WW1 and Art

Dear readers,

As it appears that all of you are in STAC I now know that I alienate no one by talking, almost, exclusively about STAC. Today is the obvious thoughts of war and art so let's give war and art a try.

War is a horrifying thing but public opinion influences ones view of war. War is more horrifying when society tires of the war. In other words we only think of the horror of war when it goes on to long and we are tired of the war being on going in the first place. At the beginning of a war the chances are that we would love the war and it would be reflected in the things we make. We would make great patriotic movies about how we are right and then maybe five years later when the public re thought their opinion we make a depressing film about war that horrifies people.

Now I will look at some historical context of WW1. It happened immediately because the head of a nation was killed in an assassination attempt by foreign anarchists. All of these participants, killers and victim, were from small and other wise insignificant (to me at least) European countries. How ever because everyone wanted to try out their air planes and mustard gas as weapons and no body could have predicted how much a success they were. Deadly gases were so, well deadly, that they were banned from war fare and had the words "chemical war fare" slapped on them. Currently chemical war fare is frowned upon by most large nations which are threats to each other and many small nations. In short nobody uses them because the big boys on the black say not to. I'm digressing. Because most European wars were fought in the open techniques such as charging were common how ever due to the new deadlier weapons it also meant certain death.

This certain death is what caused art to look at war and become horrified. It went from one day glorifying war to making absolutely no sense what so ever in order to show how war no longer has sense. When once you could face the enemy with honor you were now namelessly mowed down by machine guns if you were lucky. If you were unlucky deadly gases would get you. And so DADA was created.

Ok, that was more WW1 history of weapons then its influence on art so I'll sum it up in a sentence. WW1 had new and horrifying weapons which changed the definition of war, created new fears of war and influenced artists by causing them to make DADA to show how little sense the war made.

Hoping this post made sense,

Mike Hand