How to explain

I have completed my Summer assignment at the Canadian War Museum as Interpreter guide for the painting exhibit ''Transformations'' paintings of the Canadian A.Y.Jackson and German Realist Painter Otto Dix. Two interesting men and certainly famous painters though in the final analysis I find Otto Dix far more interesting as a painter than Jackson who was essentially a landscape artist.

In the course of the tour of the exhibit I presented the basic differences between the two men, they were in fact very different men not only by temperament but also in their up-bringing and in the life they led.

Otto Dix (1891-1969)

With Otto Dix comes the various art movements he worked in and associated with, Futurism, Cubism, Dadaist movement, Realism, etc... Dix modelled his life on the Philosoply of Friedrich Nietzsche who is seen as the philosopher whose theories influenced much of the XXth Century and the way we live. He was the main proponent of Existentialism. Now the problem for me was to try to explain very briefly Nietzsche as an influence in the life of Dix and his paintings. How do you do this with a public who has very minimal knowledge of painting, who has never heard of this painter and who does not know who Nietzsche is. The easy way out would have been to skip it all together but the explaining notes alluded to it, so you need to maybe give some context to it all.

The other problem is that the Second World War is a very large elephant in our collective memory and unfortunately our view of that war and the events surrounding it is very distorted and has been simplified into a lot of nonsense. So here I am trying to explain that the painters Jackson and Dix saw action during the First World War (1914-1918) which has no relation to events between 1933-1945 and their world was transformed by the Great War and no I am not talking of Nazis and Jews.

In fact one of the questions that came back constantly was at the very beginning of the tour when people would ask, So what did Dix do during the Nazi era? Was he a Jew? Did he leave Germany? How come he survived did he collaborate with the Nazis? I constantly had to remind my dear public that first Dix was born near Dresden in Germany in 1891 and we are looking first at the paintings of his early life and his war experience during the period 1914-18 as a very young man.  In most cases I could clearly see that my public was lost or at least disappointed, they could not pigeon hole Dix into the bad German or bad Nazi mode. It has been 100 years and that is a very long time ago for most people.

One person insisted that he had to be an evil man because he did not get on the soap box to denounce Hitler in 1914 and leave Germany pronto.  Never mind the fact that Hitler an Austrian, was not a political figure in 1914 and was just an anonymous conscript like millions of others. I did say that Otto Dix had a difficult character, was a social climber and became famous and infamous because of his high jinks in the art world in Germany.

On the other hand A.Y.Jackson was seen as the good guy simply because his name is recognisable with the Canadian Group of 7 Painters. Beyond that most people did not know a Jackson from a Renoir. Most cannot identify a Group of 7 painting from any other landscape painting. If truth be told only the most famous paintings, those that are endlessly reproduced are known by sight. The Group of 7 contrary to popular mythology was also short lived, they were active only between 1919 and 1932. Some members of the public thought that they were still painting as a group in the 1970's when in fact most of them were long dead. The Group disbanded because the Art critics got tired of their landscapes.

Many women were asking about another Canadian Painter Emily Carr who did not figure in the exhibit since she did not take part in the Great War, was not a Canadian War Artist and the exhibit was not about her to begin with, for some reason I always got the impression that my female public was disappointed she had not been included as if this was another ''equity issue'' we are so fond of here in Canada.

The automatic association the viewing public made with the Group of 7 and A.Y.Jackson was also maddening. It was as if they believed that from birth Jackson was in the Group of 7 as a painter. However almost no one could name another painter in that group, it seems that when it comes to Canadian painting if you do not mention the Group of 7 there is no Canadian painting period.
A rather sad commentary on general knowledge of Canadian Art and artists.

So there I am back in the early years part of the exhibit trying to give a concise explanation about Nietzschean philosophy. I would usually say this: Nietzsche rejected Traditional Christian values, he argued that the ideal human the Übermensch would  be able to channel his passions creatively instead of suppressing them.  He also reasoned that Christianity's emphasis on the afterlife makes its believers less able to deal with earthly life.  Dix certainly followed Nietzsche in his life and in the way he perceived himself in the art world.

In some cases, not all, depending on my audience, I would also explain the fascination Dix had with violence and sexual violence done to women, the case of Jack the ripper was fresh in European minds at the time and the recurring theme in his early works of the idea of regeneration, that the earth is associated with motherhood and fecundity, that trenches were men hid and fought from was similar to a woman's genitalia. This was presented in the notes and I heard more than one visitor scoff at the program notes as inventions by the Curator. In fact the Curator, a knowledgeable expert, was paraphrasing Dix himself who explained why he painted as he did.

In one of Dix's war paintings he paints red poppies on top of the trench, as an erotic flowers and not a flower of remembrance as we in Canada think of them. Certainly between 1919-1933 which was Dix's most prolific period he was in open revolt against the German War profiteers and German Bourgeois society denouncing its hypocrisy in the face of social upheaval and economic uncertainty. Dix late in his life said: I paint for the man in the street, I hope he likes what I do but I do not know.

