The palette knife is sharper than any bayonet: Artists at war.

Thursday, April 7, 2011 6:32 PM by Betty Brennan in Design and Planning


As the U.S. enters into its third military conflict, I felt it appropriate to examine art during wartime. I will not use this blog as a forum for political debate, but rather to introduce to some of you two artists whose legacy was forged under unfortunate circumstances.

*Great things are done when men and mountains meet;

This is not done by jostling in the street.*

~William Blake

I have a special fondness in my heart for artists such as Kaethe Kollwitz (1867-1945) who were driven to grapple with the big subjects life and death, injustice, war and peace.

Kollwitz lived through two World Wars in Germany where she worked with her husband in the most impoverished areas of Berlin. Her artwork passionately depicted the plight of the poor and oppressed. As a mother and peace activist, she suffered the twin nightmares of losing her son in World War I and losing her grandson in World War II. Here is her mournful picture of a mother searching for her dead son on a battlefield:

Kollwitz was persecuted by Nazi thugs who considered her pictures degenerate art. The place where men (or in this case, women) and mountains meet is difficult terrain for an artist. Her career was blocked and her home was bombed but she refused to be intimidated into leaving Germany. She also refused to stop working, saying Drawing is the only thing that makes my life bearable. She was one of the most powerful graphic artists of the 20th century

This lovely, delicate drawing was the best way that Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) knew to kill his enemies.

After the Nazis invaded his native Poland in 1939, Szyk took refuge in the United States where he learned in despair that the Nazis had killed his brother, then turned their attention to his mother:

“My beloved seventy-year-old mother, Eugenia Szyk, was taken from the ghetto of Lodz to the Nazi furnaces of Maidanek. With her, voluntarily went her faithful servant the good Christian, Josefa, a Polish peasant. Together, hand in hand, they were burned alive.”

Szyks anguish increased as photographic evidence smuggled out of Europe showed Nazis methodically slaughtering helpless civilian populations.

A small, balding, bookish man with weak eyes, Szyk could not present much of a threat to the Nazis as a soldier. His strongest weapon was his art, and he made it his purpose in life to rouse the slumbering west to the genocide taking place in Europe. He worked obsessively, producing hundreds of miniature drawings attacking and ridiculing the Nazis.

His drawings soon resonated with the public. His work appeared on the cover of Time, Colliers and other popular magazines. They became effective tools for fundraising for war bonds, training soldiers and raising corporate awareness for the war effort. Hitler put a price on Szyks head. Eleanor Roosevelt described him as a one man army.

Szyks drawings were small and combined subtle gradations in tone with delicate, lacy lines. His designs were consistently beautiful. Szyks great artistic strength was that he could control his powers, channeling his unbearable agony into millions of precise, miniature lines.

Artists who choose to portray injustice or death (as opposed to flowers or landscapes) tend to get carried away and sacrifice form for content. The test is whether they become shrill, or stray from art into the realm of political propaganda. Kollwitz and Szyk both pass that test. In my view, they put to shame much of todays smug art establishment. By casting our eyes back to the place where men, women and mountains once met, we can gain some perspective on just how far we have relaxed our standards to accommodate todays minor artists jostling in the street. Their tiresome fascination with their own neuroses and bodily functions seems trivial compared to the majestic example of Kollwitz and Szyk.

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