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Why the art of war is hell Why the art of war is hell
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The most powerful piece of contemporary art about war is not about a real conflict. It is a vision of atrocities performed by toy soldiers on other toy soldiers.The most powerful piece of contemporary art about war is not about a real conflict. It is a vision of atrocities performed by toy soldiers on other toy soldiers.
As the Imperial War Museum opens a contemporary art programme, it is worth asking what are the best responses to war in today's art. For my money the modern masterpiece of war is Jake and Dinos Chapman's Hell. Small plastic Nazis brutalise each another in a model landscape that combines the nerdy verisimilitude of a Hornby railway with the fantastic horrors of Bruegel.As the Imperial War Museum opens a contemporary art programme, it is worth asking what are the best responses to war in today's art. For my money the modern masterpiece of war is Jake and Dinos Chapman's Hell. Small plastic Nazis brutalise each another in a model landscape that combines the nerdy verisimilitude of a Hornby railway with the fantastic horrors of Bruegel.
The Chapmans make the war art of our time that truly matters, because they recognise that war today is imagined by non-participants – and maybe some participants as well – through the conventions of cinema. Hell is a surreal distillation of old second world war films, re-enacted by boy's toys.The Chapmans make the war art of our time that truly matters, because they recognise that war today is imagined by non-participants – and maybe some participants as well – through the conventions of cinema. Hell is a surreal distillation of old second world war films, re-enacted by boy's toys.
No artists are less worthy, less concerned with being taken seriously, than the Chapmans. Yet their images of war speak deeply of the way war is now. They see atrocity as war's true nature. If modern conflicts from Iraq to Syria have taught us anything, it is this terrifying truth. Recent images from Syria of a rebel commander apparently cannibalising an enemy evoked comparison with the Chapman's sculpture based on a Goya print, Great Deeds Against the Dead.No artists are less worthy, less concerned with being taken seriously, than the Chapmans. Yet their images of war speak deeply of the way war is now. They see atrocity as war's true nature. If modern conflicts from Iraq to Syria have taught us anything, it is this terrifying truth. Recent images from Syria of a rebel commander apparently cannibalising an enemy evoked comparison with the Chapman's sculpture based on a Goya print, Great Deeds Against the Dead.
Another artwork that went to the heart of conflict was Jeremy Deller's display at this very museum of the remains of a car destroyed by a car bomb in Iraq. Its red, twisted metal had the pathos of a blasted body – a piece of the war and its aftermath, brought home.Another artwork that went to the heart of conflict was Jeremy Deller's display at this very museum of the remains of a car destroyed by a car bomb in Iraq. Its red, twisted metal had the pathos of a blasted body – a piece of the war and its aftermath, brought home.
Yet artists often seem to say the most about war when they are trying to say something broader about the human condition. When Douglas Gordon made his film 10 ms-1 he was not trying to document war. At the time it seemed almost incidental that he used a slowed-down piece of first world war footage of a shell-shocked patient to make this eerie sequence of images. Yet as the world has become more war-torn, his slow, painful film of a soldier's breakdown speaks eloquently of the madness of conflict.Yet artists often seem to say the most about war when they are trying to say something broader about the human condition. When Douglas Gordon made his film 10 ms-1 he was not trying to document war. At the time it seemed almost incidental that he used a slowed-down piece of first world war footage of a shell-shocked patient to make this eerie sequence of images. Yet as the world has become more war-torn, his slow, painful film of a soldier's breakdown speaks eloquently of the madness of conflict.
The Imperial War Museum programme starts with a work about drones by Omer Fast. But do polemical pieces actually make the most enduring and compassionate war art? I've a feeling we will be looking at Hell when more well-meaning protests are forgotten.The Imperial War Museum programme starts with a work about drones by Omer Fast. But do polemical pieces actually make the most enduring and compassionate war art? I've a feeling we will be looking at Hell when more well-meaning protests are forgotten.
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