Lest we forget

Most years I would attend at least one, probably two, Remembrance services but this year, not being at school and having grandchildren for the Remembrance weekend, I did not expect to take part at all, despite it being the centenary of the Armistice in November 1918. However, I was delighted that my colleague Georgina, from LVS, had written a school production based partly on some research I undertook in 2014 on the pupils and staff at the school during the Great War.

What a terrific production! Great script, amazing sets and wonderful music written by one of the students. It was wonderful to see all the students I have known for years deliver such a polished performance and it was incredibly moving.

The following week our Arts Society lecture was given by Frank Woodgate BA MBCS ACIB entitled "The War to end all Wars: The Art of World War One". Frank Woodgate is a a lecturer in Art History at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, as well as lecturing for other bodies such as the Arts Society. It is obviously a difficult area to lecture on and I thought I knew quite a lot about WW1 artists. However, Frank took an interesting angle, introducing us to some of the war artists' work before, during and after the war.

Paul Nash (1889-1946) was a British surrealist painter and war artist and we were introduced to some of his early work including Summer Garden (left).

A student at the Slade School of Art, Nash was poor at figure drawing so concentrated on landscape and I found his work very appealing. In further research (Tate:https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/paul-nash-1690) I discovered that he very much liked ancient landscapes and his Landscape of the Megaliths features nearby Avebury (image: Victoria & Albert Museum).

The contrast between these and his subsequent war work was, of course, quite stark but the approach taken led us gently into the dark paintings of war.

Frank did not just concentrate on British artists but also introduced us to German and European artists both before and during the war and, indeed into the inter war years that followed.

I learnt about Futurism and Dadaism, both of which I knew very little about. Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.

It emphasized speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane, and the industrial city (Wikipedia accessed 25.11.18), it celebrated modern life and eschewed the past. Dada was an art movement formed during the First World War in Zurich in negative reaction to the horrors and folly of the war. The art, poetry and performance produced by dada artists is often satirical and nonsensical in nature. In addition to being anti-war, dada was also anti-bourgeois and had political affinities with the radical left. Both disturbing in their way, I found them quite fascinating.

(Pictured above: Unique forms of continuity in space 1913, Umberto Boccioni - Futurism)

Our lecturer also touched on war poetry and stories including Birdsong (Sebastian Faulks), War Horse (book by Michael Morpurgo, play and film). He also, of course, mentioned the novels of Pat Barker who is best known for her 1991 Regeneration Trilogy. If you haven't read her more recent trilogy, Life Class, Toby's Room and Noonday, I would strongly recommend them, particularly in this time of remembrance. Life Class begins in 1914 at the Slade School of Art and all three books follow a group of young art students through the first war and into the second.

Toby's Room, in particular was fascinating as it tells us how Elinor, an artist turned nurse, is involved in helping surgeons to reconstruct the faces of injured soldiers.

I was fortunate enough to visit the the major art installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London in 2014. It marked one hundred years since the first full day of Britain's involvement in the First World War and I was delighted to buy one of the poppies in memory of my grandfather who survived the war and was mentioned in dispatches for bravery in the field. Many were not so lucky. Despite "the old lie: Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori "(it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country - Wilfred Owen 1920), it is right we should continue to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice.