War Prompts Artistic Responses

Author: Suzanne Mozes

As our nation showers the "Cradle of Civilization" with bombs, the foundations of ancient architecture and archeological sights quake alongside ancient artifacts, threatening 6,000 years of irreplaceable culture with ultimate destruction. "Shock and Awe" only awes me with the shock of losing art, treasures that we must turn to in times of war.
Connie Julian, national Coordinator of the Artists Network of Refuse and Resist!, explains, "People look to the arts when the world turns very, very dark."
The most visible response with words and images leads us to poster art. Rhyming couplets, witty fragments and international symbols adorn cardboard lollipops parading up and down streets throughout the world. (My personal favorite "Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot.") Graffiti, a more enduring art form, has begun to spring up in more urban areas depicting destructive wartime images.
Cartoonists manage to reach a more visually oriented audience, as opposed to the reading public. This more sophisticated art form combines series of images with dialogue to poke at the leaders and prominent members of our nation.
Political cartoons, just as in past wars, take on a serious role in current events, simply because they draw attention away from blocks of text to more condensed chunks of information.
In conjunction with reaching a broader audience, MTV and People Magazine were each offered spots for their journalists abroad. These outlets cater to audiences not necessarily tuned in to world events. As a result, the public as a whole remains informed in their normal routines.
Moreover, People has taken advantage of this opportunity by using 10 pages of their 50 plus Oscar issue for Iraq coverage.
The line between art and entertainment, while already blurred, merges into actual news coverage, leaving us more muddled than ever. Because television falls under the category of "showbiz" as Frank Rich of The New York Times points out, the newscasters must entertain.
Recently, reporters have begun interjecting sarcasm and personal opinion into their allegedly objective reports. While it is clearly difficult to remain impartial in such emotional times, they have begun to entertain their audiences with unnecessary, undercutting mantras. Peter Arnett committed the crime and paid for it when he was fired by NBC.
Celebrities entertained us this past week with short-winded speeches and silver squiggle pins signifying peace at the Oscars. Nevertheless, they donned themselves with designer names and lovely locks.
Retreating back to the "real" arts, poetry, as of late, rushes to the scene as the fastest art form to heal. Easy to publish, poetry speaks to many with intense emotion.
While Tony Kushner directed protesting crowds at the United Nations in late January to The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht because "nothing warms you up like a good poem," Thuray El-Kaissi, a young girl from Baghdad, writes a poem of war and blood entitled "Poem: Running 17 March" in her diary, collected by the Iraq Peace Team.
Words provide common ground for the people of all ages and nationalities, uniting them with common ideas. Lenny Kravitz just released "We Want Peace," performed with Iraq's top pop music artist, Kazem Al Sahir, also known as Iraq's Diplomatic Ambassador to the world.
Also featuring Palestinian and Lebanese artists, the song argues "There won't be peace if we don't try."
Similarly, overseas, Heideroosjes, a Dutch group covered "Mr. President, Sleep Well," a hit from back in the 1970s.
The song, an anti-war anthem, broods with lyrics like "Don't think of those 46 killed, that recent mistake with that bombardment. / And forget the fourth of the Ten Commandments, which you as a good Christian must know."
Visual artists, as usual, seems to respond a little more slowly, but we will see it surfacing soon, just as we are now seeing art in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
Questions regarding the arts' role in this situation seem to mushroom into eternity, but as of right now, it seems to all be headed in the same direction - try as I did, I couldn't find any art that supported Bush's "Shock and Awe."