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“Gassed” by John Singer Sargent Art Analysis
Tilly Olsson 8D
“Gassed” by John Singer Sargent was painted in August of 1918 (towards the end of World War I) , but published in 1919, according to the Imperial War Museums Organisation, which is where this painting is now located. This painting was created using oil paints on a canvas, and was 231 cm x 611 cm in size. John Singer Sargent was an American painter who was born in 1856 in Florence, Italy.
This painting has a landscape shape, as well as belonging to a historical or war genre. The angle of this painting is a pretty normal eye level, as if standing a couple meters away from the scene and looking straight and a couple degrees tilted downwards. I can tell this because you can see on the painting that Sargent has made the ground visible as well. The painting centers around injured and tired soldiers, about 11 of them standing and leaning on each other in a line. The majority of the soldiers are facing the same direction, looking to the right (from the perspective of the viewer) except for two soldiers who are looking the other way. This line of soldiers is being helped by another man who is dressed in overalls and a hat, who is obviously not apart of their group. Almost all of the soldiers we can see that are standing up have a white cloth covering their eyes. This line of soldiers are walking on what looks to be a series of wooden planks, laid down horizontally. These wooden planks are leading a path towards several ropes that are tied down to the ground around the soldiers. You can see one of the soldiers in the first line has his leg lifted as if walking up stairs, to accent the step of the wooden plank. The ropes are attached onto dark, metal connector that straps the ro...
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...he American Civil War. No matter what, the pictures of war that I’ve seen all have the same sad, hopeless, and tired expression of the soldiers that have fought that I think the painter was trying to show. This expression that has been like boulders on the shoulders of the soldiers won’t just go away, but I see it outside of the war as well; the wars of everyday life. It’s almost as if these warriors’ heavy hearts were so heavy that it physically weighed their bodies down to a shrug. I think that John Singer Sargent wasn’t sent to France to just capture the aftermath of World War I, but to capture the feeling that people have after their own wars. I think this heavy hearted and sorrow feeling that is expressed in this picture wasn’t just painted for this particular war, but to represent the wars people like us, the soldiers, fight in everyday life in our own war.
Many soldiers who come back from the war need to express how they feel. Many do it in the way of writing. Many soldiers die in war, but the ones who come back are just as “dead.” Many cadets come back with shell shock, amputated arms and legs, and sometimes even their friends aren’t there with them. So during World War I, there was a burst of new art and writings come from the soldiers. Many express in the way of books, poems, short stories and art itself. Most soldiers are just trying to escape. A lot of these soldiers are trying to show what war is really like, and people respond. They finally might think war might not be the answer. This is why writers use imagery, irony and structure to protest war.
George Gittoes (b.1949) creates works that that communicate the issue of the graphic horror of war. A social realist painter, photographer and filmmaker, his approach to art is that ‘he layers and accumulates material until, out of apparent chaos, there is a synthesis of idea, passion and image’ (Mendelssohn, 2014). As an eyewitness to the world's war zones, Gittoes clearly uses his work as a means of communication to society.
painting with dimensions about 9 feet wide and 7 feet high. The medium of this work is oil on
The poet Wilfred Owen was one of many poets who were against war. He reflected this idea of anti-war in his poems, one of his poems called “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, mirrors most aspects of war all put together in this short still deep poem. An example of that would be when the speaker stated,” What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?”(1) The speaker asks is there any sound that marks our soldier’s death other than the sounds of church bell’s which are mostly rung to represent somebody’s absence? Clearly, the speaker sets anger as the tone of the poem through this question to show that soldier’s death is unremarkable.. The speaker compares the soldiers to a “cattle” which illustrates that soldiers are treated more like animals with no feelings and also shows how they are killed indiscriminately in war. Finally the line ironically contains an iambic pentameter which is a natural rhythm for such dark, grim, dull subject. The two novels, The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, and All Quiet on The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, both present a similar idea of how soldiers are killed out there in the front comprehensively and the dehumanization of war towards its soldiers. The first novel is set during the Civil War, and it focuses on the psychological aspects of one soldier named Henry Fleming and how his naive thoughts about war constantly change through the course of the novel. The second novel presents the life of a soldier named Paul Baumer and his friends who were faced with the terribleness of war and how severely it affected their lives. The Red badge of Courage and All Quiet on The Western Front are similar in the way of how the main characters develop through the novel to change from naïve and innocent men ...
Tim O’Brien states in his novel The Things They Carried, “The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat” (77). This profound statement captures not only his perspective of war from his experience in Vietnam but a collective truth about war across the ages. It is not called the art of combat without reason: this truth transcends time and can be found in the art produced and poetry written during the years of World War I. George Trakl creates beautiful images of the war in his poem “Grodek” but juxtaposes them with the harsh realities of war. Paul Nash, a World War I artist, invokes similar images in his paintings We are Making a New World and The Ypres Salient at Night. Guilaume Apollinaire’s writes about the beautiful atrocity that is war in his poem “Gala.”
