british art and the great war the great war promoted the breakthrough of modernism in british...
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BRITISH ART AND THE GREAT WAR
The Great War promoted the breakthrough of modernism in British literature, but it discouraged avant-garde experimentation in the visual arts. These painters found that those who controlled museum space and government commissions detested irony or avant-garde styles:
Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957): pioneer of Vorticism
Paul Nash (1889-1946): influenced by Cubism
John Nash (1893-1977): Paul’s younger brother
C.R.W. Nevinson (1889-1946): Cubist trained in Paris
William Orpen (1878-1931): fashionable portrait painter
“What did YOU do in the Great War?”
(1915):Photographic
realism was the preferred style for
recruitment posters
“Step Into Your Place,” Great Britain, 1915
E. Kealey, “Women of Britain Say – GO!” Great Britain, 1915
Emile Boussu, “Reims Cathedral
in Flames” (1914)
Instructions regarding Field Punishment #1, January 1917(Canadian):
See Graves, p. 176
W.H. Margetson, “The Angels of
Mons”
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925),“Gassed,” 1918/19
(a somber topic, treated intraditional style)
John Singer Sargent, “A Street in Arras” (1918)
Pablo Picasso,“Girl with a Mandolin”
(Paris, 1910):A pioneering work
of“analytical cubism”
Marcel Duchamp, “Nude Descending a
Staircase, #2,”1912:
Described by a U.S. critic of the Armory
Show as “an explosion in a shingle factory”
David Bomberg, “Sappers at Work,” 1918/19 (first version)
David Bomberg, “Sappers at
Work,” final version in the National Gallery of
Canada, 1919
C.R.W. Nevinson,
“Machine-Gun” (1915):
Apollinaire wrote that Nevinson “translates the
mechanical aspect of modern
warfare where man and
machine combine to form a single force of nature.”
C.R.W. Nevinson, “French Troops Resting” (1916)
C.R.W. Nevinson,
“A Bursting Shell” (exhibited in
London, December 1915)
C.R.W. Nevinson, “Paths of Glory” (1917):Banned from exhibition!
Eric Kennington, “The Kensingtons at Laventie” (1915/16)
Eric Kennington, “Gassed and Wounded” (1918)
Wyndham Lewis, “The Crowd”
(1915; example of “Vorticism”)
Wyndham Lewis, “A Canadian Gun-Pit” (1918):Imitating Orpen’s style gained him commissions
Wyndham Lewis, “A Battery Shelled” (1919)
John Nash, “Over the Top” (Cambrai, 1917): Of 80 men in Nash’s company, 68 were killed or wounded in a few minutes
John Nash, “Oppy Wood, 1917: Evening”
Paul Nash, “The Ypres Salient at Night” (undated)
Paul Nash, “Void” (1918)
Paul Nash, “We Are Making a New World” (1918)
William Orpen (1878-1931),
“Ready to Start” (June 1917)
William Orpen, “Dead
Germans in a Trench”
(1918)
William Orpen, “To the
Unknown British Soldier
Killed in France,” 1922/23
(photograph of first version)
William Orpen, “To the
Unknown British Soldier
Killed in France,”
final version of 1927
The Cenotaph,Whitehall, London.
Designed by Sir Edward Lutyens, built
in 1919/20:“The Glorious Dead”