John Singer Sargent, 'Gassed', 1918

                     
                                              John Singer Sargent, 'Gassed', March 1918


                                                                       THE ARTIST


     John Singer Sargent was an American portrait painter born in 1856. He was considered by many to be the "leading portrait artist of his generation" and achieved international acclaim
for his technical abilities as well as his mastery of oil, watercolor, charcoal and various other mediums.

     While being an American, Sargent  was born in Florence, Italy, during a visit there by Sargent's parents. Sargent's parents were travellers, using Paris as a home base of sorts, but constantly moving to different locations all over Europe. From a young age, Sargent's parents took young John to museums, churches and other public places to educate the young boy in the ways of culture and society in addition to educating him themselves. This proved an influential experience for young John,  who grew up to be a cosmopolitan and intelligent youth despite his lack of formal education.

     in 1874, Sargent entered the Ecole de Beaux Arts, the premier art school in France at the time. here he soon became a star student and won the attention and accolades of his instructors and peers alike. soon after finishing school he was showing his works in the Paris Salon, receiving commissions, and enjoying the experience of being one of the most respected and successful modern portrait artists. This period of Sargent's life was not without controversy, however. His 1884 work titled, 'Portrait of Madame X'  was met with critical scorn by many in the Paris art world, mainly due to the fact that the subject was considered to be somewhat risque and revealing for the time.  

                                   
                                       Sargent in his Paris studio with 'Portrait of Madame X'


      It was after the Madame X controversy that Sargent decided to move to London, England and continue his work there. Some historians postulate that this was because of the negative reaction to the painting by the Parisian art elite, whom eventually came around and recognized the work as a masterpiece, but not until after Sargent had left for England. Here he continued to work as a commissioned portrait artist over the next several decades. Sargent made a comfortable living, travelling sporadically to various global locations which served him well for inspiration while also making landscape paintings, but always considered London as his home. 


    Upon returning home to London after a visit to the United States in 1918, the British Ministry of Information commissioned Sargent to create a painting that would be shown in the planned Hall of Remembrance. Sargent was to create a work that depicted the epic-ness of the  struggle of the Great War, as well as showing Anglo-American co-operation during the war (Sargent was commissioned partially due to the fact that he was an American).


                                                                    THE WORK


    The resulting work, entitled 'Gassed', was the result of a journey to the Western Front in 1918. Sargent arrived with his associate Henry Tonks to a site near the town of Arras, in which a large offensive had taken place just prior to their arrival. The resultant scene was to affect Sargent profoundly, who described what he saw as 'A harrowing sight'. The Allied lines at Arras had been bombarded by German artillery, with large numbers of shells containing Mustard gas. This weapon was highly feared by both sides of the conflict as being particularly terrifying. The gas caused large, uncomfortable blisters, severe burns to the eyes, lungs and throat, damage to the mucous membranes, and vomiting. Death could occur a few days after exposure, but sometimes victims suffered for weeks before finally expiring. Sargent was privy to a medical assembly area to the rear of the combat line in which scores of men were collected and were led away to be treated. 


     The painting, which measures 7.5 feet tall by 20 feet long, is impressive in its scale alone; the figures depicted are almost life size. In the foreground, a line of several blindfolded soldiers, all walking in single file while holding onto one another, pick their way through scores of other men in similar dress and bandaging who are laying on the ground. they are led by a medical orderly.
a bit further back, another line of soldiers in a similar situation are seen approaching the viewer. off in the distance, the golden sky is filled with biplanes engaged in a distant dogfight, while amongst the legs of the walking wounded one can see healthy men playing football far from this scene of misery and pain. The entire painting is bathed in a golden glow of wonderful afternoon light, a stark contrast to the horrible scene it illuminates. 


