![\"Charcoal](\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/Waiting-for-the-Train-on-the-Anhalter-Bahnhof-Berlin-December-1945Mary-Kessell.jpg\")
<\/a>Waiting for the Train on the Anhalter Bahnhof, Berlin, December 1945 - Mary Kessell<\/p><\/div>\n
Just to get one thing out of the way before I get stuck in: women artists
are not an invention of the 20th<\/sup> Century, they have been around for a very long time indeed.
Just because you may never have heard of them doesn\u2019t mean they
don\u2019t exist or they weren\u2019t producing accomplished, arresting
and intelligent works alongside male artists. But there are reasons you
have never heard of them.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Let\u2019s get another old chestnut out of the way: there\u2019s no
feminine unity of theme, approach, subject or style in art produced by
women, just as there\u2019s no equivalent in the work of men. However
in small collections of art by any group you can sometimes see common
patterns based on the conditions of production.\u00a0 For example very
few of the works in Women War Artists directly depict combat. This is
not womanly squeamishness, they weren\u2019t allowed on the field.
Similarly there aren\u2019t many images of chisel-jawed tommies
striding forth in a blaze of noble violence, because the government
paid their official (and male) war artists to produce most of the top
propaganda. Female artists were drafted in for specific jobs, for
example Laura Knight\u2019s famous, glamorous portrait of Ruby
Loftus<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Britain has such a wealth of art documenting the experience of war
not only because it was diligently collected by post-war art
committees (including the Imperial War Museum Women\u2019s Work
Sub-Committee, created in 1918) but also because the government
commissioned artists to record the war. The first official war
artists scheme was set up in 1916, to create propaganda and to
commemorate the national war effort. 51 artists were commissioned,
47 men and four women, and of these four, three had their work
rejected and one did not take up the commission. But while there was
no “official” female representation, women artists
recorded the impact of the war on civilians, what they saw in the
factories and military hospitals, as nurses, drivers and auxiliary
staff close to the frontline.<\/p>\n
In the Second World War over 400 artists were commissioned, of whom
52 were women. Only two were given overseas commissions and only one
\u2013 Evelyn
Dunbar<\/a> – was given a salary. But again a rich body of
\u2018unofficial\u2019 work by women emerged during and after the
war, and this forms the bulk of the Women War Artists exhibition,
documenting everything from queues at the fishmongers (fish was
popular because it wasn\u2019t rationed) to shipyards and weapons
factories, bombed out streets and army camps and hospitals.<\/p>\n
To my mind the most powerful work in the exhibition, and in fact
one of my favourite paintings full stop (because I think it\u2019s
brilliant, not because I particularly want to look at it) is
Human Laundry<\/em> by Doris Zinkeisen. Commissioned by the
British Red Cross to record their activities, Zinkeisen arrived
at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, soon after it
was liberated. Her painting shows a scene in the stable that was
nicknamed the \u2018human laundry\u2019 in which survivors were
washed and de-loused by staff from a nearby German army hospital
before being treated in the makeshift hospital at the
camp.<\/p>\n Human Laundry, 1945 Doris
Zinkeisen<\/p><\/div>\n
The contrast between the sparkling white uniforms and plump
pink arms and faces of the German nurses and the grey
emaciated bodies of the camp inmates is full of quiet horror.
The ambiguous, unreadable expression of the foreground nurse
and the blurred faces of the other nurses and the two doctors
also contrast with the realism and detail of the water
spreading across the floor, the texture of the metal buckets.
What were they thinking, as they washed these half dead
creatures? Whatever it is, we have no sign of their emotion.
Then there\u2019s the contrast between the tenderness and
intimacy associated with washing somebody and the industrial,
mechanical nature of this operation, underlining the sheer
scale of the task. They found 60,000 sick and starving people
at Belsen, alongside 10,000 corpses.<\/p>\n
I know you know this, I\u2019m sure you studied it at school
just like I did. But that\u2019s one of the main reasons war
art is so important \u2013 it\u2019s not just propaganda, it
communicates the human cost of war more powerfully than the
numbers do, or at least it does for me. I can\u2019t imagine
10,000 dead bodies. I can\u2019t really imagine 100. But I
look at a painting like
Human Laundry<\/em> and I can grasp it, the horror of
it.<\/p>\n
However, I think the painting also contains if not hope,
then the possibility of hope (or at least I feel it does
compared to photographs<\/a>
of the same scene) The hope of a new beginning is present
in the symbolism of washing, and in the way that the water
spreads like a shadow across the bottom of the painting,
but the people are picked out in light.<\/p>\n
Across the way from the exhibition is another gallery,
which is just called \u2018The Art Collection\u2019 and
looks to be part of the museum\u2019s permanent
exhibitions. There are some very fine works in there as
well (John Piper! Paul Nash! <3) but my companions
couldn\u2019t find any by women. I hope that when the
Women War Artists exhibition closes in January some of
the works will remain on permanent display alongside the
works of male artists rather than being returned
immediately to the vaults and forgotten all over
again.<\/p>\n
Unofficial artists<\/h2>\n
Argh<\/h2>\n
<\/a>
A woman\u2019s place<\/h2>\n
![Ruby Loftus<\/a>.<\/p>\n](\"http:\/\/www.citylife.co.uk\/img\/12885\/19983_star_piece_laura_knights_ruby_loftus.jpg\"){kind=link}