Anti-War Protest

I've been to many anti-war protests. In my very conservative town, it was a way for all the rebel high schoolers to 'stick it to the man.' Last night, I attended the Anti-War protest lecture which followed the march that took place earlier that day. The same feel was there except instead of high school kids, it was a bunch of aging hippies that still wear their Birkenstocks and flowers in their hair proudly. What shocked me the most was how there were hardly any students at the meeting whatsoever. Colleges have a reputation of breeding liberals and campuses are normally very liberal and vocal about issues that affect them. Besides me, Pierson and Alyssa, there probably were only a dozen or so other college kids there. The lack of enthusiasm by the general student body was surprising and certainly the rally, at least the lecture could have used the addition of the younger kids. Generations working together could produce change but the aging hipsters that were clapping and screaming held their own in terms of really wanting change.
There was this one woman who was sitting two pews in front of me. She had grey (almost silver) hair pulled back in a braid that looked as though it has been in for sixty years. She wore glasses and hunched over or leaned on who I could only guess was her daughter from their striking resemblance. She clapped. She screamed. She truly wanted change and probably has wanted change for every war that she has lived through. My guess is that during each war, she was at every peace protest trying to show that war isn't the answer. I could see her at a rally during the Vietnam war, during the Gulf War, during every other war, wearing the same anti-war t-shirt and her hair in that braid. Her daughter (once again speculating that the woman next to her was her daughter), probably in her thirties, looked like she's been to her fair share of rallies and probably will follow in the footsteps of the grey-haired woman because even though she is only one person, she can help change.

War as Art

War is hardly ever seen as art. However documentation, especially in the form of photography, takes the concrete definition of war and manipulates it in the eye of the artist, in this case the photographer. The Binh Danh exhibit takes photographs from the Vietnam war and makes them into art. By placing the photographs on a different canvas, the artist manipulated war into expression. Danh may have many reasons as to why he took the pictures and put them on leaves and grass but the effect that the canvas has made the exhibit. It seemed like putting the pictures on leaves placed war in its natural habitat. War, especially in Vietnam took place in nature, with nature, and therefore putting the documentation on nature seemed like a natural progression. He took two completely different topics, nature and war, and married them in a cohesive manner. His technique of fusing art and documentation is extremely powerful, especially in the action shots.

A major difference between Sontag's article about art and Danh's exhibit is that Sontag looks at war art with a more critical eye. She said that "photographs have laid down the tracks of how important conflicts are judged and remembered." Danh took the photos and made art. Sontag looks at the photographs and wrote about how the pictures will dictate memories. Sontag says that however the pictures were taken is how they should be seen...living in 'real time.' The pictures show the truth about the situation without any sort of manipulation. It is just the picture, just the truth. Danh took the picture and put it on a different background which took away from the pure picture.

what is art?

What is art? Well, it is quite a vague question with millions of answers depending on who you ask. To me, art is simply the display of self in different media although many could argue that this definition is too broad. But, this is my definition which I have discovered rather recently when I first found true art for the first time. In high school, I took a British Literature class and in that class we took a ten-day trip to Ireland, England and Wales. While in England, my friend wanted to go the National Gallery so we all begrudgingly went with him. As he was frolicking around mid-eighteenth century portraits, the rest of us were following him kind of like a husband following around his wife through Macy’s annual sale. We walked into another room and there it was: Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. I stood in front of that painting for the rest of the time that we were in the museum. The innocence in her eyes, the realism of her facial expressions, the detail of the pearl, it seemed as though the girl in the painting was looking at me and I sort of saw myself in her. Our eyes looked the same so it kind of freaked me out. When I looked at her face, it felt as though I could see into her soul (as cliché as that sounds.) Her eyes seemed like a gateway to Vermeer’s time. I imagined that my eyes were hers and that I was watching Vermeer paint. It was a complete outer body experience. Although I don’t know if the painting was intended to be more than just a portrait, I saw myself in it, exactly my definition.

One focus of Duve’s article was the idea of intention, meaning the reason as to why the artist made whatever they made. Anything can be art as long as the artist thought of some meaning behind it. Anyone can draw a line on a piece of paper but it is not art unless there is some meaning behind the line. Art is art as long as it is “always constant in its aim,” so anything can be art as long as it matches what it was intended to be. (Duve pg. 8) Whether art takes the form of a sculpture, film, painting, performance etc. if it successfully portrays the message that the artist wanted to it portray, it can be considered art.