As a young adult born just barely before the turn of the century, I don't have the firsthand experience of being alive during a world-scale war. I have read about it, watched movies about it, but these are all someone else's stories; someone else's experiences. The only way I feel like I can get into the mindset of someone in that time is through the art that came from the after effects of the carnage. The ability of art to transcend time with its messages of the horror that humans are capable of inflicting upon each other is incredible. In Saturn Devouring His Son, the fleshiness and raw emotion evoked by the figures gets under the viewer's skin and scares them to the point that they cannot look away from the terrifying scene. In the case of Jacob Epstein's Rock Drill, the rigidity and unfeelingness of the droid-esque figure show the way that humanity has become apathetic to its own destruction. The following remake of the piece conveys something entirely different; destroyed, pathetic, and helpless, humanity is unable to cope with what it has done. These transcendent themes are scary, but it is important that we be able to see the flaws in our history, and not repeat them in the future. Sidenote: These pieces relate very much to the WWI poetry that we've been reading in Lit. Together, these different mediums create a vibrant image of the destruction of war. |
0 Comments
|