Costs of Disagreement

The Apotheosis of War by Vasily Vereshchagin was such a controversial piece it was barred from being shown during its exhibition in Russia, and a German commander forbid his troops from seeing it. Apotheosis meaning pinnacle or culmination, this piece stands as a tribute to the best that war can hope to achieve. A pile of skulls, and a ruined city, surrounded by a wasteland, and watched by vultures. With it Vasily ironically inscribed “to all great conquerors, past, present and to come”. Vasily had a long history of touring with the Russian navy and would paint many more anti-war pieces, depicting the horrors of war through realism so shocking, many of them would never enter print. At the time the Russian military portrayed an image of nobility and honor, the national pride for which, was high. Vasily’s pieces however would make many question the nobility of their military, and the justifications for their wars.

Paths of Glory by C.R.W Nevinson is a piece with quite an interesting background, it depicts two British soldiers from World War I lying dead on the ground. Forgotten, and unburied on the Western Front. The artist Nevinson, had been a volunteer ambulance driver for the Friends’ Ambulance Service during the opening months of the war, and eventually returned to London and served as an orderly, until he became too sick to continue. In 1917 he was sent to France by the British War Propaganda Bureau and began making paintings that depicted the horrors of the war, during this time he completed Paths of Glory. The painting was censored in France due to its depiction of allied corpses, despite this, Nevinson still included this piece in his exhibition, however, he put brown strips over the bodies, and on them read the word “censored”.

Gassed is a haunting piece by John Sargent, an artist commissioned by the British Government to make a painting documenting World War I. In 1919 it was voted picture of the year by the Royal Academy of Arts and it’s not hard to see why. It is a truly massive canvas and the figures depicted in it are nearly life size, at the time gas attacks were something you’d hear about in the news, something that was always happening “over there”. To see the costs these attacks bring with them so vividly was a shock to many. Of course there’s not just the parade of blinded soldiers, but in the background a game of soccer being played can be seen. A shocking juxtaposition from the corpses in the foreground. From it we can gather just how desensitized these soldiers were, just how normal, and present these mountains of corpses felt.

This drawing, made by Kichisuke Yoshimura in 1974 after a call was issued by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and other entities for artwork. It depicts Hibakusha, survivors of the atomic bombings in Japan during the closing days of World War II. The figures depicted are haunting, and we can see how apparent the title is in the drawing, with the figures having ripped clothing and distorted skin. The artists recollects how he saw figures like the ones in his drawing down by a river, quietly moving towards the outskirts of town. He would describe these people as “Ghost-like”. Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in the immediate deaths of roughly 110k people, and in just a years time, would be linked to nearly another 100k. This drawing serves as a testament to the horror and wide-scale destruction of nuclear war.

The Vulture and the Little Girl is a photo that captures the depths of the humanitarian crisis in Sudan during the 90s, when civil war and famine tore the country apart. The photo captures a child, now known to be a boy, trying to make his way to a UN aid station, collapsed on the trail. The photo managed to spark widespread support for Sudan and many rushed to donate to organizations that had operations there. The photo won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography in 1994, and four months later, the photographer, Kevin Carter killed himself. We can only guess as to his motives in taking his own life, but it is not difficult to see how his work and experiences in Sudan could’ve played a major part. To this day this photo stands as a testament to the tragedy of famine, and the trauma those who document it face.