Art and the First World War John Molyneux Art reflects society. This statement, theme in art since war became a central which is based on a core proposition of his- feature of human society - with the division torical materialism, is fundamentally true of society into classes and the development - all art has its roots in developing human of the state. Thus in the art of Pharaonic social relations - but it is also a condensa- Egypt, we find depictions of Ramses II in tion of a very complex interaction. This is his war chariot; in Ancient Greece, numer- because the social relations that art reflects ous representations of the Trojan wars in are antagonistic relations of exploitation, sculptures and on vases; in medieval Flo- oppression and resistance. So we should rence, Paulo Ucello gives us `The Battle also remember Brecht's words that `Art is of San Romano', which also pioneers the not a mirror to reflect reality, but a ham- development of single point perspective. mer with which to shape it'. In Europe in 17th century Dutch art features a whole the Middle Ages and the Renaissance art school of maritime paintings which special- ‘reflected’ society in that a huge amount izes in naval battles (reflecting the major of it was commissioned by the church and role played by sea power in the Dutch Re- religious subject matter was predominant. volt and in the establishment of the Dutch But this didn't stop Michelangelo, for ex- Republic with its empire stretching from ample, using an ostensibly religious sub- New Amsterdam to Batavia). ject, such as David, to express both re- volt of the people of Florence against rule The overwhelming majority of all these by the Medici bankers and homoeroticism. art works, whether they are masterpieces Rembrandt ‘reflected’ the early bourgeois or mediocre, do not just depict war, they society of the 17th century Dutch Republic celebrate it. `The ruling ideas in soci- by painting numerous portraits of Dutch ety are the ideas of the ruling class', says burghers but also drew attention to, and Marx, `The class which has the means of showed his sympathy with, the outcasts material production at its disposal, has of that society in his etchings of beggars. control at the same time over the means Constable ‘reflected' the industrial revolu- of mental production', and this applies tion sweeping Britain at the time not by even more strongly to painting and sculp- painting factories but by painting the En- ture than to poetry and literature, be- glish landscape as a rural idyll, much as cause of its dependence on commissions, Wordsworth and Coleridge took off to the on wall space in palaces, churches and Lake District. William Morris expressed public buildings and its embodiment in his hatred for late Victorian capitalism by very expensive physical materials (eg mar- celebrating the visual culture medieval Eu- ble and bronze). Consequently, from the rope. Parthenon marbles depiction of the Bat- tle of the Centaurs and the Chinese Terra- A very large amount of art, in many cotta Army, through Leonardo's lost Bat- different countries, reflected the cataclysm tle of Anghiari, Titian's portrait of Charles of the First World War but it did so in a V at the Battle of Marburg, to David's wide variety of ways. Oath of the Horatii and Napoleon Cross- But first we should see this in historical ing the Alps, and Lady Elizabeth Butler's perspective. War has been an important Scotland Forever!, we find literally innu- 20 merable works glorifying war and military art with Kandinsky.1 Artistically it was leaders. 18th and 19th century British art, cubism that was to prove the most pro- in particular, is filled with (generally sec- found and most important of these move- ond rate) paintings recording the progress ments2 but in the years just leading up to of Britain's military exploits and colonial the War it was Futurism that held cen- conquests - Woolf at Quebec, Clive of In- tre stage and made the biggest impact in dia, Nelson, Wellington, Gordon at Khar- avant-garde artistic circles across Europe. toum, the Battle of Omdurman and so on. Futurism was a poetic and artistic The only important exception to this movement founded in Milan in 1909 by pattern is provided by Goya's extraor- the Italian poet, Filippo Marinetti who au- dinary series of etchings The Disasters thored its grandiloquent manifesto. Fu- of War born out of his direct experi- turism was a response to the dramatic ence of the Spanish peasants' resistance to eruption of modernity - modern industrial Napoleon's occupying army. To this day, capitalism concentrated in Italy's northern these brutal works remain the most sear- cities - within traditional Italian society. ing sustained indictment of the inhumanity It denounced the past and all its works in and horror of war in the history of art. But favour of the new and the