Many of the visitors at the exhibition preferred Jackson who is much easier to assimilate and whose paintings did not challenge pre-conceived ideas of war and sacrifice. In this sense even British painter Paul Nash who hated the war and those in charge of it, is far darker and Nihilistic than Jackson who simply refused to show in his war art the horror of the battlefield, unlike other Canadian artists like Arthur Lismer and Frederick Varley. No Jackson was not the controversial one, in fact after the Group of 7 disbands in 1932, he will transform himself into the teacher, writer and government propagandist, his paintings will be reproduced into thousands of copies plastered in every waiting room of the nation, he will sit on Government Commissions choosing soldiers who will paint specifically requested scenes of the Second World War (1939-1945).

If during the First World War the Canadian Government of Sir Robert Borden did not care for an archive of Canadian War Art, Canadians can say a large thank you to Max Aitken Lord Beaverbrook for giving us one,  during the second world conflict the situation was very different now propaganda or Art at the Service of War was a powerful tool and continues to this day. In the latest conflict, the longest in Canadian history the 12 year Afghanistan war in which we were involved, the Harper Regime rather clumsily tried to tell the artists what to paint.

Jackson will continue to sit on various government commissions, one will be the Commission on the New Canadian Flag of 1965.  In his final years he will paint at the McMichael studio in Kleinburg Ontario North of Toronto, nothing too challenging for the eyes just more of the same.

After 1945 for both Dix and Jackson it was clearly the case of Fame stifling Genius, they were famous but no one cared much for their painting style. Grand old men of an era most people wanted to forget and today we have forgotten about the war,  but Dix is still present and his paintings are questions for us to answer in this very troubled world we live in. To me he is still fresh and relevant.

In the late 1920's Dix was interviewed and he explained that as a soldier he wanted to feel what it was like to fear death when it is in front of you on the battlefield and the lust he felt in plunging his bayonet into another man in battle. Though this statement is shocking Dix is nonetheless brutally honest, he became infamous for his brutal honesty. Whereas Jackson would say to friends that he did not want to show the horror of war in his paintings, he preferred leaving it to the viewer to figure out what they were looking at, to me his so called reserve is dishonest, very middle-class and so Canadian, don't rock the boat approach.


Art exist so that we will not die from the Truth!  F. Nietzsche.

Transformations 1914-2014

I started a few weeks ago to work at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, Capitale, as an interpreter for the exhibit of paintings of the Canadian War Memorial Fund of Max Aitken Lord Beaverbrook.

Lord Beaverbrook who was the first Press Baron in London was immensely wealthy, a Canadian from New Brunswick, he moved to London and was elected to Parliament and became a Minister in the British Government. Canadians could do that then, since we were British Subjects and part of the Empire.

When the Great War started in August 1914, Canada was automatically at war and 10% of our population went to war some 650,000 men. We also produced the ammunition for Britain and for ourselves and supplied Britain with millions of tons of food to avoid famine in the British Isles.

Canadian Soldier called a Tommy, on his shoulder a red patch and a blue half moon, insignia indicating he was a Canadian Army soldier 14th Battalion, also on his sleeve a yellow bar indicating he was wounded in action. This poster was designed by Gunner Ross Wiggs of Montreal. In 1969 Wiggs described this cartoon as the humorous side of the Great War.


This enormous Canadian contribution needed to be remembered and so Lord Beaverbrook took it upon himself to set up a group of 116 artists who would be on the battlefields of the Western Front (Belgium-French border) to document the Canadian soldiers at war. Some 400 paintings were produced and they are now today at the National Gallery of Canada and at the Canadian War Museum. It is worth noting that the Government of Sir Robert Borden was not at all interested in documenting what Canadians were doing in Europe.

My job is to help visitors to the exhibit understand what they are looking at, explain who the painters were and how they got involved with the program, I also have to explain the different schools of painting and the evolution painters went through as part of their experience of the horrors of the Front. Something difficult for us to understand one hundred years later.

One exhibit (the other is called Witness, I will write about it later) Transformations features two artists of very different character and origins, one is Alexander Young Jackson better known as AY Jackson of the Group of Seven Fame, the other is the famous German Artist of the XXth Century Otto Dix. The two men were very different, Jackson was from Montreal and spent his life painting, at first he went to Europe, France and Italy to study the European style of painting and many of his landscapes were then in the Impressionist style favoured by Claude Monet.

Otto Dix was from Gera a small town near Dresden in Saxony. Born in a poor worker family, Dix loved the countryside and was troubled by the rapid changes brought upon by industrialisation. He was fascinated by the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, he was also influenced by modern artist like Klimt, Van Gogh. By 1913 he was following the Futurist and Expressionist movements in painting, Ludwig Meidner with his dramatic apocalyptic paintings was a source of inspiration.

Of the two painters I find Dix far more complex than Jackson. There is a certain maturity in his paintings and his thinking totally lacking in Jackson who was painting, charming pictures to use his own words on his work of the period between 1882-1914.