                                               MY REACTION TO THE WORK:


     I feel as though this painting does justice to the men who were forced to suffer untold hardships during the Great War. In a way it beautifies the subject due to the use of color and tone, but all that does is draw the viewer in and the gravity of the situation sinks in after a few seconds of looking at the piece. This particular work allows us to remember a specific moment that was in all probability repeated throughout the entire European conflict of 1914-1918 but rarely captured in such an arresting manner. It does so in a way that allows us to be transported to the scene, where the aftermath of modern mechanized warfare is just as horrible as the battle itself. these men carried the scars of battle with them in their minds as well as on their bodies, and many did not fully recover. Sargent's painting provides us with a reminder of what these men went through, and that many of them suffered with a stoicism that was depicted so well in his painting. This painting depicts these men as victims, but also immortalizes them with an air of honor in a way that no commendation or medal could surpass.


                                                           WORKS CITED:


Harris, James C. MD (January 2005). "Gassed". Art and Images in Psychiatry 62 (1): 15–18. print. 


Willsdon, Clare A. P. (2000). Mural painting in Britain 1840–1940: image and meaning (2000 ed.). Oxford University Press. print.


Chenoweth, H. Avery. The Art of War: Eyewitness U.S. Combat Art from the Revolution through the Twentieth Century. New York: Freidman/Fairfax, 2002. Print.





     

John Woodin, Snowball stand, 2622 Flood Street, 2004, and near Florida Avenue, 2005, 2008.

THE ARTIST: JOHN WOODIN

     John Woodin is a contemporary photographer who was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1961. He spent his childhood and early adulthood in New Orleans, attending the University of New Orleans where he received his Bachelor's degree in Communications. he left the south to pursue his M.F.A. in Photography at Tyler School of Art at Temple University. He has been a Philadelphia resident ever since, and has taught photography at the University of the Arts since the year 1990. 

     

It was in 2004 that Woodin realized that the fine art photography work he was creating was inseparably tied to his formative experiences growing up in New Orleans. A desire to recapture memories that were fading from his mind of his childhood environment led him to return to New Orleans in to begin a formal study of the city's unique architecture. Eschewing a stylized representation and romanticization of his subjects, Woodin instead chose to portray the structures of his old haunts in an objective manner. Focusing on the details of the environments and creating a realistic and detached portrayal of his subjects, Woodin revealed a mix of architectural order among the social chaos that spoke volumes about the unique character of the City of New Orleans. Avoiding the traditional Bourbon Street locales so frequently associated with the city, Woodin instead documented the poorer areas, which reveal subtle hints to the real personality of the city as opposed to more popular areas. many of the structures can be considered archetypically 'Southern', and even further, archetypically 'New Orlean' in terms of their physical qualities. 

     It was an unexpected turn of events when Hurricane Karina barreled into the Gulf Coast region in August of 2005. The destruction wrought by the storm was on a scale previously unimagined by the people of the United States. The sheer amount of damage, loss of life, widespread displacement of the surviving residents, as well as the federal government's slow response to the calamity polarized the nation as well as the Delta region, and the whole country was sent reeling in its wake. The face of New Orleans was radically altered, physically and psychologically, and remains so to this day.

     Woodin was among the first in a series of photographers allowed back into the city after the search and recovery efforts were abandoned. He reentered the city not as a photographer, but as a resident, intent on salvaging what was left of his childhood home with his family. It was after this heart-wrenching experience that Woodin decided to return to the locations that he had documented a year before, and re-photograph them to show the effects that the devastating hurricane had brought to them. Woodin then collected the newly-created diptychs into a monograph titled 'City of Memory' which was published by The Center for American Places in 2010.