modern, enthu- as I said they were absolutely an exception siastically and uncritically celebrating the - until the First World War. machine, speed, the automobile and the Before we come to how that change oc- aeroplane. With great fanfare, Marinetti's curred we need briefly to review the devel- manifesto declares: opment of art leading up to the War. 1. We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness. Modernism, Futurism and 2. Courage, audacity, and revolt will be Vorticism essential elements of our poetry. The emergence of modern art dates 3. Up to now literature has exalted roughly from the mid-19th century with a pensive immobility, ecstasy, and Courbet and Manet, followed by the sleep. We intend to exalt aggres- Impressionists (Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, sive action, a feverish insomnia, the etc.), Symbolists (Redon, Moreau, Klimt) racer's stride, the mortal leap, the and post-impressionists (Seurat, Cezanne, punch and the slap. Gauguin, Van Gogh). In the early 20th century this development accelerated and, 4. We affirm that the world's magnif- in artistic terms, radicalized with the swift icence has been enriched by a new and overlapping succession of avant-garde beauty: the beauty of speed. A rac- movements such as the Viennese Secession, ing car whose hood is adorned with Fauvism, Analytic and Synthetic Cubism, great pipes, like serpents of explo- Die Br¨ucke and Der Blaue Reiter (Expres- sive breatha roaring car that seems sionism), Orphism, Futurism, Rayonism, to ride on grapeshot is more beauti- Vorticism and the beginnings of abstract ful than the Victory of Samothrace. 1The pivotal role of Picassos Les Demoiselles D'Avignon in this process is discussed in John Molyneux, `A revolution in paint: 100 years of Picassos Demoiselles', International Socialism 115, July 2007. http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=341 2 See John Berger, `The moment of cubism', in The Moment of Cubism: And Other Essays, London 1969. 21 5. We want to hymn the man at the Here we see revealed the reactionary wheel, who hurls the lance of his arrogance, brutality and incipient fascism spirit across the Earth, along the cir- that lay at the heart of Italian Futurism.3 cle of its orbit. In the event, the eagerly anticipated War was to claim the lives of a number of Fu- 6. The poet must spend himself with turist artists, most notably Umberto Boc- ardour, splendour, and generosity, to cioni and the architect Antonio Sant'Elia, swell the enthusiastic fervour of the and destroy Futurism as an art movement. primordial elements. Marinetti's militarist bravado could not 7. Except in struggle, there is no more survive the brutal reality of the war ex- beauty. No work without an aggres- perience, at least not as an inspiration for sive character can be a masterpiece. avant-garde art. Poetry must be conceived as a vio- Much the same happened with the lent attack on unknown forces, to re- British incarnation of Futurism, namely duce and prostrate them before man. Vorticism. The Vorticist art move- ment was formed in 1914 by the artist 8. We stand on the last promontory of and writer, Wyndham Lewis, in loose the centuries! Why should we look association with a number of other back, when what we want is to break artists including David Bomberg, William down the mysterious doors of the Im- Roberts, Christopher Nevinson, Henri possible? Time and Space died yes- Gaudier-Bresca, Jacob Epstein and Ed- terday. We already live in the abso- ward Wadsworth. The aesthetic of Vor- lute, because we have created eter- ticism , as displayed in its magazine nal, omnipresent speed. BLAST4 was a combination of cubism Given the historic moment, the ex- and futurism but Lewis's general world traordinary burst of urbanization com- view and attitude to war was similar to bined with electrification and numerous that of Marinetti. Nevinson was also other startling technical innovations and strongly influenced by Marinetti and an- scientific breakthroughs, the appeal of this other influence on Vorticism was the poet, one-sided intoxication with the machine Ezra Pound, who gave it its name. Like and speed is not hard to understand. And Marinetti, Pound went on to become a fas- it managed to inspire some powerful works cist and Mussolini supporter. Vorticism of art such as Boccioni's sculpture, Unique did not survive the war. A number of the Forms of Continuity in Space and Balla's artists went to war and some became offi- Abstract Sound +Speed. However, the cial war artists but the war changed their Manifesto went on to say: attitudes and their art practice.5 1. We will glorify warthe world's only hygienemilitarism, patriotism, Nevinson, Nash and others the destructive gesture of freedom- bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying The two most important British war for, and scorn for woman.