Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Nakamura Hiroshi

Nakamura Hiroshi described the 1950s as a “civil-war era,” and he obviously had confrontations over the militarization of Japan in mind. He himself took both the Girard and Sunagawa incidents as subjects of his artwork, in two equally powerful but stylistically very different protest paintings. Militarization, however, was only one aspect of what Nakamura and his like-minded compatriots found disturbing and grotesque in post-occupation Japan. Commonly known as the “reportage painters” for their distinctive left-wing combination of realism and surrealism, these artists also called attention to social oppression and grievous poverty; to corruption, and the return of former militarists to high political positions; and to the “inhumane mechanism” of postwar society in general. (via)

Artur Grottger - War Cycle (Wojna Cykl)

Come with me through the Veil of Tears
Comet

Draw Recruits
Farewell
Conflagration
Hunger
Betrayal and Punishment
People or Jackals?
Only Misery
Sacrilige
Humanity, Kin of Cain

Sunday, February 10, 2013

George Grosz - from Abrechnung Folgt! aka One Day We'll Get Even or The Day of Reckoning (1923)

The artistic revolutions of painters and poets are certainly interesting and aesthetically valuable - but still… they are studio problems and many artists who earnestly torment themselves about such matters end up by succumbing to skepticism and bourgeois nihilism. This happens because persisting in their individualistic artistic eccentricities they never learn to understand revolutionary issues with any clarity; in fact, they never bother with such things...My drawings expressed my despair, hate and disillusionment, I drew drunkards; puking men; men with clenched fists cursing at the moon… . I drew a man, face filled with fright, washing blood from his hands… I drew lonely little men fleeing madly through empty streets. I drew a cross-section of tenement house: through one window could be seen a man attacking his wife; through another, two people making love; from a third hung a suicide with body covered by swarming flies. I drew soldiers without noses; war cripples with crustacean-like steel arms; two medical soldiers putting a violent infantryman into a strait-jacket made of a horse blanket… I drew a skeleton dressed as a recruit being examined for military duty. I also wrote poetry.” 
- George Grosz

Fatherland, may you be at peace [quiet]

Whoever can, swims, whoever is weak, goes under

Sportsclub Harmonia

"Poverty is a great radiance from within" (Rilke)

Call it the fault of reparations--I'm not moving my ass!


Sticking it Out

The Republic is firmly established, and snores

Although the Rhur (double meaning of Dysentery and also an industrial river zone in Germany) sickens, it doesn't taste bad.

MARLOH NOW-- Whoever wants to be a Crusader [Knight] of the Swastika 

--AND THEN ...got his training some time ago


My Pension

One Havana

Song of the Intellectuals: Take our bodies, belongings, honor, wives and children but our minds remain! 

People of Europe maintain your Sacred Values 

For the Rich, the Booty- for the people, the misery of war

The Bourgeoisie stirs up trouble---

---and the Proletariat must shed it's blood

Against Communism they are United!

The Family is the Foundation of Society

Half a Century of Social Democracy

Caution, don't stumble

United Front

Religion must be well preserved for the people! Be fruitful and multiply!

Knowledge is Power

On Sign: The Future of the Working Class lies in the blossoming of entrepreneurs (10% wage reduction) (United Front) (piece-work) (12 hour day) 

For the Fatherland, for riches, grab on!

I Shall Exterminate Everything around me that prevents me from being the Master (The Director---)

---and his puppets

The Workers make so much trouble for the authorities....

....that it is not possible to catch the racketeer

Two Chimneys and one soul

Stinnes and his President

Always practice truth and faithfulness until you are in your cold grave

Give us today our daily bread

The Republic - a scarecrow

Those who eat well...

...forget easily

The Gorlitzer Program...

...and it's consequences

The German philistine is a gut filled with fear and hope, that god pities (Herwegh)

...these war invalids are getting to be a positive plague!

 
The knife in the back from the right (on hand: Profiteering)

Four years of murder

If soldiers weren't such idiots they would all go AWOL

If workers stop wanting to be slaves they must grab the whip

Please yourself in life!

Marriage is the beginning and pinnacle of culture (Goethe)

We hold solidly and staunchly together

Arise ye workers from your slumbers