Dix sought to depict the transformation of society through the violence done to the Earth and the countryside around him and equated this to the violence done to women. Mother Earth, women, regeneration, life death cycle is present in his paintings and sketches. Did Otto Dix oppose the war or the motives of going to war, that is not clear, he did say that he joined the German Army to experience death at a close range. Dix at age 22 was put in charge of a machine gun which at the time was a brand new weapon and could with its spray of bullets kill hundreds of men in a few minutes.

From 1914 onwards we see how his battlefield experience has affected-transformed him. He wants to believe in regeneration of life. Whereas Jackson who joined the Canadian Army will fight on the Front but is injured in 1915 convalescing in London he meets with Lord Beaverbrook who offers him the opportunity of returning to the Front not as a soldier but as an artist. Jackson will also meet with Paul Nash and will change gradually his style of painting to a more Surrealist and Symbolist Style leaving behind the earlier Impressionist style he followed. However Jackson made clear that he would not paint like Lismer or Varley depicting the horrors of war. He preferred to do landscapes trying to convey a message of desolation and emptiness created by the bombardment and battles.

Jackson presents a reflection on violence and on societies at war with each other, a more subtle approach to how he viewed the Great War. The landscapes shows trees like a chorus of Greek mourners, there is something terribly disturbing about the skeletons of trees where you should see green fields covered in flowers with great leafy trees, you see emptiness thus accurately portraying the violence of this first industrial war. In a sense I prefer the work of Canadian artist Frederick Varley 1881-1969 or Arthur Lismer 1885-1969 who have no such reticence to show things as they were and ask through their paintings direct often aggressive questions of the viewer. They also reflect as the years wore on the anger in Canada of Canadians who by 1918 wanted to know what this war was all about. Canada had 66,000 war dead and 175,000 gravely wounded, a very high social cost for a country with a population of only 7 million people at the time. In fact Canada had more war dead than the USA who joined the war in early 1918.

After the war both Jackson and Dix return home. AY Jackson is now an established artists and will help create the Group of Seven which will be active in Canada from 1919 to 1935, the McMichael Collection in Kleinburg north of Toronto is the repository of their collective work. In this sense Canada owes Lord Beaverbrook an immense debt, because of his idea to finance and promote Canadian artists, he helped Canadian painters and other artists to come of age and gain valuable experience which propelled forward Canadian art scene.

Dix not so lucky returns to a broken country, the German Empire has collapsed, the Kaiser left for exile in Holland, the economy is gripped by hipper inflation, millions of veterans are without money or work, many are horribly disfigured and maimed. On the German Art scene a new movement DaDaist or painting of the absurd is all the rage, Germans are searching for a way out in a climate of near Civil War. This is where the National Socialist Ideology will take root gradually, promising work, a stable economy, industrial development and to make Germany a great country again. The promise of work and social reform is seductive and crafted carefully by Hitler and the men around him. He promises the reform of Socialism without the excesses of Communism now all too apparent in Russia. Dix like many German artists will resist the Siren call of the Nazi Party. He becomes a professor at the Art Academy of Dresden a post he will occupy until 1933. As he becomes more and more famous he is setting himself up as a known opponent of Nazism and the ideology which sought to impose on German society one artistic style and one school of thought on Culture, Education, etc.

Otto Dix, Shell burst in battle,  

Things are not much better in Canada in 1919, socialist causes and Trade Unions are now everywhere, there is lack of work and inflation. Veterans are often left to fend for themselves or families are asked to care for them. The Borden Government is unable to answer the social demands  to rapidly changing country, also transformed by the Great War. The great Winnipeg General Strike will happen in May 1919. The Government of Sir Robert Borden panics fearing Bolchevism and orders the RCMP to shoot on the strikers. Canadians are asking what was this war all about and general dissatisfaction grips the Country. Borden a man of another age is completely overwhelmed by this new Canada, the old order he knew of the ruling class who dominated national discourse was gone.

The great Canadian War Memorial collection of Lord Beaverbrook is a burden for the Borden government who does not know what to do with 400 paintings depicting Canadians at war. Borden does not like them and tells his wife in a letter. They are put in the care of the National Gallery in a storage facility where they will remain for 90 years. The Museum to house them will never be built despite Lord Beaverbrook providing plans and drawings.

Despite this important artistic legacy Canadians will not know about their experience and officially we are told of the British, French and American contribution as if ours was not that important. Transformations the exhibit wants to set the tone and correct perceptions so that the Canadian public can see what our ancestors did and how the Great War forever changed Canada from a social point of view from rural to urban, women by the thousands joining the workforce giving them a new role and a new voice politically with the introduction of the vote in 1917 and for Canada political independence as a country.

This citation from Paul Nash who influenced the work of AY Jackson is appropriate for the Exhibit Transformations.
He wrote in a letter to his wife in November 1917; I am no longer an artist interested and curious, I am a messenger who will bring back word from the men who are fighting to those who want the war to go on for ever. Feeble, inarticulate, will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth, and may it burn their lousy souls.

A.Y. Jackson,  A Copse, evening 1918.  Beaverbrook Canadian War Art Collection.