The Legacy of War
Recently, your reading has focused on the impact of war on the history of modern art. In this week’s discussion forum, you will choose a work of art that expresses politicalthemes specifically related to warfare. Although you are encouraged to focus on works related to World War One, you may also choose a work by an avant-garde Russian artist related to the Bolshevik Revolution, or even revisit Romanticism and choose a work of art related to the French Revolution or Napoleonic Wars (such as Goya’s Disasters of War).
The purpose of this assignment is to examine a work of art in its historical context, and also to research how political forces shaped the lives of artists. In your post, please choose a single work of art that has political content and describe the way in which the artist expresses their perspective. How do they communicate their ideas through iconography, narrative, color, technique, etc.? What specific political events inspired the work of art? How did these events shape the life of the artist?
Be sure to include an image of the work and for posting a poem in the forum that is related to World War One.Attachments area
Answer preview
The impact of war during the French Revolution influenced significant artists to express their political views by creating artworks related to warfare. The Romanticism Movement is linked with the French Revolution since this revolution was liberation to the oppressed because it brought political, social and economic change (Berlin, 2013). An example of artwork with a political theme in this period was the Raft of Medusa by Theodore Gericault, a French Romantic painter.
The Raft of Medusa is an oil painting of 1818-19 with an over life-size scale of 7.16m by 4.91m located in Paris. The art shows the wreckage of the French Naval that ran aground after hitting a sandbar in today’s Mauritania in 1816 (Alhadeff, 2002). The ship had an overload of 400 people, yet it had a capacity of 250 people, and from the tragedy, it is believed that only 15 people survived. Gericault expresses the political allegory theme by conveying his sad emotions which is evident in the appearance of the surviving people and lifeless bodies lying on a raft…
(500 words)