applied to mental laziness, and moral depravity. Today, corporelles. Comment les artistes les breakdown under the stress of conflict. operational stress is a relatively ont-ils dépeintes et à quels défis ont- They are injuries of the mind and not of well-known psychiatric condition ils dû faire face ? L’article s’attarde the body. So how have artists depicted à l’analyse des œuvres de deux them and what are the challenges they whose physical symptoms include artistes canadiens contemporains, have faced? This article examines works cold sweats, dizziness, stomach Gertrude Kearns et Elaine Goble, et by two contemporary Canadian artists, problems, and a distant or haunted deux autres qu’intéresse l’histoire : le Gertrude Kearns and Elaine Goble, one look, the so called “1000-yard stare.” peintre canadien Charles Comfort et le Canadian historical painter, Charles muraliste britannique Colin Gill. L’art The mental and emotional symptoms Comfort, and one British historical de ces quatre créateurs met en lumière muralist, Colin Gill. The work of these include difficulty in remembering les débats, anciens et modernes, sur four artists sheds light on historic and details or not paying attention, les troubles mentaux affligés par la contemporary debates about conflict- troubled sleep, crying, anger, grief, guerre. Les œuvres illustrent comment induced mental illness. They show how and communication difficulties.2 la perception de ces maladies, de la public and personal perceptions of these part du public et de gens en particulier, All the artwork referred to in this diseases in the 20th & 21st century have au vingtième siècle, a pu toucher la affected the production, representation, article references in some way such production, la représentation et la and reception of such images. symptoms of operational stress. réception de telles images. Published© Canadianby Scholars CommonsMilitary @History Laurier,, 2009Volume 18, Number 3, Summer 2009, pp.41-46. 41 1 Brandon - PTSD and art.indd 41 10/6/2009 1:16:26 PM Canadian Military History, Vol. 18 [2009], Iss. 3, Art. 6 argue that there is not and that began a series of paintings based on Sensitivity to noise after innumerable recognition that an artwork is about his recent personal experience of artillery barrages was a common operational stress rests on the artist the conflict. The Canadian war art symptom of shellshock. Furthermore, ensuring that the viewer knows this program, known as the Canadian the fact that he is sitting on a non- to be the case – through the work’s War Memorials Fund, acquired one military chair suggests a link with the title, for example – or by critical work from him completed in 1920, older description of the condition as evaluation on the part of the viewer. Canadian Observation Post.3 After the nostalgia or homesickness. My own analysis in the absence war, Gill became a noted muralist. He For me, the hands over the ears are of written evidence leads me to died suddenly in 1940. the telling clues because this painting conclude that the first two paintings The Fund exhibited Gill’s painting is about keeping going (or not so I am going to discuss: one from only in North America in 1920 as doing through death or shellshock) the First World War and the other the organization’s existence and its in an environment that reverberated from the Second World War, depict exhibition program were ending.4 with the continuous loud, shocking operational stress. I draw my findings He originally titled the painting The sounds of shells exploding. The from research pertaining to these Widow’s House, evinced in the patches painting includes elements of an conditions as we experience and of wallpaper, the broken shutters, and artillery subject Gill completed for the understand them today, from visual the wooden chair.5 The Fund’s extant British scheme entitled Observation and circumstantial evidence of the documentation is sparse as a whole of Fire (1919) that he described at the time, and because of luck. In the case and there is little in the archives of the time as “Gunner [or artillery] officers of the post-Second World War art I Imperial War Museum, the custodian correcting their battery fire by field will subsequently discuss, the artists of Gill’s British commissions, so telephone from a disused trench state their work depicts operational we have no written information in No Man’s Land.”6 Clearly based stress. about the Canadian piece. We do on his experiences with the Royal Colin Gill was born in England in not know what led Gill to include Artillery, in Canadian Observation 1892 and trained at the Slade School in this painting a man (the figure Post the figures to the right and the in London. He enlisted in 1914 at the on the lower right) who I believe to landscape in the background derive beginning of the First World War be suffering from shellshock, a First from Observation of Fire. In Canadian and, as an artillery officer, found World War term for operational Observation Post, the camouflage that himself in France in 1915. By 1916 the stress. I base my conclusion on the protects the officers peering through Army had seconded him to the Royal fact that he is not involved in what is binoculars is evidence of Gill’s later Engineers as a camouflage officer. In going on around him, has dispensed military experience in a camouflage 1918, he became an official war artist with his protective steel helmet, and unit. Canadian Observation Post and with the British war art program and is covering his ears with his hands. the other painting he completed on this scale, the Imperial War Museum’s Heavy Artillery, include many similar elements and details that speak to personal experience.7 Experience would have exposed Gill to shellshock as it affected hundreds of thousands of soldiers.8 That this element of the painting is a recent revelation on my part is attributable simply to the fact that after the First World War the painting went into storage until 2000 and therefore was not easily viewable.9 If visitors identified this subject as suffering from shellshock Canadian War Museum (CWM) 19710261-2189 Canadian War Canadian Observation Post by Colin Gill http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol18/iss3/642 2 Brandon - PTSD and art.indd 42 10/6/2009 1:16:26 PM : Making the Invisible Visible Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
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