War in art

Images of warfare have been common in art almost from the beginning of civilization. Even very early state-level societies recognized the power of artistic representations of military action to shape the perceptions of their members, whether to arouse pride or fear. Among the bas-relief sculptures and wall paintings of ancient Egypt are portrayals of the military victories of the Pharaohs, the stylized bodies of their opponents lying bloodlessly tumbled at their feet. Utterly unlike these distant images of divine conquerors are the vast reliefs of war and victory that Assyrian kings commissioned for their palaces. These showed battle in all its brutality, including vivid images of blood flowing from the wounds of the vanquished, as the conquering Assyrian soldiers slaughtered them.

Classical Portrayals

Greek vase paintings also include images of war, often from the great epic of Greek culture, the Iliad (c. 800 b.c.e.; English translation, 1616). There are also images of soldiers in the sculptural works of the Greeks, such as the temple friezes (areas decorated with relief sculptures, often telling a story). Once again a more stylized approach is evident, one in which heroes pose handsomely and the slain fall neatly, without ugly wounds or blood. This is at least partly a reflection of the religious overtones of the Iliad, which was not only the defining historical epic but also an important religious text. The Greek cult of the body beautiful also played a role in the form in which warfare was portrayed by the ancient Greeks. Because images of war were to uplift the viewer and motivate him to serve in defense of the polis (city-state), the ugliness of battle was eschewed in favor of well-muscled heroes in poses that showed off their physical perfection.

The Romans, an eminently practical people, took a different approach to art as military propaganda. While they were perfectly capable of producing massive monuments to their martial prowess, such as Trajan’s Column, they also wanted to remind their far-flung subjects, in a more personal way, who ruled them. In pursuit of this goal, the Romans placed imperial portraits on all their coinage. As a result, every Roman subject who engaged in commerce was repeatedly reminded that he or she was ruled by a Roman emperor, whose command was backed by the might of Roman armies.

The Middle Ages

Immediately after the fall of the Roman Empire, European society regressed to a largely pre-state level of organization, with the Catholic Church being the primary force for cohesion amid near-constant barbarian raids. The Church became the primary patron of large-scale artwork. Thus warfare once again took a strongly religious overtone in artistic portrayals. Warfare on earth was a reflection of the heavenly struggle between God and Satan.

During the High Middle Ages, as life became more settled and the cult of chivalry developed its strongest form, kings and nobles once again took an interest in commissioning artwork. These works generally were intended to glorify the chivalrous deeds of their patrons, and thus generally portray them as beautified figures in heroic stances. Many of them had strongly religious overtones, showing their subjects carrying out quests for holy objects and relics or participating in the Crusades.

The Renaissance and the Modern Era

Both Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo painted major battle scenes that served as foundations for modern secular portrayals of warfare. Although the Renaissance laid the foundation for modern civilization, it was also a time of looking backward and rediscovering classical ideals of civilization. Therefore there was a widespread use of classical imagery during this period, often including nudes and eschewing blood and other evidence of the ugliness of battle. Trajan’s Column in Rome was often used as a source for idyllic portrayals of combat.

During the 1600’s, military art came into its own as a genre, particularly through the patronage of Louis XIV, who commissioned both paintings and tapestries celebrating his victories. This was also the period in which artists began paying particular attention to portraying naval battles, particularly among the English and Dutch, the maritime powers of the time. This presented unique challenges because it was difficult to distinguish individual ships in mass actions, and battles often became diagrammatic if the artist was not particularly skilled in visualizing the perspective involved. Naval painting required a great detail of technical finesse in handling the intricacies of rigging, but the artist had to find a balance between tight technical accuracy and large-scale comprehensibility. Even as late as the 1800’s, J. M. W. Turner’s Battle of Trafalgar (1806–1808) was harshly criticized by William IV, “The Sailor King,” for technical flaws.

Propaganda and Protest in the Modern Era

As engraving and other techniques of mass reproduction were developed, the art world began to develop a split between fine art and illustration. During the same time, cultural changes led to the need on the part of leaders to rally the populace behind the wars they were fighting. This led to the development of modern propaganda art. The precursors of this are visible in many of Jacques-Louis David’s portrayals of Emperor Napoleon, which served to create an image of him as a Romantic hero.

At the same time, the Romantic movement led to a questioning of the accepted heroic iconography of warfare. For example, Francisco de Goya’s paintings of the guerrilla warfare in Spain during the Napoleonic Wars were unsparing in their portrayal of brutality and suffering.

During the American Civil War, photography came into its own both as a communications medium and an art form. Mathew Brady not only documented the horrors of war with his camera but also was able to create images that have stood the test of time as artworks.

During the twentieth century, the world wars and the Cold War (1945–1991) saw the development of the mass-produced illustrated propaganda poster as a means of rallying the populace to total war. Many well-known illustrators, including Norman Rockwell, produced images that were used in propaganda posters. Rockwell’s series of four images illustrating President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “four freedoms” speech ultimately became icons of the Allied cause. In creating them, Rockwell searched for concrete images to illustrate the abstract concepts, not high-flown metaphors but homey things to which the common person could relate: a man speaking up in a town meeting (freedom of speech); a family at Thanksgiving dinner (freedom from want); parents tucking their children into bed (freedom from fear); and a montage of people at prayer according to their various religions (freedom of religion).

At the same time, artists in the fine-art world were using images of warfare in art as a means of protest against the horrors of war. Pablo Picasso painted Guernica (1937) as a response to the horror of a Falangist bombing of a Basque town during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). The confused jumble of images reflects the chaos and horror of modern industrialized warfare. Many critics have subjected it to intense analysis, identifying each element with a political statement (the bull’s head with Adolf Hitler, etc.). Many other artists throughout the twentieth century used their art to protest what they regarded as the dehumanizing elements of modern warfare.

In the Soviet Union, the Socialist Realist movement sought to enlist artists in the development of the new communist society by compelling them to portray images of the great heroes of the Revolution such as Vladimir Ilich Lenin and Joseph Stalin. However, unlike the use of illustration in propaganda posters in the West, there was no room for noninvolvement. Artists who could not buy into the Socialist Realist line were silenced, often brutally, and works protesting the actions of the government were regularly ridiculed and destroyed.

The development of mass media has somewhat lessened the importance of static imagery in the depiction of warfare. However, it is likely that artistic representations of military subjects, whether through paint or complex digital reconstructions, will continue to be important both in government propaganda and in opposition protests. The wars of the post-September 11, 2001, era have had an indelible impact on many mediums of art. Photography, in particular, has been a powerful medium for conveying the ravages of war. These have ranged from Gerhard Richter's September (2005), a distressed and distorted image of one of the Twin Towers burning to photography series from the war front to Guantanamo Bay.

Ten Famous Depictions of Warfare in Art

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