Art of the first world war and it's aftermath
As well as photographing the events that happened during the first world war, many artists would create pieces of artwork depicting things that happened.
an example would be a painting by Max Oppenheimer. Who painted an image of an almost naked man holding a wound on his chest. He entitled the image 'the bleeding man'.
'The Bleeding man'
Although you see these paintings and you know that they are showing the death and suffering of men, there is something appealing and beautiful about the actual pieces of artwork. This is because a large majority of the paintings have very vivid color and this is considered to be a beautiful thing as bright colors are associated with happy things.
Max Beckmann
Beckmann's name was one that kept popping up whilst i was researching war art.
He is concidered to be a widley known as one of Germany's best 20th century artists. Beckmann was a figure painter by trait and during the war he took advantage of the world around him and painted his experiences throughout the war, political turmoil during the 1920's and 30's, the rise of nazism, exile in Amsterdam and his emigration to the USA.
Beckmann was in the action during the war serving as a medical orderly. This did have a profound psychological effect not only on his brain but his artwork also.
'The Grenade'
Propaganda posters
Propaganda was used a long time before world war one happened. But using propaganda on posters only came around as world war one did.
Almost immediately from the start of the war the government started to produce posters to get the public to join the army to help the fight. The image to the left shows a British recruitment poster and below that there is an American recruitment poster similar to the British one.
The American recruitment poster above is one of the most iconic images from world war one.
The poster would include short punchy lines that would make you feel like the poster was directly speaking to YOU, as though America or Britain needed YOU to help win the fight.
They would say things like 'Uncle Sam needs YOU', Join YOUR country's army' and 'God save the King'.
They would say things like 'Uncle Sam needs YOU', Join YOUR country's army' and 'God save the King'.
Aswell as the text the posters would also include drawings. The drawings were designed to convey pro-war messages and to seem to be looking at you, and also pointing right at you as you have seen from the two posters show above.
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