This week I thought that I would link the 'Poem of the week' with the 'Art from War' article, by utilising the image used to illustrate the former, as the inspiration for the latter. The text this week is not mine, I have taken it verbatim from 'Art from the First World War' published by the Imperial War Museum, as an introduction to their collection of War Art. For anyone interested, it is still available on-line from them, for £9.99, by following the link below:
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| William Roberts RA: 'Burying the Dead After a Battle' 1919
Roberts has been a member of the avant-garde Vorticists group before the war and a soldier-artist during it. While serving in the Royal Field Artillery, he produced a large painting and numerous drawings and watercolours depicting the life of a gunner in a modernist style that was eminently suited to the subject.After 1918, though no longer a war artist, he continued to make work that reflected his wartime experiences. He used the same harsh, abstract style with its implied critique of the dehumanising effect of war on the men who fought.
Burying the Dead After a Battle is a particularly bleak and ferocious image, seemingly devoid of compassion and empathy. Amidst the general carnage and destruction - shells exploding randomly, houses reduced to abstract ruins, an aeroplane diving or falling through the sky - human existence has list its meaning. The dead are too numerous and no longer retain their individuality. The soldiers are not performing a sacred rite but carrying out a necessary duty.
Study for 'Crucifixion' 1922
In the Study for 'Crucifixion' (above), Roberts revisits the same landscape but with roles reversed: the living are now crucified and the dead are the soldiers scattered around the feet of the crosses, gambling and taunting. The indicators of life and death have become blurred by the war and its aftermath.
(Source: Art from the First World War, Pub: Imperial War Museum)
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