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The Art of War

The National Constitution Center assembles 90 years of paintings, straight from the front lines.


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Published: Sep 15, 2010

TOP TO BOTTOM: That 2,000 Yard Stare (detail), by Tom Lea, WWII, 1944Landing Zone (detail), by John Wehrle, Vietnam, 1966 Attack at Twilight (detail), by Roger Blum, Vietnam, 1966

Every war has a palette.

Afghanistan is a dusty ochre. World War II is beige and gray. Vietnam is a brilliant green, with airborne gasses turning a psychedelic red. Iraq is mostly a bland, colorless desert, but pixilated patterns on modern camouflage fatigues have a very subtle hint of pink.

For 90 years the Army has sent artist-soldiers into battle, sketchbook in one hand, rifle in the other. There are plenty of other soldiers documenting military maneuvers with cameras, film reels, video, satellite tracking and mountains of binary datato find out who did what to whom, where and when. But none of them are there to record what it feels like. Since World War I, the U.S. Army has considered an emotional record of war important enough to dedicate funding for artists to paint what they see, from the boredom of a chow line to a horrific pile of empty boots, and the thousand-yard stare in between.

There is one big caveat: The art must be representational. No abstract stuff. Army brass who set up the program, along with the members of Congress who approve its funding, insists on knowing what they're looking at.

There are almost 16,000 pieces of art in the Army's collection, most never seen publicly. It's a treasure trove by any yardstick, but especially for the National Constitution Center (NCC), which normally deals with hoary busts and yellowing documents to showcase the creation and maintenance of American democracy. "It was unbelievably inspiring," says exhibit director Stephanie Reyer, who culled about 200 items from that deep well of material and split it into three parts — a soldier's life, duty and sacrifice — for the NCC's weighty fall exhibit, "Art of the American Soldier." "At times really happy, at times heartbreaking."

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Reyer is the first to admit she's not an art curator; her forte is historical exhibits. The show she put together has a narrative arc representing each war and the unique perspectives the artists brought to it. Soldier art changes with the times. In the Army collection is an exquisitely rendered, Rockwell-esque portrait of a medic in the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Normandy, with telltale bloody rags in the background. There's also a helicopter landing in a Vietnam field where lush, shoulder-high grass hypnotizes as Impressionistic colors wave in the wind of the chopper blades.

Like artists everywhere, soldier-painters are subject to funding fluctuations. There were 42 artists in the field during World War II. There were none in Korea. In Vietnam, small patrols of artists were deployed as their own units. Now, there is exactly one staff Army artist: Master Sgt. Martin Cervantes, who recently was deployed with an airborne unit in Afghanistan, making sketches and taking reference photos. He recently created a painting of what he saw while riding in a Humvee along the edge of a mountain.

"It was dusty. But when I took the photo you couldn't see the dust. So that was something I was able to add as an element, to give it that feel so everybody understands the conditions these guys are in every day."

The artists may have been commanded to be figurative, but many found enough elbow room to get funky with it. In 1966 an artist named Augustine Acuna painted Morning Ritual in Vietnam, with men shouldering one another to get some space in front of a tiny shaving mirror tied to a stake. The flattened style, and the calm, unremarkable moment, suggest Acuna had Cézanne on his mind. In the NCC show's online supplement, the sepia-toned color fields of In the Field (1968) indicate that artist David Farrington knew something about Pop Art.

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Ninety percent of war might be obtuse boredom; that last 10 percent — abject terror — is also in the Army collection. Robert Delassandro of the U.S. Army Center of Military History, which oversees the collection, says regardless of who signs their checks, many of the soldiers painted works that could be considered anti-war. The NCC's Reyer had a hard time finding words to describe some of the images in the collection; some of the most horrifying were not chosen for the exhibit, with consideration to the NCC's expected audience (they get a lot of school groups).

The dénouement of the NCC show is Soldier's Sacrifice, a quiet, enclosed area where patrons can reflect. The Army has not spent the last 100 years painting pictures for the American public, and they weren't made for purchase (although officers at the Pentagon get to choose works for their offices). The artists are simply trying to capture a feeling their fellow soldiers will recognize. "What is history? How do you paint history?" asks Master Sgt. Cervantes. "If a soldier goes to a museum, I want them to say, 'That's where I was, that's what it was like, that's what I did.'" There are few better gifts to offer the tens of thousands of soldiers now returning home from Iraq.

(editorial@citypaper.net)

"Art of the American Soldier" runs Sept. 24, 2010-Jan. 10, 2011, free with regular museum admission of $12, National Constitution Center, 525 Arch St., 215-409-6600, constitutioncenter.org.