In all works about war, the element of pain is essential. Without pain, there is no real happiness. The men described in these works all endured vast amounts of physical and emotional pain on their tours serving the country and the accurate representations of their time overseas wouldn’t be able to be complete without this element.
This painting presents two soldiers are standing in a trench. The soldier who wears a pale blue uniform stands beside a sentry box on the right and the other soldier who wears a different uniform enters from the left. Only the expression on the face of the right soldier’s is presented and it seems to show his scorn to the soldier on the left. As we can see in the painting, some other soldiers who are probably the left soldier’s comrades are hiding behind the sandbags. The painting uses diagonal lines which are neither vertical nor horizontal to make the objects seem to be unstable and in motion. It makes the audience feel that those soldiers are moving or going to take an action. Horace Pippin successfully uses diagonal lines to convey a feeling of movement for this painting. Outpost Raid: Champagne Sector is two-dimensional and composed of shapes which are formed by lines. This artwork uses shapes to depict the soldiers as well as background’s objects. Because the artist tends to use subdued colors such as gray, brown and black, the painting create a sense of calm and composure for the audience. The use of colors make the audience feel peaceful although they are seeing a painting which presents the scenes of war. In addition, the uses of color
Throughout history, war has been depicted as heroic and romantic for a soldier to be involved in. But though all the war propaganda, is it really a glorious and lovely event. One novel explains the true reality of war. In the American Protest literature text, there is a section of Norman Mailer’s novel, “ Why are we in Vietnam”. The section contains several chapters of his novel that explains the situations soldiers had to experience during the Vietnam War. In the section, we see how credited Norman Mailer is, and examples of his descriptions that are very vivid that gives the reader the realization of war.
The three narratives “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, “Song of Napalm” by Bruce Weigl, and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen all have the same feelings of war and memory, although not everyone experiences the same war. Zabytko, Weigl, and Owen used shifting beats, dramatic descriptions, and intense, painful images, to convince us that the horror of war far outweighs the devoted awareness of those who fantasize war and the memories that support it.
The painting itself is an incredible combination of colors, texture, and style. The scene includes a line of general white warriors all dressed identically in the foreground. They wear military clothing appropriate for the timeline of the Great Sioux War of 1876, including white gloves, a brimmed hat, and an ascot. The military men are
The viewer's eyes go directly to the man because he is the center of attention. The man is standing in front of the memorial with his back hunched and his head down. Then the viewers notice the soldiers in the background. The soldiers are metaphorically included in the painting. They are all in a straight line, side by side, and one is crouched down.
We walked and walked looking at each art piece, which were all well displayed. Then as I looked at the back wall, a large oil canvas painting looked right back at me. I could feel its pain and so then, I decided to do my paper on this piece. The painting was The Ragpicker by Manet. (The Ragpicker. Edouard Manet.1865.Oil on canvas.) The painting was so enormous that it was hard to miss. Such a huge painting for one man, it almost looked life-like. The dimensions of this work is 76.75” x 51.25”. This scene seems to take place of a lower-class man late in his age, probably near his seventies, appears to be looking out of the corner of his eye. The ...
The written elements work with the visuals to show the emotional and physical impacts war has on soldiers. The picture on the left of Private MacGregor was taken before his instalment in the war, as you can see the focus is soft, the colours are fairly sombre and he looks slightly worried. The accompanying text talks about the things he will miss the most while away and he only briefly touches on his family, with most of the focus being on his dogs. In this caption he talks about the ordinary things in life such as a family, a couple of dogs and a TV. This caption matches the photograph as they talk about and represent a normal person that he is and give a basis to which his change
This painting may not look like much at first, but it is full of meaning and emotion whether it’s you who are feeling it or the artist who made it. That artist happens to be the Dutch painter, Vincent Van Gogh. Vincent actually made three different versions of this painting, that are currently residing in the Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, and Paris, Musée d'Orsay museums. He also made two sketches of this peace that are in the Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, and Paris, Private collection, he included those sketches in his letters to friends and family. This one specifically is one of the copies that is being help at the Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago. [redundant, you already specified this paintings location in the first part of the paper] A lot is known about this series of paintings since he wrote an abundance of letters about it in detail to his loved ones, he wrote about 13 letters to be exact (Brooks, The Paintings).
The painting was of a river flowing from a lake, surrounded by very tall grass. On each side of the river there are people standing. What was interesting is they were painted all black. They looked like shaded figures. They were all shaped differently but you can tell they were all men. On the top left side of the river there were five men. On the right bottom side of the river there were four men. On each side it looked as though the men were trying to cross over to the other side. They looked tired and scared. It looked as though they were hiding, and getting across the river was the only way to get to that safe haven.