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The artists of war

If the role of a journalist is to paint a complete picture of war, then the role of a war artist is to paint just a small sliver of it.

That’s the goal of the handful of artists serving in the U.S. military whose job is to “go to war and do art” of what they witness in battle.

Four of those artists are featured in a new exhibit, “Afghanistan and Iraq: Combat Art,” on view at the Navy Art Museum in Washington, D.C., through the end of February.

The collective works showcase a range of experiences and emotions in the war zones and provide a record for future generations.

“The quote I like is, ‘Photography is like prose, and art is like poetry,’ ” says Chief Warrant Officer 2 Michael D. Fay, one of only two combat artists in the Marine Corps. His works are part of the show.

While journalism attempts to tell it all one story at a time, Fay says, a painting portrays a more visceral narrative so that, when viewed as a collection, a clearer story emerges.

“They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but there’s also something ineffable [about art]. You really can’t put it into words,” Fay says. “That’s why imagery exists. If you just had journalists writing about it, then why have photographs? Or if you have journalists writing about it and you have photographers, why have artists? Why have musicians?”

“I want to tell the story of what our people are doing,” says Morgan Ian Wilbur, a self-trained artist and former sailor who has traveled to war zones three times to create dramatic, photorealistic oil paintings. “I kind of look at it as a way to tell their story.”

Wilbur is one of two Navy combat artists.

One of the show’s more striking examples of the combat art genre is Wilbur’s “Three on the Knee,” an oil on canvas of medical personnel operating on a wounded soldier. From afar, the painting is hard to distinguish from a photograph.

Equally captivating are small line drawings, usually done on the battlefield from direct observation, that show slices of military life: a 1st Recon Marine with an IV in his arm; the inside of a Humvee on patrol; a corporal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who lost his legs.

People unfamiliar with military culture often are surprised to learn that combat artists are being employed at all, Fay says, and that, of all the branches, the Marine Corps would place such emphasis on fine art.

“But in point of fact, the Marine Corps is about excellence,” Fay says. “We want to be the best shots, drill the best, have the best in military music.”

Sgt. Kristopher J. Battles, a Marine and another artist exhibiting in the show, is a classical realist who paints landscapes and portraits.

“It’s not shocking to us that the Marine Corps and the military in general draws some of the better of the culture, the cream of the crop,” Battles says. “But it is surprising to some people.”

History

Combat art is as old as combat itself. Images of battle date back to the Ice Age, when cave paintings showed human figures with spears stuck in their sides. Much of what we know about the battles of ancient times comes from this art.

Every society that has gone to war has employed the skill of an artist to record or memorialize the experience. As a soldier in the Revolutionary War, John Trumbull painted the surrender of Lord Cornwallis in 1787. During the Civil War, Winslow Homer sketched battle scenes for Harper’s Weekly.

In most cases, war art is created by those who witnessed history firsthand. The Army enlisted eight artists at the outset of World War I to create a record of what they saw, starting what became the Army’s combat art program.

“War and tales of war basically shape storytelling, which is the passage of culture,” Fay says. “We’re part of that ongoing cycle of culture. We’re going out and we’re observing war, and we’re creating an artifact from that.”

There are two ways to join the ranks of combat artists. The first is to be commissioned or contracted to travel to a war zone to create art.

The other is to submit an original work based on personal experience. If it’s acquired by a museum, the creator “is now and forever a combat artist,” Fay says.

Today, the military’s art collections comprise thousands of works and include important paintings in America’s history, such as Paul Cadmus’ “The Fleet’s In,” depicting a rollicking scene of sailors, civilians and one infamous cross-dresser that led to public outcry and its ultimate removal from exhibition lest the Navy be cast in a poor light. (It’s now in the collection of the Navy Art Museum.)

Insiders

Unlike an outsider who shows up at camp with a sketchpad, most combat artists are in uniform — or were very recently — so they speak their subjects’ language.

“They want to feel we’re an asset and not a liability,” Battles says.

“Part of our challenge in integrating with a unit is that, although they are accounting for us, they’re also counting on us,” Fay said. “When the proverbial you-know-what hits the fan, they don’t want to be looking for us as the artist sitting there off in an artistic reverie, and [they want to know], can he shoot?”

Combat artists usually gain their subjects’ respect quickly.

“At first they may look at us like, ‘Uh-oh, we’ve got to take care of this person,’ ” Battles says.

“When we’re out with the young lieutenants or the corporals on patrol or living in a [forward operating base], we’re not chaplains, but we’ve been told that we bring something like that,” Fay says. And sketching their subjects can be “a morale builder.”

Legacy

“The unique thing about combat artists is that we start with the most brutal and rawest material there is: people and places in a time of war,” Fay says. “We translate being out there danger-close, being out there in 120-plus degrees, having on 80 pounds of gear, feeling as nasty and skanky as the next guy — having the full experience.”

That translation becomes a record of a place and time that will serve as an artifact.

It also can provide closure.

Fay’s magnum opus is a drawing of tousle-haired Lance Cpl. Nicholas G. Ciccone, whose 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, had stumbled into the bombed-out Kandahar International Airport after a nine-day battle with the Taliban in January 2002. His face is worn, and his steely gaze is drawn downward. “His gear is off, but the weight’s still there,” Fay wrote on his blog, Fire and Ice.

Several years later, through e-mails from family members who discovered the portrait of Ciccone online, Fay learned that the 23-year-old had taken his own life.

“The common thread through all their heartfelt messages is a healing sense that they’ve regained a piece of Nick they thought they’d never reclaim,” Fay wrote.

“We are fine artists,” Battles says. “One of the legacies that we want is that people see it as art and that it will be enjoyable to look at even though the subject isn’t always necessarily enjoyable, or it’s not necessarily pretty.

“So it’s enjoyable as art, but it’s also informative as history,” he says. “So that they will say, ‘Oh, that’s what the Marine Corps was like in the early 2000s.’ ”

In another blog entry, Fay wrote that some of the young men he has painted have died and can no longer speak for themselves, but “I knew them. I was there, but the bullets and grenade fragments that killed them passed me by.

“I will speak for them,” he wrote. “They would want me to.”

If You Go

• “Afghanistan and Iraq: Combat Art from the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps Combat Art Programs” runs through the end of February 2009 at the Navy Art Museum in the Navy Shipyard in Washington, D.C.

• Visit www.history.navy.mil/branches/nhcorg6.htm.

• Call (202) 433-3815 for more info.

Find out more

To find out more about the artists in the show, visit their personal Web sites at:

• Monica Allen Perin: www.monicawatercolors.com

• CWO2 Michael D. Fay: http://mdfay1.blogspot.com/

• Sgt. Kristopher J. Battles: http://kjbattles.blogspot.com/

Web exclusive

Video of some the work on display at the Navy Art Museum show: “Go to war, do art”

More online

• Artist Richard Johnson traveled to Afghanistan to document the work of Canadian troops.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/kandaharjournal/default.aspx

• The PBS documentary “They Drew Fire” tells the story of war artists during World War II.

http://www.pbs.org/theydrewfire/index.html

• The National Museum of the Marine Corps houses a large collection of combat artwork.

http://www.usmcmuseum.com/exhibits_CombatArt.asp

• NPR interview with Steve Mumford, an independent artist who embedded with troops in Iraq.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4854668

• From Goya to Sargent, a list of well-known combat artists through history on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_artist

• The Waterhouse Museum features the work of World War II artist Charles Waterhouse.

http://www.waterhousemuseum.com/

• A gallery of past Army artists on the Web site of the Center of Military History.

http://www.history.army.mil/art/A&I/artwork.htm