Week 39: Women War Artists/Imperial War Museum

Hello!! How crap has this summer been?? Totally disappointed and pissed off about it. When I contemplate another winter stretching before us for 9 months or so I literally want to kill myself!! So happy Tuesday to you all.

This week I ventured back to the Imperial War Museum, because it was near to where I had crashed the night before and I was seriously broke this weekend and it’s free, plus I was with boys. We had a quick walk round World War 1, popped into World War 2 , had a brief stop over in the Cold War before pointedly avoiding the Holocaust rooms in favour of some nice pretty pictures in the gallery. Actually I really should spend more time in the main parts of the IWM (as we call it in the biz, yes really I do have occasion to type that in a work capacity sometimes) as it’s basically a 3D visualisation of my day to day Wiki-wanking. It got me all morbid in an enjoyable blood-lust kind of a way.

When I went to the IMW last year
(see here for blog: http://elizakessler.blogspot.com/2010/02/week-6-imperial-war-museumhall-of.html) I think they just had the usual stuff in the main gallery along with the amazing work for the Hall of Remembrance. This time they had rearranged it somewhat and half the space had been given over to a special (although still free yippee) exhibition called Women War Artists. Hurrah hooray.

Now, to be honest I don’t remember an awful lot written about this exhibition, mainly because I think I didn’t read it – which is unusual for me but there you go. So, even more than usual this blog is going to be a bit of a ‘visual essay’ burgess style. Quickly though it seems that Anna Airy was pretty much the first women artist to be employed as an official war artist by the British War Propaganda Bureau during the First World War, she joined the likes of Paul Nash and John Nah, Wyndham Lewis. It was during the Second World War, when the War Artists Advisory Committee was set up by Kenneth Clark through the Ministry of Information that women war artists became more of the norm. However, many of the artists featured in this exhibition were not official war artists at the time and it wasn’t until after the war when a concerted effort was made to gather images of the conflict that these artists were properly appraised.
Anna Airy was the main female war artists in the First World War (it seems, I don’t know this for a FACT ok!!). However, it seems that she was not expected/allowed to travel to the war zone proper (again don’t know this for a fact ok guys) but was instead charged with depicting the industry of war in various locations across the UK including Hackney and Glasgow. Apparently her commission was incredibly specific with fines occurring should she go even a day over the appointed deadline. One of my favorite images in the exhibition was this one by her called A Shell Forge at a National projectile Factory, Hackney Marshes, London 1918. I love how she manages to catch the intense orange heat of the metal, things

The exhibition opened with the rather fabulous painting Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech-ring by the 2nd World War artist Laura Knight, or Dame Laura Knight RA if you like. This was accompanied by a fabulous war time news reel showing Laura and Ruby visiting the picture in that years summer exhibition with lots of comments such as ‘wat a lovely gal wat-ho wat-ho’ etc etc:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PTtzGS0gmg
I also found this great interview with Ruby Loftus of Newport about her experience of sitting for the painting and filming the newsreel: http://www.wartimenewport.virtuallyhere.co.uk/pages.php?page_id=56
Fab painting I think you’ll agree.

They also had the famous image of the Nuremberg trials by the same artist, a commission she specifically requested and where the horrors of the war, something she obviously witnessed first hand when travelling to Bavaria to document the proceedings break through her usual strictly realist style:


Although most of the female artists seem to have been denied access to the battlefield, at least until long after the danger, and action had ended, one woman artists was present soon after the liberation of Belsen concentration camp. Doris Zinkeisen worked as a nurse throughout the war but it wasn’t until after 1945 that she was taken on by the War Artists Advisory Committee to produce official work. She spent 3 days at the camp almost immediately after it’s liberation and obviously, that’s not something you’re going to get over quickly. The work she produced is truly chilling, the title Human Laundry says it all:

As most of the woman artists in this exhibition, official or unofficial, were denied experience of the front the work they produced obviously dwells more on the every day life of the people at home rather than documenting conflicts and violence first hand. Ethel Léontine Gabain for example made many images of women during the Second World War at work and on the street. She was particularly interested in the revolutionary new treatments being developed to nurse the injured, a useful propaganda subject displaying the might of British technology and innovation as seen in A Bunyan-Stannard Irrigation Envelope for the Treatment of Burns, Applied by Sister Roberts in Middlesex Hospital:

Evelyn Dunbar was apparently (i.e. according to Wikipedia – so who knows how true this is…) the only salaried woman artist of the painters and sculptors employed during World War II by the War Artists Advisory Committee. I’m a bit confused about who was and wasn’t actually employed by this committee so we are just going to skim over this. Anyway her work was FABULOUS, and again stuck mostly to themes of domestic life during the war years:

This theme of the domestic is carried through many of the works in this exhibition. The work of Flora Lion who was commissioned to depict factory work in the First World War concentrates on the interaction of the women when off duty, in the canteen or elsewhere. Unfortunately, maybe for this reason, the work was not bought by the collection after they commissioned it but was eventually donated years later. The women do indeed look rather independent and forceful, no doubt a terrifying prospect to the establishment at the time.

The exhibition also included work by later woman artists including Linda Kitson who documented the Falklands conflict and was onboard the various non-military ships which were used to transport troops to the area. (Women at this time were not allowed on proper battle ships). Her incredibly quick fire sketches, obviously done on the spot whilst observing the action, give an amazing sense of the energy of life onboard as well as the more off-duty exploits of the soldiers:

My memory has gone and lunch hour is approaching so I will leave you poor bored people with that for now but while I’ here and have your attention (although I almost certainly don’t by now) please check out this amazing BBC/Public Catalogue Foundation resource now available online. ALL the oils paintings in EVERY public collection in the whole of the UK will be on there by the end of next year which is over 200,000. At the moment there are about 62,000 only but it’s really well worth a look at and is lots of fun and you can contribute by tagging images which will eventually be used as a way of searching and categorising the paintings on there. I have put it on the page for Evelyn Dunbar but please do take a look:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/search/painted_by/evelyn-mary-dunbar

That’s all folks and fingers crossed for the weather improving. There is too much cricket going on that’s the problem, the gods are mistaking it for a rain dance.