Fought on canvas: The world at war

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At last we have a pithy, knowledgeable and compelling account of the art of WWII, says Julian Freeman

Art and the Second World War by Monica Bohm-Duchen

There has been no coherent art history of the Second World War, nor any truly discursive, national histories of war art from 1939–45. There are no templates for such studies, and if histories are created for the victors, or for those who wield most power, truly representative surveys of art made in wartime in nations in flux are likely to be so layered with meaning, and so stylistically varied, that overall clarity is at best threatened, at worst obscured.

In Britain, in whose wartime art history all these traits are represented, some accounts have come close, and others, such as Colours of War by Alan Ross (1983)  have provided incisive but limited critiques. The open-ended approach to the subject by Monica Bohm-Duchen (hereafter MBD) and her hope ‘…never to lose sight of the significance and power of the individual artist’ are essential to the success of her 12 chapters. These consider a range of art created in the major seats of conflict from 1936–45. Though all draw on established chronologies and events, each of them challenges accepted art historical conventions.

The survey begins with the art of the Spanish Civil War, but also provides considerations of the much less-known visual doctrines that obtained in Japan and China, and – unsurprisingly, given her expertise in the subject – an overview of the art of the Holocaust. Her book is not definitive, nor could it be. Time and space, together with the perceived audience, have not permitted this. Nonetheless, as a starting point for serious students of history and of the history of art, Art and The Second World War is as discursive an overview as anyone may wish. It opens several doors through which readers of all types can move on, wherever they choose, having gained much in the introductory process.

Readers with previous knowledge may discover piquant combinations of familiar material, juxtaposed with much that has never been introduced to mainstream audiences. The three chapters on Art in the Democracies (Britain, the USA and the Commonwealth – should the latter not have been ‘Empire’?) relate the curious and convoluted evolutions of commissioned war art among the English-speaking allies, and the discussion of Kenneth Clark’s rise to pre-eminence as ‘The Earl of Moore and Sutherland’ introduces a critical note when considering the outcomes of the art commissioned by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, and its value, as a vast body of work, for posterity, given what she sees as the privileged positions of the official artists.

Importantly, a new generation will learn of the activities of Anthony Gross, Leslie Cole, Ethel Gabain and Laura Knight, but, as noted, the history of British war art of the period is bigger and more detailed than space allows here, and, inevitably, more detail is needed to discuss these artists and their work and impact coherently. To a large extent this is true throughout, and the other chapters in this section broadly follow suit: bare-bones detail with informed discussion, and a sharply critical summary of the bureaucratic peaks and troughs that bedevilled the creation and reception of American art during the war. A similar approach is applied to the uncertain policies governing war art in the Dominions. But oh! Who could resist a reproduction of Norman Rockwell’s 1943 original Rosie the Riveter, Ma Baker with a sandwich?

 ‘France, Once the Haven of Exiles: Victim or Collaborator?’ follows, a jarring account of creative activity during the German occupation that will be new to a wider audience, not least because, with only a few exceptions, English-language studies of French artistic activity in this era remain few. This chapter, and her opening study of the Spanish Civil War, impressively convey the manifold ways in which art in both countries fell victim to gross deceits and concealments created by their own countrymen. Webs of misinformation continue to bedevil clear understanding of the complicit interrelationships between occupation and collaboration in France, and cynical repression and counter-propaganda in Spain. In each case MBD offers readers pithy, knowledgeable text in which passion and restraint are ably combined, supported by well-selected images.

The book’s treatments of Russian and German war art do not lend themselves to summary, and are in some ways hard to separate. Despite their distinct differences, both are characterized by deep seams of mythological and triumphalist representational narrative. Of the two, MBD’s examination of the war art of the USSR is less convincingly authoritative, owing to its dependence on printed source material, and because of her need to determine a coherent approach to a complex and politically driven art campaign by the Soviets. Nevertheless, her analytical responses to this material convey strong ideas. She is on much surer ground with the Nazis, whose art has been much discussed for decades, as the extensive bibliography clearly shows, though to what end must still be questioned: a phenomenon in cultural studies if ever one existed. Once again, illustrations might be stronger, but here the inevitable comparison between the plastic arts, as they were permitted to be practised in the Third Reich,and the ‘degenerate’ art created by Jews or other undesirables is one of the book’s strengths, and one it is important to return to.

Perhaps the most compelling components of Art and the Second World War are those that find their way less often into similar compilations. MBD’s chapter on the art of Fascist Italy covers everything from representations of Mussolini to aeropittura.As a body of work, these Fascist images of flight remain absorbing, not least for those who may wish to consider the surprising longevity of Futurism, first, as one of the key vehicles of Fascist dreams of an imperial future bound up with the ideal of flight and the conquest of the air, but also as an important influence on Hollywood, before becoming all too real in the skies over Abyssinia and Spain.

Elsewhere, MBD moves into new territory with separate discussions of the Japanese-Chinese conflict, still a heated debate today. Both chapters are revelatory in their ways, not least because their presence here is so unusual and, in the case of Japan at least, because of the increasing dilemma for its artists, faced by the realities of the wars they were fighting, and the need to represent them in appropriate narrative styles.

MBD’ short chapter on the art of the Holocaust is vital to the book’ balance. She comments generally on work created in specific locations across the Nazis’ empire of death, but she concentrates much of her critical intensity on documentary work executed by Bedrich Fritta (1906–44), Leo Haas (1901–83) and others in the Terezin/Theresienstadt concentration camp. That was the site of the Nazis’ grossest deceit, to the Red Cross, on the well-being of the Jewish prisoners there. For good measure MBD up-ends the British government, whose over-lengthy internment of Jewish refugees and others in the Isle of Man was little more than a sustained exercise in ignorance and prejudice, but which resulted in many telling and cultivated visual responses.

In sum, the chapter clearly points to the failures of some governments and regimes to prevent the very worst type of repression, and to the complicity of others in the promotion of such conditions. It speaks of the presence of creativity, ideals and art against all odds, of the acceptance by civilized people of cultural blindness, and of collective revelation or amnesia at the moment of liberation. There is too much on which to reflect here, and though the book is deceptively slim, every part of it is more than worthy of any reader's investigation, consideration and evaluation.

Art and the Second World War  by Monica Bohm-Duchen is published by Lund Humphries, 2013. 288 pp., fully illustrated in mono and colour, £40.00 (hbk). ISBN 978 1 84822 033 1