War paint

“ What they must have looked in war paint, with tangled locks over their eyes and matted beards chewed between their teeth, it was easy to imagine, and I think that the success of the performance, which was so popular that we had to interfere when we had had enough of it, was due to the fact that it was not play-acting at all, but actual warfare as it was waged in the old days ”

“ My laughter discouraged the impromptu artist, who for one moment felt that a “restoration” is not quite equal to the original. He declared that he would put a coat of gray paint over all, so that in a dim corner they might pass for new. I insisted that it should be a very dark corner! Both of the statuettes represented scenes from the war. One was called “Wounded to the Rear,” the other, “Letter Day.” The latter was the figure of a soldier sitting in a cramped, bent position, holding an inkstand in one hand and scratching his head for thoughts, with the pen. ”

“ It had not been realized by the artists who had never studied the composition of light, that there is a great deal of red in the green light reflected by grass, and that if they were to duplicate this shade of green, they must put a certain amount of red paint in their imitation grass roofs. Air scouts did not depend upon their eyes alone, but used cameras so that they could study their photographs at their leisure and by fitting the cameras with different color-screens, they could analyze the camouflage and undo the patient work of the artist. ”

“ The painting was done again, and the work was accomplished, this time with notable success, for as a result of the damp first layer of paint the final coating did not look too aggressively new.
We raised anchor and steamed out of port in a fog. Soon we exchanged farewell greetings with the German outpost boats, and, shortly after, reached the zone where at any moment we might run against an English destroyer [168] or submarine. Everyone on board was strung up to the highest pitch. What would the next moment bring us? ”

“ They have also made a most immoderate use of paint, covering their brow, cheeks, and neck with thick coats of rouge and white. Some have even gone so far as to gild their lips, but the more modest have been content to color them with carmine, and the excessive use of paints is diminishing. ”

“ The raids, the forays, the charges; the pitting of cold steel against cold steel, the hand to hand encounters in trenches, the steadfast manning of machine guns and field pieces against deadly assault, these and kindred phases of battle are what find themselves into print. Because they lend themselves so readily to the word painter or to the artist's brush, these lurid features are played to the almost complete exclusion of others, only slightly less important. ”

“ The regiments in it are ‘The Queen’s,’ the Welsh Fusiliers, Staffords, and Warwicks, with the monstrous 4·7 guns drawn by my well-loved mighty mammoths. The guns are made impossible to the artist of modern war by being daubed in blue and red blotches which make them absolutely formless and, of course, no glint of light on the hidden metal is seen. Still, there is much that is very striking, though the colour, the sparkle, the gallant plumage, the glinting of gold and silver, have given way to universal grimness. After all, why dress up grim war in all that splendour? ”

“ Then came the details, thrilling a warlike people, and the trophies which symbolized success,--banners torn and stained in desperate conflict, destined to hang over Christian altars until the turning current of fortune should drift them back,--parks of artillery rumbling through the streets, to be melted into statue or triumphal column,--and, amid the spoils of war, everything most glorious in Art to fill that wondrous gallery, the like of which the eye of man will never look upon again. ”

“ Nature's tricks of camouflage were freely used in the hiding of the implements of war on land. Our big guns were concealed by being painted with leopard spots and tiger stripes, the color and nature of the camouflage depending upon the station they were to occupy. In many cases, they were covered with branches of trees or with rope netting overspread with leaves. So careful was the observation of the air scouts that even the grass scorched by the fire of the gun had to be covered with green canvas to prevent betrayal of the position of the gun. ”

“ True, perhaps, for the moment; but, then, such times as these are in many ways unfavourable to the creative instinct; moreover they will leave in restless, sensitive natures lassitude, recoil, a sense of surfeit. Quite probably the war may produce a real masterpiece or two, formed out of its very stuff, by some eager mind innocent hitherto of creative powers, for whom actual experience of the sights and feelings of war may be a baptism into art. ”

“ The living pictures and the moving statuary in the Grand Palais exhibited the fine arts of war as they are practised by civilized men using explosive shells, with bombs, shrapnel, hand-grenades, mitrailleuses, trench-mines, and other ingenious instruments by which the ordinary designs of God may be re-drawn and re-shaped to suit the modern tastes of men. ”

“ There was not a belligerent capital where great and enthusiastic crowds did not parade the streets to cheer for war. In those days men did not know what war meant. Their conception of it was formed from the pictures of heroic—and always victorious—feats, hung in national galleries and reproduced in the form of the cheap chromos, engravings, and prints, which adorn the walls in every cottage throughout most lands. ”

“ The amazing truthfulness of the style is here in its proper place; we wish to be brought as near as may be to the facts; we want good realistic painting more than fine sentiment. The story35 reminds us of certain ghastly photographs published during the American War, which had been taken on the field of battle. They gave a more forcible impression of the horrors of war than the most thrilling pictures drawn from the fancy. In such cases we only wish the narrator to stand as much as possible on one side, and just draw up a bit of the curtain which conceals his gallery of horrors. ”

“ The taste was not a transient one. No visitor to Paris can fail to see that blood is regarded as a standard enrichment of a painting. This is natural to a people who fight duels about trifles, and who treat war as though it were a virtue to find occasion for it; with such a passion it would be impossible that the Art should be of generally pure and ennobling character. ”

“ The whole history of war shows this, and even in the beginning war seems to be an activity carried on in part for its own sake, and not entirely for its practical results, and thus has qualities which later are explicitly aesthetic. We cannot of course separate sharply the aesthetic motive from everything else in studying so highly complex an object as war, but that war does partake of the nature of what we call the beautiful, and that the craving for the beautiful is a factor in the causes of war seem to be certain. The relation of art to war is of course no new theme. ”

“ They came singing and twirling their caps on their bayonets, as if fear were an emotion unknown to their hearts. They came brushing through the wheat, following the tracks the tanks had made; they came cheering up the ravines and laughing along the high-road. They came carrying rifles, machine-guns, trench-mortars, bombs—all the filthy inventions war has brought to perfection, whereby one man may torture another. They stuck wild-flowers in their tunics, as if off on a holiday. They never once acknowledged by word or gesture that, life might hold for them no more to-morrows. ”

“ The modern world is at this moment ruled by two enemies of all beauty: these are commerce and militarism. What the one does not destroy, the other tramples under foot. In earlier times war, terrible always, was beautiful, like its goddess Bellona, in its savage splendour. Its camps, its troops, its standards, its panoply, were all full of colour and of pomp. Even so late as the Napoleonic wars its awfulness was blended with beauty. ”

“ Not a sunset in which conflicting colours are fused into each other by soft and subtle gradations—these we see often and soon forget—but one of war and discord; when colours, the most antagonistic, meet without blending, and produce effects that would be called crude and coarse upon a painter’s canvas. ”

“ Now, you are to remember, in passing to the next phase of history, that though you must have war to produce art—you must also have much more than war; namely, an art-instinct [Pg 69] or genius in the people; and that, though all the talent for painting in the world won't make painters of you, unless you have a gift for fighting as well, you may have the gift for fighting, and none for painting. Now, in the next great dynasty of soldiers, the art-instinct is wholly wanting. ”

“ He is, above all, the painter of movement, whose artistic bent inclined him towards the depicting of the bewildering bustle of military life: mounted artillery-men displaying their outlines against the smooth sky, or galloping down the dunes, full of screaming yellows and blacks, of horses and of the bright, white sand ”

“ And yet, and in spite of all this, beauty retains its sway over "the common heart of man." Even war cannot destroy, though it may temporarily obscure, the beauty of Nature; and the beauty of Art is only waiting for the opportunity of Peace to reassert itself.
To the prevailing uncomeliness of this war-stricken time a welcome exception has been made Page 311 by the patriotic pageantry which, during the week now closed, has been enacted at Queen's Hall. ”

“ It is urged that in time of peace for maneuver purposes the figureheads, if gilded, afford a shining mark to reveal to the constructive enemy the whereabouts of the ship and in time of war, if painted with the protective war color, the artistic value of the figurehead is wholly lost. Furthermore, figureheads cost a good deal of money and have a good deal of weight, and serve no practical value whatever in warfare. ”

“ There is no danger of the general public, which delights in the red coats of our soldiers, and thinks the crudest colored dyes the prettiest, encouraging you to paint sad olive pictures. The danger comes from the select few who are gifted with æsthetic tastes, and who, having recently awakened to the fact that crude contrasts do not constitute color, fall into the opposite extreme, and praise whatever is negative and colorless. ”

“ The red material stretched back of the metal fret-work, is said to be a souvenir of the gruesome custom prevailing in ancient times, of warning off invaders by posting on the doors of public buildings, the skin of prisoners of war, and holding it in place with open-work metal, through which the red skin was plainly seen! ”

“ Trickery does not help actuality, straightforward manly work being absolutely necessary to the war artist of to-day.
(p. 360) (We are sure that if the men in this Army who are engaged as artists or who feel strongly and lovingly the relation of true art to war, to photography and to the refinement of mankind—if these will take the trouble to answer this letter, we shall have a rich correspondence.—Editors, Friend.)
(p. 361) CHAPTER XXV
The End Approaches We arrange to retire from our posts, but still possess the enterprise to start a Portrait Gallery.
"The Friend," No. ”

“ Activity in poster production was not confined to Great Britain. France, as in all matters where [Pg 2] Art is concerned, triumphantly took the field, and soon had hoardings covered with posters, many of which will take a lasting place in the history of Art. Germany and Austria, from the very outset of the War, seized upon the poster as the most powerful and speedy method of swaying popular opinion. Even before the War, we had much to learn from the concentrated power, the force of design, the economy of means, which made German posters sing out from a wall like a defiant blare of trumpets. ”

“ In June and July, 1916, an exhibition of drawings was held at the Leicester Galleries, entitled “Italian Artists and [Pg 37] the War.” There were several actual poster designs, but by far the larger proportion of the drawings exhibited consisted of war cartoons and caricatures akin to those of Raemaekers and Dyson, though prints from them were extensively displayed upon newspaper bills and walls in Rome and other Italian cities. ”

“ While excelling in war they were not unmindful of the arts of peace. They were an artistic people, and the weapons and ornaments which they wrought in various metals, as well as their enamel work, are exquisite in design and workmanship. ”

“ A title such as "A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire" indicates at once the nature, scope and limitations of this unpretentious volume of annotated drawings to which it has been given.
Faked pictures of the war are plentiful. Sketches taken on the spot they depict, sometimes by a hand that had momentarily laid down a rifle to take them, and always by a draughtsman who drew in overt or covert peril of his life, gain in verisimilitude what they must lose in elaboration or embellishment; are the richer in their realism by reason of the absence of the imaginary and the meretricious. ”

“ Colours—the signa militaria still, though not of such importance as a rallying centre in these days of extended order and fire fight, as in the days of line formation and the Brown Bess—lost as these were lost reflect honour, and not discredit, on the history of a regiment.
Remarking on the use of colours in the past during battle, Sir Charles Napier writes: “Great is the value of the standard; it is a telegraph in the centre of the battle to speak the changes of the day to the wings. Its importance has therefore been immense in all ages, among all nations, and in all kinds of war. ”