The Influence of WWII on the Mid Modern Era Works of Art

 A large majority of people were influenced by WWII and started to take a stand. Art works were not excluded from this. It was an opportunity to show what war was like and how it effected people all around the world. It even started showing the brutality and truth of war that was not typically seen by the common individual. 

 Hitting the Beach, Painted By: Tom Lea

1944 Location: Depiction of Peleliu

                                                        The Price, Painted By: Tom Lea

1944 Location: Depiction of Peleliu

Tom Lea was a war art correspondent for Life Magazine. He originally attended the Art Institute of Chicago. After this he became a commercial artist in Chicago. In 1940 he accepted an invitation to work for LIFE Magazine.  He covered the war for Life from 1941 to 1946.  This put him in the direct viewing of the battle fields and you can feel this in is works. He painted and drew exactly what he had witnessed. His images are intended to show his first hand account viewings of WWII. These paintings have even hung in the Pentagon with the intention of reminding of the ugliness of war. 

Elements

Color and contrast are greatly used in both paintings. There are many shades of green giving the aspect of dark conditions. In the painting The Price the only other color is red and it is made as the extreme contrast to draw immediate attention to it. The element of lines are curved and non defined giving strong sense of movement throughout both paintings. You can see this in the first painting showing soldiers throwing themselves while others lay limp having succumb to the fatalities of war. The second shows the soldier stumbling.

Placement

The painting Hitting the Beach makes all the soldiers the most important placement by them being in the immediate forefront of the painting. What the soldiers are falling to their deaths from are set far back making them less relevant. This painting is showing D-day and makes it clear with the placement that the focus is on the soldiers. The painting The Price has blatantly made the soldier the only object of interest by being front and center with no other items around. This painting was created to remind everyone the cost of battle. 

Emotions

Both of these works are extremely emotion invoking. You can feel and sense the jumping to safety instinct that is shown in the first painting. You want to reach out and help them and try to protect them. The second painting is supposed to invoke strong emotion and was done well. You see this man is dying and there is nothing you can do. It makes you want to cry when you realize this was a real person that had their life ended in such a brutal way.

Tube Shelter Perspective:

The Liverpool Street Extension

Created By: Henry Moore 1940-1941

Location: London

                                                         A Tilbury Shelter Scene 1941

Created By: Henry Moore

Location: London

Henry Moore was a known sculpture in Britain. He was a soldier in the army in WWI. After that he would attend Leeds School of Art and the Royal College of Art. Ultimately, his drawings of London's community sheltering from the Blitz is what made him famous though. Henry did many drawings of the German aerial attacks on London starting in 1941. He was eventually asked to become an official war artist. What makes them so special is he is actually there with these individuals going through the Blitz while capturing what he witnessed. Moores' own home was bombed even. 

Elements

These works involve a lot of shading and curved lines. Lighting is used throughout to create depth within the sketches. The shading gives a sense of collapsed and crammed bodies. At the same time the curves give individual outlines to each human being in these works. The lighting shows how dark these shelters were but also has just a hint enough of light to show the enormity of people sheltering.

Placement

The placement seems to portray that you are to look at the sketches as a whole. No one individual stands out more than another. They are all placed randomly crammed together and there are no strong individual details to draw you to one single person within the sketches.

Emotion

I find these sketches to be very raw with emotion. Even though you do not see faces and exact depictions of human beings you do see the children that are likely in hiding with their mothers and people crammed and huddled. You can feel the angst and stress of the conditions. The fear is strongly portrayed by how these individuals are cuddles so close together like them being close would make them safer.

Stand-by on Train 21

Created By: Evelyn Dunbar

1941 Location: Unknown

St. Thomas' Hospital in Evactuation Quarters,

Created By: Evelyn Dunbar

1942 Location: London
 

Evelyn Dunbar was yet another artist of WWII but as you can see quite different. She was also a British artist, illustrator and teacher. She is best known for showing how women were apart of World War II in the United Kingdom, especially the work of the Women's Land Army. In 1940 she was hired by the War Artists' Advisory Committee. Evelyn was the only female artist to get regular work and pay from the British government.  In 1942 she spent weeks at Pyrford hospital watching the activities of the place. This is where her nurse paintings were painted from.  

 Elements

Color is a large element of these works. You can see how the contrast of the whites and the reds stand out against the darker yellow and green backgrounds. Lines are both curved and flowing showing the movement of the nurses as they go through they daily work. You also have straight harsh lines depicting the shape of the train as well as the beds for incoming patients. 

Placement

Even though there are many nurses you can see that each one is made to stand out and be what you look at the most. Placing them in a movement state against a stagnant background really draws them to the forefront demanding your attention.

Emotion

For me these invoke a great deal of emotion. My grandmother was a nurse in the Women's Land Army. I can almost imagine her in her uniform going from patient to patient trying to do the best care she could. You can see in these women that they were determined to do there job. Even in the train painting you can see the nurses are still actively doing something. It gives a sense of pride as a female to see how women worked to help the war and that some stopped for a moment to take notice.

Overall, you can see how World War II was a large aspect of the Mid Modern Era. Artists were actually hired to do these works to start spreading a sense of beating the enemy. Other works such as The Price were created to remind people the cost of war and the benefits of peace. The gruesomeness of war was strongly depicted in WWII but so was the strength that it draws out in a nation and individual people.

Works Cited

“Biography.” Tom Lea Institute, 2020, www.tomlea.com/biography.

Christopher. St Thomas’ Hospital in Evacuation Quarters (1942), 4 Sept. 2012, evelyn-dunbar.blogspot.com/2012/09/st-thomas-hospital-in-evacuation.html.

“Evelyn Dunbar.” Never Such Innocence, www.neversuchinnocence.com/evelyn-dunbar-second-world-war. Accessed 21 Nov. 2023.

“Evelyn Dunbar.” Paint Drops Keep Falling, 13 Dec. 2011, paintdropskeepfalling.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/evelyn-dunbar/.

Hallett, Florence. “Henry Moore: The Artist in Wartime.” Henry Moore: The Artist in Wartime | The Tretyakov Gallery Magazine, 22 May 2020, www.tretyakovgallerymagazine.com/articles/1-2020-66/henry-moore-artist-wartime.

Klepper, Dan. “Tom Lea’s War.” Texas Co-Op Power, May 2019, texascooppower.com/tom-leas-war/.

Paul, Stella. “Abstract Expressionism: Essay: The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.” The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, 1 Jan. 1AD, www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/abex/hd_abex.htm.

Ucl. “The Tilbury Shelter.” The Survey of London The Tilbury Shelter Comments, blogs.ucl.ac.uk/survey-of-london/2020/04/17/the-tilbury-shelter/. Accessed 21 Nov. 2023.