Category: Art
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01 Work, The art of War, József Molnár’s Warrior Dezső Sacrifices his Life for King Charles Robert, with Footnotes
King Charles Robert of Anjou fleeing from the Battle of Posada (November 9-12, 1330). Romantic painting Charles’ army wear hussar clothes of the 17th century. The Basarab I of Wallachia’s army ambushed Charles Robert of Anjou, king of Hungary and his 30,000-strong invading army. The Vlach (Romanian) warriors rolled down rocks over the cliff edges…
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01 Work, The Art of War, Sliman Mansour’s Prison, with footnotes
Prison (1982) depicts five men, their hands cuffed behind their back and their heads covered so they cannot see. They are huddled together, back to back, confined within the walls of a prison. Most likely Palestinian and although faceless, the men appear strong, youthful and resilient in their stance. Yet melancholy undertones run throughout, as the…
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01 Work, The Art of War, Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson’s A Taube, with footnotes
The Taube (Taube translates as ‘Dove’, taub as ‘death’) was a German reconnaisance plane but carried bombs that could be thrown from the cockpit. The casual violence of the scene marks the increasing vulnerability of the civilian population. Both the title and the evidence of an explosion imply that this was the cause of death…
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01 Work, The Art of War, Georges Rochegrosse’s Andromaque, with footnotes
This is a distinctly surprising work, where the atrocities of war are depicted with raw violence – severed heads, pools of blood, lifeless bodies stretched out on the ground or hanging from the wall – at the same time as candid eroticism, such as Andromache’s swelling bosom: an appealing show of female nudity placed well…
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01 Work, The Art of War, Sliman Mansour’s crowd, with footnotes
Mansour is a committed Palestinian artist. Here he paints a compact crowd, seized with fear and hampered by the barbed wire of the occupation. Beyond the Palestinian question, this image has, thirty years after its execution, a more universal scope: we see the people confronted with conflicts and the migrations which are their consequence. More on…
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01 Work, The Art of War, Howard Pyle’s A Wolf Had Not Been Seen at Salem for Thirty Years, with footnotes
Pyle’s image is rather sparse, between the snow and the cloudy sky he leaves the viewer’s eye to latch onto the people and the wolf. Your eye falls upon the people in the front, and the mix of fear and of the unknown is very strong here. Pyle creates his people, the landscape and even…
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01 Work, The Art of War, Elmars Mageramovs’ Victims of War, with footnotes
“The theme is relevant in our troubled time. I think it is worth thinking about our attitude to the world, to suppress in oneself everything that leads to war, instability in society, in the family, in nature. We should learn for analysis and thinking to be objective political processes understanding. The main victims of these…
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02 Works, The art of War, Louis Gallait’s War and Peace, with Footnotes
When this pair of allegorical paintings (together with Walters 37.124) was completed in 1872, a Belgian critic wrote: “M. Gallait just finished two paintings forming a pendant pair that rank among the best things he has ever done. They are allegories of peace and war, but allegories conceived in a new order of ideas, substituting…
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01 Work, The art of War, Benjamin West’s Edward III Crossing The Somme, with Footnotes
English offensives in 1345–1347, during the Hundred Years’ War, resulted in repeated defeats of the French, the loss or devastation of much French territory and the capture by the English of the port of Calais. The war had broken out in 1337 and flared up in 1340 when the king of England, Edward III, laid…
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01 Work, The Art of War, Afifa Aleiby’s Gulf War, with footnotes
Gulf War reflects Aleiby’s pain for the suffering that had resulted from the Persian Gulf War, which happened between 1990 to 1991 and was triggered by the Iraqi invasion of the State of Kuwait. The conflict resulted in the death of thousands, damage to infrastructure and cultural loss. Notably, The painting were painted while the…
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01 Work, The Art of War, Sue Coe’s Bomb Shelter? with footnotes
With access to the outside world choked off the superb painter Hanaa Malallah, developed varieties of ruggedly handmade books that are like the dream diaries of constricted personal lives and thwarted artistic aspirations. Malallah immigrated to the U.K. in 2006. A new work by her, “She/He Has No Picture” (2019), amplifies the aesthetic to generate…
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01 Work, The Art of War, George Bellows’ The Germans Arrive, with footnotes
A German soldier strangles a civilian while another woman is attacked near a burning cottage. Artists played a role even before 1917. Reports of German atrocities galvanized George Bellows, initially an opponent of the war, into action. Bellows, channeling Goya, painted and made prints of rape, forced labor and the murder of children by gleeful…
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02 Works, The Art of War, George Bellows’ Massacre at Dinant, with footnotes
The Dinant massacre refers to the mass execution of civilians, looting and sacking of Dinant, Neffe and Bouvignes-sur-Meuse in Belgium, perpetrated by German troops during the Battle of Dinant against the French in World War I. Convinced that the civilian population was hiding francs-tireurs, the German General Staff issued orders to execute the population and…
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02 Works, The Art of War, Kenneth Forbes’ Canadian Artillery in Action, with footnotes
A Canadian 6-inch howitzer supports British troops in the attack on Thiepval on 16 July 1916 during the Somme offensive. The artist captures the exhaustion of the gunners, who appear to have been firing for hours… Please follow link for full post
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04 Works, The art of War, Alfred Théodore Joseph Bastien’s Over the Top, A Sniper in the Cemetery and CANADIAN OFFICER KILLED, Neuville-Vitasse, with Footnotes
Bastien depicts an attack by the 22nd Battalion at Neuville-Vitasse, a German-fortified village in occupied France, in late August 1918. Major Georges Vanier, later the Governor General of Canada, maintained that he was the officer holding the pistol leading the assault… Please follow link for full post
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01 Work, The Art of War, Charles Le Brun’s The passage of the Granicus, with footnotes
The Battle of the Granicus in May 334 BC was the first of three major battles fought between Alexander the Great of Macedon and the Persian Achaemenid Empire… Please follow link for full post
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01 Work, The Art of War, Maurice Orange’s The Defenders of Zaragoza, with footnotes
The second siege of Zaragoza was the French capture of the Spanish city of Zaragoza (also known as Saragossa) during the Peninsular War. It was particularly noted for its brutality. The city was heavily outnumbered against the French. However, the desperate resistance put up by the Army of Reserve and its civilian allies had been…
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02 Works The Art of War, Bertalan Székely’s Women of Eger, with footnotes
On 29 September, 1552, an army of 35–40,000 men from the Rumelian army (and an Anatolian contingent) and the troops of Ahmed Pasha from Buda gathered at Szolnok and went on to attack the castle of Eger. The defenders of the castle numbered all together 2000, including serfs with no understanding of warfare, and many…
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01 Work, The Art of War, Max Ginsburg’s War Pieta, with footnotes
I thought of a mother losing her son and the Pieta paintings of the Old Masters and of Michelangelo’s sculpture, Pieta, showing the Madonna mourning the death of her son. In my painting I sought to symbolically connect, and contrast, the image of a real mother screaming in anguish over the death of her soldier…
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