Artists’ Corner-In The Aftermath Of World War I- Dada Takes A Stab
At Visually Understanding A Broken World After the Bloodbath
By Lenny Lynch
I don’t know that much
about the Dada movement that swept through Europe in the early part of the 20th
century in response to the creation of modern industrial society that was going
full steam and the modern industrial scale death and destruction such mass
scale techniques brought upon this good green earth by World War I.
(Foreshadowed it is agreed by the industrial carnage at places like Cold Harbor
in the American Civil War, the butchery of the Franco-Prussian War and
subsequent river of blood by its own rulers of the Paris Commune and the Boer
War.) The war to end all wars which came up quite short of that goal but did
decimate the flower of the European youth, including vast swaths of the working
class. Such massive blood-lettings for a precious few inches of soil like at
the Battle of the Somme took humankind back more than a few steps when the
nightmare ended-for a while with the Armistice on November 11, 1918. An event
which in observing its centennial every serious artist should consider putting
to the paint. And every military veteran to take heart including the descendants
of those artists who laid down their heads in those muddy wretched trenches.
Should reclaim the idea behind Armistice Day from the militarists who could
learn no lessons except up the kill and fields of fire ratios.
I don’t know much but
this space over this centennial year of the last year of the bloody war, the
armistice year 1918 which stopped the bloodletting will explore that
interesting art movement which reflected the times, the bloody times. First up
to step up George Groz, step up and show your stuff, show how you see the
blood-lusted world after four years of burning up the fields of sweet earth
Europe making acres of white-crossed places where the sullen, jaded, mocked,
buried youth of Europe caught shells and breezes. Take one look Republican Automatons. Look at the urban
environment, look at those tall buildings dwarfing mere mortal man and woman,
taking the measure of all, making them think, the thinking ones about having to
run, run hard away from what they had built, about fear fretting that to
continue would bury men and women without names, without honor either.
Look too at honor
denied, look at the handless hand, the legless leg, the good German flag, the
Kaiser’s bloody medal, hard against the urban sky. The shaky republic, the
republic without honor, shades of the murders of the honest revolutionary
Liebknecht walking across Potsdam Plaza to go say no, no to the war budget and
grab a hallowed cell the only place for a man of the people in those hard times
and gallant Luxemburg, the rose of the revolution, mixed in with thoughts of
renegade burned out soldiers ready for anything. Weimar, weak-kneed and
bleeding, would shake and one George
Groz would know that, would draw this picture that would tell the real story of
why there was a Dada-da-da-da-da movement to chronicle the times if not to
fight on the barricades against that beast from which we had to run.
The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Poetry Out Loud Note: This poem has had two titles: “The Soldier” and “Nineteen-Fourteen: The Soldier”. The student may give either title during the recitation.
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