The exhibition “the Sensory War 1914-2014” at Manchester Art Gallery examined the effect of war on humans and nature throughout a century. At the beginning of her talk,\u00a0Dr. Ana Carden-Coyne said that war is artistic. And indeed war is artistic even though at the same time it is\u00a0cruel, destructive, and deadly. Some of the questions posted during her\u00a0presentation showed insight of how difficult it must be to curate such an exhibition. How should war be remembered? Which artwork should be shown? And who gets to speak for the deaths?<\/p>\n
The artwork of K\u00e4the Kolhwitz\u00a0particularly struck\u00a0me.\u00a0Kohlwitz’s\u00a018 year-old son Peter voluntarily\u00a0joined the German military in 1914 and was killed only 10 days afterwards. Ever after the death of her son, Kohlwitz incorporated\u00a0the grief, sorrow, and hardship of war in her artwork. A early sketch of the grieving\u00a0parents shows a couple who has just lost their child in the battlefield. They\u00a0both tightly hold on to each other and mourn together. Kohlwitz made a monument of “the parents” for her son’s grave. The couple is\u00a0kneeling down, the man upright and the woman’s head down.\u00a0This time the parents do not grief arm in arm but are separated by\u00a0their\u00a0sorrows.<\/p>\n
K\u00e4the Kohlwitz was the first woman to be elected to join the Prussian Academy of Arts. However, when Hilter came to power in 1933 she was expelled from the Academy. Three years later her art was removed from all galleries because the Nazis feared that K\u00e4the\u00a0Kohlwitz powerful art could work against their war propaganda of dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (it is sweet and glorious to die for one’s country).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The exhibition “the Sensory War 1914-2014” at Manchester Art Gallery examined the effect of war on humans and nature throughout a century. At the beginning of her talk,\u00a0Dr. Ana Carden-Coyne said that war is artistic. And indeed war is artistic… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5675,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5675"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=991"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":993,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991\/revisions\/993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}