Art in times of war

Between propaganda, protest and pacifism.

There is a war raging in Europe. A fact, which artists have also been grappling with. Since time immemorial, art played a pivotal role in questioning the point of war. Here is a look into art produced during times of war and DW’s coverage of wartime artists.

Text Annabelle Steffes-Halmer and Manasi Gopalakrishnan, DW editors

Bombs explode in the skyline and the droning sounds of fighter jets fill the air. Corpses lie by the wayside as people flee and find shelter underground. Such images have become common on television or on social media since Russia invaded Ukraine, beginning a war on Europe’s doorstep. The Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa seems to have had a premonition of the Russian invasion on his country in 2018 itself. In his film “Donbass” he demonstrates how Russian television used actors to stage a massacre and justify a military takeover.

“Liberal democracies in the West were sleeping when Russia shaped itself anew; as Russians attacked Grozny and Chechnya, then Georgia, then annexed Crimea and marched into the Ukrainian Donbass,” he told Arts 21, DW’s weekly Culture and Lifestyle magazine. “What we are experiencing now, are in a way the consequences of this slumber, the missing reaction of the West,” Loznitsa added.

Graffiti artwork by My Dog Sighs.

The film director is neither a prophet nor a politician, he admits. Through his films, he wants to demonstrate how he sees the world and war. Nevertheless, some scenes of Loznitsa’s film are eerily close to reality.

Indeed, Vladimir Putin and his supporters are aiming to spread false information and propaganda. Targeted spreading of fake news in social media has also led to many Russians in foreign countries believing the Kremlin’s propaganda.

DW is reporting about artists worldwide, who are openly speaking against the Russian invasion and who thematize war in their work.

Artistic rebellion against Putin’s invasion

The UK-based Russian hip-hop artist Oxxxymiron alias Miron Yanowich Fyodoroc, in protest against Putin and his propaganda has canceled his Russia tour. Instead, he is on a “Russians Against War- Tour” in Europe, to educate people about the invasion.

Singer and hip hop artist Oxxxymiron performs in a charity concert titled “I’m Going to Sing My Song”and held at Moscow’s GlavClub Green Concert in November 26, 2018.

“I have many Russian friends and it pains me to see how many people do not grasp what is happening,” he told DW at a concert on April 6 in Berlin. “It is painful. I don’t feel hate, only pain.”

In his home country Russia, Oxxxymiron’s protest show would have been punishable by law. Anyone there who speaks against the war faces up to 15 years of prison. Oxxxymiron was arrested once in January 2021 for protesting against Putin’s regime.

Artists have long been creative against war. The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens created the “Consequences of War” in 1637 as an allegory for the tragedy caused by the Thirty Years War (1618–1648). In Rubens’ painting, “Venus”, the goddess of love tries to pull back Mars, the Roman god of war.

Nearly one and a half centuries later, the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya created his “Disasters of War” series consisting of 82 prints that showed the gruesome crimes perpetrated by Napoleon’s army on the Spanish population.

Never again war

As World War I ripped through Europe between 1914 and 1918, the Colognebased painter Käthe Kollwitz became a vehement pacifist, reminding people of the horrors of violence. In 1918, her poster “Nie wieder Krieg” (Never again war) was printed in the socialist magazine „Vorwärts“ (Onwards). The sketch is one of her most popular creations and was made in the memory of her fallen son.

Kollwitz was the first woman to be accepted in the Prussian Academy of Arts. She spoke up against social injustice and positioned herself clearly against the Nazis. When they took over in Berlin 1933, they forced her to resign and declared her art as “degenerate”.

Kollwitz was not the only artist whose creations were discredited in this manner. According to the Nazis, “degenerate” art consisted of expressionism, impressionism, dadaism, new objectivity, surrealism, cubism and more. Works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Pechstein, Otto Dix or Max Ernst, as well as other artists were banned.

Liberal democracies in the west were sleeping when Russia shaped itself anew.

