Artists Witnessing the War

Sue Malvern

Much of the artwork within this resource was produced by official British war artists, employed by various agencies during and immediately after the First World War, the majority of which ended up in the collections of the Imperial War Museum, established in 1917. The term ‘war art’ brings together two opposing notions; the violence of war and the perhaps assumed beauty and escapist ideals of art which have been observed by artists attempting to represent war. William Rothenstein, a British official war artist sent to France in January 1918, wrote in his memoirs: 'Had I asked myself, would I rather there had been no war, and consequently no such strange, livid beauty, I should have been at a loss how to answer.’[1] Eighty years later in 1994, Peter Howson, Britain’s official war artist in Bosnia, described similar conflicted feelings about being an artist in a war zone: ‘Half of you detests what you see and half of you wants to be there. You're living on the edge and it's exciting. That's the truth of the matter! … You don't understand how incredible it is. You don't have a clue. It could really be a life's work …’[2]Both artists recognise the compelling nature of war, expressing an urgency to record their artistic impressions. At the same time the question of depicting war is marked with a sense of a boundary or limit on representation. There is something ultimately incommunicable and unknowable about the scenes they witness. Both artists are also troubled by matters of propriety; not only whether the terms ‘war’ and ‘beauty’ can justifiably be brought into juxtaposition, but also whether making art about war might be shameful. The sights of war produce a wealth of resources for the artist but this raises the question of profiting from war or exploiting the suffering of others.