Essay on Art History: War and Its Consequences

The ideas of Western art particularly existed in the US and Europe during the First World War, Second World War, Revolutionary War, American Civil War and Franco-Prussian War. During the time of war in the First World War, almost everything became a tool for propaganda. For instance, Italys artistic and rich historical heritage turned into a tool of war for the country. Destruction of works of art was easily turned into tools for measuring the level of brutality in the war. Artists at the time would not cease to document every event of the destruction. Unlike other places in the world, the destruction of art in Italy was considered an act of cowardice of sorts and it was looked down upon as a weakness. The Italian artists hence conceptualized art forms that were filled with propaganda that sought to expose the cowardice of their aggressors in the face of the impending war. With the evolution of every war came challenges that were unique to the war. This paper will look into the art history, focusing primarily on war artists during WW1, WW2, and Revolutionary War, and the consequences the wars had on the artists and art.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Thesis statement: In times of war when the media and other state-owned corporations were easily bought into aligning their policies and reportage against the powers for political survival and protection, it was up to another form of medium to act in the place of the media. At a time when warring factions used the media as their puppet to spread their ideologies and propaganda about the enemy factions art played a significant role in not only highlighting the plight of the ordinary citizens but also in raising awareness about the politics on the ground. Throughout the history of man, war has greatly shaped how we have come to appreciate art.

World War I

World War I Artists

William James Aylward

William James Aylward was one of the greatest contributors to the world of art after the First World War. William was a war artist for the United States during the First World War. He was born in the year 1875 at a time when the political temperatures of the world politics were beginning to get heated up. He went to the art institute of Chicago where he studied art. He also went to the art students league in the city of New York. William developed a taste for the nautical subject matter, and this was a result his fathers work with the great ships. William died in 1956 at the age of 80. From an early age, he was introduced to many European artists of his time, and he got the learning of European art that became a part of his inspiration for a long time in his careers.

Due to his fathers profession on the shores of the seas, he got the chance to document the events of loading and offloading the weapons of warfare as they left the ports. He spent most of his time at the seas and got better chance to record the events in detail leading to some of the worlds most valued works of art. Many of his works of art appeared in magazines like The Sea Wolf by Jack London and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. He was not only an award-winning illustrator but also an award winning artist that began his career by the illustration of the 18th-century history of the marine life in the coast towns. He gathered interest in the sea and marine life from a young age and put them together to come up with concepts that assisted him to realize award-winning portraits.

Kerr Eby Marines

Another artist of war that was of important note was Kerr Eby Marines. Eby was a Canadian illustrator that was born in 1890. Eby was best known for the way that he rendered the soldiers in combat during the first and the Second World War. He was one of the artists that were used by the government to go and cover the events of the war. Eby was born to a Canadian Missionary in Tokyo Japan in 1890. He went to the art institute of New York and received his formal training at a young age. He was used to the various art forms and the exposure that he had given him a lot of perspective concerning the way that war influenced the politics of the world. Emy was one of the few artists that have to serve in the army, as one of the ambulance crew and to he was familiar with the pain and suffering caused by war. His experience at the barracks gave him unique memories with which he was able to create and document the lives of the soldiers in the war as well as the victims of the war.

Walter Jack Duncan

Walter Jack Duncan was another American artist that was born in Indianapolis in Indiana and was an alumnus of the Arts Students League. He came from a family that included some prominent actors and actresses in the times that he lived. His artworks were keen to record some of the less glamorous but all the same essential aspects of scenes and times of war. He traveled widely, and this gave him the chance to be exposed to some of the most gruesome scenes of war and the items that could ever be documented. He mostly used pen and ink to carry out his pictures. From the way that he worked with the pen and ink, it gave him the title Wizard of the pen and ink.

Harvey Thomas Dunn

Harvey Thomas Dunn was born in 1884. He was best known for his prairie masterpiece that was intimate. He was one of the leading forces of art in the medieval times, and his works were greatly respected for the depth and the vision that they entailed. His works were one of the forces that led to the some of the greatest forms of art appreciation and the renderings. The beginning of the First World War led to some new artists as well as art forms throughout the western world. Many artists emerged out of the dust of the war while much more used it as a platform to further their careers in the arts and to make their voices heard. Some of them drew their attention on the technologies of warfare that had been invented, massive immigrations across nations, and a picture of a world without war. Some artist took the humanistic approach of drawing a picture of what it would have been without the wars while other took on hard lined political stances that sought to condemn the brutality and the violence that was experienced during the war.

