Abstract
As an artist who is also a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the author seeks to place his art practice within the broader tradition of Australian War Art and thereby seek to reconcile these two identities. By examining the emergence of the Australian Official War Art Scheme during the First World War, the framing and mythologising influences on Australian War Art and the development of the Australian War Memorial as the dominant War Art patron, the author identifies the key components of Australian War Art. The author’s military experience provides a unique dialogue opportunity, although he acknowledges the inherent organisational and societal biases, frames and mythologies applicable to his art practice.
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Notes
- 1.
Richard Travers, To Paint a War: The Lives of the Australian Artists Who Painted the Great War, 1914–1918 (Port Melbourne, Melbourne: Thames & Hudson, 2017), 1.
- 2.
Travers, To Paint a War, 1.
- 3.
Michael Scheib, “Painting Anzac: A History of Australia’s Official War Art Scheme of the First World War Volume 1” (PhD thesis, The University of Sydney, 2015).
- 4.
Christina Twomey, “Trauma and the Reinvigoration of Anzac: An Argument,” History Australia 10, no. 3 (2013): 85–108.
- 5.
Carolyn Holbrook, “Are We Brainwashing our Children? The Place of Anzac in Australian History,” Agora 51, no. 4 (2016): 19.
- 6.
Twomey, “Trauma and the Reinvigoration of Anzac.”
- 7.
Twomey, “Trauma and the Reinvigoration of Anzac,” 107.
- 8.
Joanna Burke, “Introduction,” in War and Art: A Visual History of Modern Conflict, ed. Joanna Burke (London: Reaktion Books), 33.
- 9.
Laura Webster, “Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan.” Art Monthly Australia 258 (2013): 41–43.
- 10.
Webster, Ben Quilty, 15.
- 11.
Geoff Dyer, The Missing of the Somme (Penguin, London, 1994), 27.
- 12.
Jason Samenow, Iran city hits suffocating heat index of 165 degrees, near world record, The Washington Post, July 31, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/07/30/iran-city-hits-suffocating-heat-index-of-154-degrees-near-world-record/?utm_term=.8671349b5679.
- 13.
Rex Butler, “Ben Quilty: The Fog of War.” Intellectual History Review 27, no. 3 (2017): 433–451.
- 14.
Butler, “Ben Quilty,” 436.
- 15.
“Ben Quilty,” Australian Story, Australian Broadcasting Company, 28 June 2012, television broadcast.
- 16.
Butler, “Ben Quilty,” 436.
- 17.
Butler, “Ben Quilty,” 439.
- 18.
Butler, “Ben Quilty,” 442.
- 19.
Butler, “Ben Quilty,” 444–445.
- 20.
Butler, “Ben Quilty,” 443.
- 21.
Butler, “Ben Quilty,” 443.
- 22.
Butler, “Ben Quilty,” 434.
- 23.
James Brown, Anzac’s Long Shadow: The Cost of our National Obsession (Melbourne: Penguin, 2014).
- 24.
Webster, “Ben Quilty,” 8–12.
- 25.
Kit Messham-Muir, Double War: Shaun Gladwell, Visual Culture and the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (Melbourne: Thomas and Hudson, 2015), 151.
- 26.
Messham-Muir, Double War.
- 27.
Messham-Muir, Double War, 162.
- 28.
Cormac Power, Presence in Play: A Critique of Theories of Presence in the Theatre (New York: Rodopi, 2008), 3.
- 29.
Power, Presence in Play, 8. This concept is also discussed by Dr Phillip Auslander, the performance theorist, in Ajay Heble and Rebecca Caines, eds. The Improvisation Studies Reader: Spontaneous Acts (London: Routledge, 2014), 358.
- 30.
Power, Presence in Play, 11.
- 31.
Peter Brook, The Empty Space: A book about the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).
- 32.
Esslin, Martin. Artaud. Vol. 3831 (London: J. Calder, 1976), 115.
- 33.
I was unable to find a definitive number at the time to verify the figure, so I proceeded with the project using 259 blades. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare later indicated that at least 292 deaths had occurred amongst the soldier and veteran community over the 2001–2014 period, indicating that the figure quoted by my friend was significantly lower than what the actual figure at the end of 2016 would have been (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2016. Incidence of Suicide among Serving and Ex-serving Australian Defence Force personnel 2001–2014. Cat. no. PHE 212. Canberra: AIHW. ISBN 978-1-76054-044-9 (PDF)).
- 34.
The blade I carried was a Special Operations Combatives Program (SOCP) Double-Edged Dagger, the issued knife for members of the Second Commando Regiment in Australia in 2013. Its short-edged tip was extraordinarily sharp, but its design and weight made it useless as a tool with any general utility. It was worn on my chest, on my body armour, positioned so that if I got into a fight at close quarters it was always accessible. Its primary function was to cut at an opponent who had grabbed my rifle, freeing it for use. The ring on the head of the blade allows the user to continue to fire the rifle whilst holding the knife looped on their index finger. http://www.benchmade.com/socp-dagger.html.
- 35.
Ryan Johnston, “Recalling history to duty: 100 years of Australian war art,” Artlink 35, no. 1 (2015): 14.
- 36.
Brown, Anzac’s Long Shadow, 5.
- 37.
Anne Gray, Arthur Streeton; The Art of War (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2018), 5.
- 38.
Nicholas Mirzoeff, Bodyscape: Art, Modernity and the Ideal Figure, Visual Cultures (London: New York, 1995), 191.
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Armstrong, M. (2019). The Soldier as Artist: Memories of War. In: Kerby, M., Baguley, M., McDonald, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War since 1914. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96986-2_10
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