THE WORK: 'SNOWBALL STAND, 2622 FLOOD STREET 2004, AND NEAR FLORIDA AVENUE, 2005, 2008'

     These particular photographs are unique as they are a triptych rather than a diptych, and represent Woodin's evolving vision for this body of work perfectly. taken over the course of 4 years, they work independently as masterful photographs in their own right, but when brought into conjunction with one another, they speak volumes about the events that they were witness to as well as how we attach memories to specific locations at specific times.

     in the first photograph, Woodin's intention was to document a specific structure that perhaps has a nostalgic and regionally specific relevance to him, and to the greater character of New Orleans architecture. There is attention paid to the fact that this structure is somewhat dilapidated, a common theme in his pre-Katrina photographs. This is an attempt to convey the social and economic state of the city, and sheds light on the plight of the economically depressed communities that many would choose to otherwise ignore. it is also a portrait of a uniquely charming structure, innocent and playful in its association with childhood and humid afternoons spent eating snowcones. the photograph is ripe with wistfulness and fading nostalgia (its emptiness, the peeling paint, etc.) , yet retains a decidedly adult detachment in the way the subject was documented. 

     

     The second photograph from 2005 reveals a shocking turn of events that Woodin could have never envisioned. Here is the same structure, having suffered the terrible caprices of Hurricane Katrina, shot in exactly the same manner, but one can deduce that the floodwaters had picked the small structure up and deposited it far from its original location.  one of Hurricane Katrina's effects was to irrevocably alter the landscape that was so familiar to thousands of residents of New Orleans, creating a twisted parody of its previous incarnation. Woodin reacted to this photographically by retaining the same focal lengths and camera angles, which had the effect of emphasizing the changes wrought by the storm. some are subtle, like the fact that the structure itself seems to have escaped relatively unscathed, yet its location is radically different. Additionally, whereas Woodin's previous memory of the snowball stand was linked to its original location, Katrina has created a new memory for Woodin by relocating the snowball stand in a new place. This new memory will always be inextricably linked to Katrina. 

     

     The third photograph illustrates the effects of time and age on the structure itself. In the photograph shot in 2008, the stand is deteriorating in its new location. Perhaps this is the effect of the structure standing in water for several years. Woodin illustrates here the passage of time, and the neglect of the structure. One may wonder that if the stand had not ended up where it did, or had not moved at all, would it possibly have been saved from its current fate? were there others who had the same nostalgic attachment for the stand that Woodin did? In any event, this photograph represents yet a new memory, the most recent of a series of memories that can be re-lived in the physical world by viewing these photographs.

MY REACTION TO THE WORK:

     I had spent time in both Louisiana and Mississippi when I was in the Navy, first in 2003 for the greater part of a year, then briefly again in 2006. I enjoyed my stay in Biloxi, where I was training to be a meteorologist. I found the character of the area to contain a subtlety that I hadn't found in other places, and was quite charmed by it after a while. In 2006 I specifically returned to the area to visit a friend I had made in Mississippi, and was taken to New Orleans to see what had happened to these areas after Katrina. In a way, my experience mirrored Woodin's in that what I saw when I returned was at once familiar but forever altered by the effects of the hurricane. It was a singularly strange and surreal experience, even though I only spent a few months in the area. Woodin's experience was many times more intense, as would mine be if my hometown was devastated by a major natural disaster. Woodin's style of photography is one that I would enjoy even if the subject matter was not so immediately compelling to me, but the fact that I had spent time in this part of the country during these times makes them special to me as well. Woodin did what I wanted to do, but did not have the opportunity to do so, and did it in a manner that only someone with close, long-term familial and emotional ties to the area could have done properly. this body of work, and these photographs in particular hold memories for me, for they remind me of the feelings I had while wandering around in Biloxi, Waveland and in New Orleans when I was there. it will be interesting to see if Woodin continues to document these locations in the future, and if he does, I will be very interested to see the further evolution of the 'City of Memory' series. 

WORKS CITED:

Woodin, John, and Craig E. Colten. City of Memory: New Orleans before and after Katrina. Chicago: Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago, 2010. Print. 

"City of Memory." Columbia College Chicago :. Web. 03 May 2012. <http://www.colum.edu/CCCPress/books/city-of-memory.php>.