Consequences of WW I on Artists and Art

Art in the First World War led to plenty of consequences more than they could ever have been anticipated. Art in the first world war was not only used as a means of appreciating the gravity of the events that were taking place but was also used as a means of documenting the events of the times. Art in times of war was used by the political powers to spread their propaganda in ways that they deemed fit and to show that they were the superior powers in the times of war. The wars influenced the society and extended to American culture and art enormously as most American artists were involved in works involving the conflicts. Many artists were involved in the war through their art, for example, Claggett Wilson, Childe Hassam, Marsden Hartley, and George Bellows among others. Art history, therefore, is the study of arts in their stylistic and historical context; these involve; ephemera, posters, photographs, prints, drawings, and paintings. Every war in the world had its unique influence on the arts. There are not toe wars that had the same kinds of effects on the people.

There were different characters in every war, and all of them were influenced by a different set of factors and environments. Every new emerging art form took the inspiration of the form of war on which it was modeled. Various forms and means influenced the way that artists expressed their art. The artists at the times of the wars meanly dealt with the subject by focusing in the brutality of the war and how inhumane world powers had become to the point of degenerating into the massive destruction of lives and property. Not all artists, however, took this kind of approach as some of them resorted to a head on kind of approach with the aim of condemning the world leaders and uniting world populations. Some of the artists that emerged out of the first world war included William James, Kerr Marines, Walter Duncan and Harvey Thomas.

Art was a strong tool for not documenting the events of the war but also in determining the course that the war was meant to take. Politicians used artists for the purpose of documenting their victories and shaping the narrative of the war. The British government sponsored official schemes that were aimed at getting the artists to record and document the events of the war. The Imperial War Museum in Britain has been used as a means of getting the best artist on the land to documents the events of the war as they occur. The end of the First World War, there were two main streams of activities that were used for the production of the official war art. The imperial war museum was charged with the responsibility of collecting all the material representative of the war in the land and abroad. The museum was established by an act of parliament in the year 1917. The government of the time was driven by the desire to seek prestige as opposed the desire to keep an honest record of the event of the war. So much was the desire to seek prestige that they would go to all the extent possible to get an artist that would document the images of war in their favor. The polarization of the events of the war was such that every country was interested in shaping a narrative that would go for their story and according to what they deemed fit for their legacy. The use of art was demonstrations of the heights that people would go to get political correctness of the situation.

World War II

World War II Artists

Gorge Biddle

George Biddle was an American painter. He was best known for his combat art and his social realism. George Biddle was an American muralist, lithographer, and painter. He was born in 1885. George was known for the way that he did his social art and for his combat art. He was an old friend of President Franklin Roosevelt. He had a major hand in the employment of artists under the works project administration that was President Roosevelt's machinery of artists deployed to document the events of war against the American narrative. He was born in 1885 in the city of Philadelphia in the United States. He was part of the federal art Project, having gone through the Harvard University School of Art. He was also an alumnus of the Pennsylvania Academy of fine art. Artists in the Second World War played as significant a role in the shaping of the war in the same way that the artists in the first world did. From the time of the First World War, the theme of war continued to be a recurrent theme that featured in the arts. The Spanish civil war was the first battle that led to the formation of the Second World War. Spanish war was the last straw to the war on the part of the Europeans.

Standish Backus

Standish Backus was a US military artist. He was born in 1910 and spent one year at the University of Munich where he studied art. He spent a year in Maine studying watercolor under OHair. At the start of the Second World War, he was commissioned as an ensign to the naval reserve. The Second World War saw the role of the artists in time of war expand to not only observations kinds of roles to active roles of spreading propaganda about the war. The Second World War saw artists abandon their artistic role of documenting the events as they occurred and were now taking up equal roles in shaping the politics of the millennium by spreading propaganda about the countries that they supported.

There were feelings that divergent views that arise from the affiliations like the democrats and the republicans were certainly Avant-garde in one way or the other. During the Second World War, various artists stood out in the way that they presented their subject matter. Few artists...