Artworks were by no means the Nazis sole target. The fascists also organized book burnings in 1933 in Berlin and 21 German cities. Works by Jewish authors or by authors who did not get along with the ideology of the Nazis, were to be destroyed completely. Musicians and their works were also victims of constant defamation by Nazi cultural policies.

Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels were aware of the influence of art. With targeted propaganda they supported artists whose aesthetics played into their hands. The most famous example is filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, whose films like “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia” show sportspersons as heroic supermen and superwomen.

In contrast, the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso shows a completely different image of human beings in his famous anti-war painting, “Guernica”. During the Spanish civil war from 1936 to 1939, the Nazis supported the right-wing Dictator Francisco Franco and bombed the city of Guernica in the Basque region of northern Spain. The massive painting in grey, black and white tones shows the suffering of people after the attack: a mother cries over her dead child, people flee as the bull — the symbol of Spain — watches passively.

“Guernica”, by Pablo Picasso.

“Guernica” is not the only painting in which Picasso criticizes the war. His other works, like “Massacre in Korea” and “The Charnel House” depict the horrors of violence. Unforgotten and world-famous, his doves are a synonym and symbol for peace and freedom globally.

Art as an expression of freedom

Since March this year, a large image of the street artist My Dog Sighs decorates the wall of a house in Cardiff, England. The picture shows a teary eye in the national colors of Ukraine. Within the iris, one sees the silhouette of the St. Andrew’s church in Kyiv with smoke clouds rising on its right side. In a Twitter post showing the image, the artist wrote, “We’ve all sat and watched this hideous situation unfurl and while it’s not much, I wanted to do what I know best, (throwing paint) to highlight my sadness and anger over the Ukrainian invasion by Russia. I stand with you, Ukraine.“

All over Europe, street artists are expressing their solidarity in this manner. The DW program Euromaxx has an entire Facebook series dedicated to these artists. The artists capture the public space and leave clear messages.

A good example are the images of protest left by graffiti artists during the Arab spring of 2011, when Egyptians protested against the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

“With the outbreak of the revolution there was a gap between what was happening on the street and what was being expressed and reported in the media, especially early on,” Street artist Ganzeer told DW Culture in an interview. Thus, he felt “compelled” to create street art and close this gap, he added.

Not only painters, but other cultural figures as well have expressed themselves on war-related issues. The Syrian musician Aeham Ahmad, for example, became world-famous as the pianist who played among the ruins of Yarmouk.

Solidarity for Ukraine

Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv celebrated its annual music festival at the beginning of April this year, amid massive destruction and intermittent bombing by Russian forces.

People came together in subway stations and listened to the consoling sounds of music. Vitali Alekseenok, the festival’s artistic director, has been living in Germany for the last 10 years and leads the Abaco orchestra at the University of Munich. Alekseenok is actively helping refugees and organizing projects for escaped artists from the Ukraine and Belarus in the Trinity Church in Bonn. He also helped Ukraine’s greatest living composer, Valentyn Silvestrov to escape to Berlin.

“Love Beyond Borders” by Grande Flagello

In an interview with DW’s television magazine Arts 21, Alekseenok said he picked up the composer from the border. “He was very, very tired, but he held up. He is 84 years old. And he is still composing music. He also continued to do so during his escape,” Alekseenok said. “And when we reached Berlin, he played the tune for us immediately. That was really touching.” As soon as he reached the German capital, Valentn Silvestrov began preparing for a charity concert in for people in his home country where the war rages on. While Russia’s Vladimir Putin desperately tries to justify the invasion of Ukraine by suggesting, the country never existed and claiming it was part of Russia and does not have its own culture.

“The world is so loud and is guided by the idea of growing ever more monumental,” he told DW. “This monumentalism is unbearable. And one wants to go back to the quiet, softly, softly. One has the strange feeling that one is weary of the monumental.” The freedom struggle of artists like Silvestrov reveal Putin’s clumsy lies. Meanwhile, many artists are showing how lively and important Ukrainian art and culture is, especially in times of war.