Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One

Fabulous exhibition at Tate Britain looking at how artists in Britain, France and Germany processed the physical and emotional effects of the First World War.

If you follow my blog you know I am a bit of a First World War geek and I’m particularly interested in the after effects on art, literature and culture so this was a dream of a show for me. The show was arranged on the broad themes of Remembrance, traces of war, return to order and imagining post-war society.

As soon as you entered you were thrown into the art of the battlefield leading into work inspired by the ruins and graveyards. It included a run of three pictures from each country using the abandoned helmet as a symbol of the death of a single soldier. These were shown with three real helmets. I loved a stunning Nevinson of Ypres after the first bombardment with cubist roofs at different angles. It was also nice to see trench art included here.
 
There was a super room on war memorials which features the gallery’s own Jagger memorial plaque of a lookout hiding amongst the bodies on a battlefield. There were also German nail sculptures which I’d not come across before where people were encouraged to knock a nail into a structure in return for a donation to the war effort or in memory of someone. I loved the deeply moving “The Parent” by Kathe Kollowitz, a sketch for a sculpture for a graveyard of kneeling mourners. There was also Ernst Barlach’s “The Floating One” which hung in a German cathedral and was melted down by the Nazi’s but recast after the war. It was modelled on Kathe Kollowitz.
 
The next two rooms looked at the war was seen in society focusing on the wounded soldiers seeing them as an alternative memorial. It included the wonderful Tonks watercolours of facial injuries. I hadn’t realised that in France disabled veterans attended the signing of the treaty of Versailles and featured in the victory celebrations. In Germany images of the wounded and traumatised featured in anti-war art by artists’ such as Otto Dix and George Grosz. It also looked at how anti-war felling fed into the ideas of Dada and Surrealism.
 
There was a fascinating room on how artists started to rebuild normality including looking back to the ideas of classical art. There has been a super exhibition on this at Pallant House a few years ago and a lot of the pictures from that were here.  Others returned to religious imagery and it’s always good to see a Stanley Spencer and this was shown with a similar picture by Albert Birkle of “Christ in a Berlin Street”.
 
Finally, sorry this is so long but as I said I loved this show, the last two rooms looked at how artists tried to image a new society. The first looked at people highlighting moral corruption and decadence. Nevison’s “He Gained a Fortune but Gave a Son”, a portrait of a war profiteer, was here plus a Glynn Philpot I’d not seen before of the entrance to a nightclub. The second room looked at new cities and in particular at the work of the Bauhaus founded in 1919. Paintings by Leger and Nevinson used skyscrapers as images of modernity. 

My favourite piece in the show was William Lehmbruck’s “The Fallen Man” which showed paired down figure on its hands and knees which was designed as a war memorial, a very moving figure. Lehmbruck fought in the war and killed himself in 1919. The figure showed the desperation of war.


Closes on 23 September 2018


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