Shadow Battles
Shadow Battles
Acrylic on canvas
30” x 45”
2023
Close-Ups:
Going into this project, I wanted to depict the theme of war through a more abstracted lens. I started by combining a couple of drawings and themes that I have been working on related to the subject matter of this class. Since war is no doubt a complex concept with actual, real, lives at stake, it feels more authentic to depict it in a more conceptual and ambiguous sense that is still calculated and thought through. I used the iconography of two angels fighting as a way of simplifying battle, which is challenged by the overlaid heard of people, cars, horses, flags, and a colony of ants towards the bottom. Although simplifying battle can have the effect of trivializing war, I think it also leaves room for viewer interpretation. I decided to title it “Shadow Battles” after having read Desmond Lee’s translation of Plato’s Simile of the Cave, in which the metaphor of shadow was explored. There was a quote in it that read: “And so our state and yours will be really awake, and not merely dreaming like most societies today, with their shadow battles.” That spoke to me as a generalized allegory of psychoanalysis of human tendencies towards battle, and how a shadow or reflection could be its metaphor. A shadow is either thought of as less or more true than its subject and relies on light to illuminate its form. The same could be said of the depiction of war in art and cinema, and its content - both good and bad - that help us to understand the ways that war and its depiction can be mobilized in many ways.
I noticed that in the war films I’ve watched, animals and insects were often used to insinuate something about the nature of the characters or their teams. In Paths of Glory, when the soldiers are charging Ant Hill, we watch as they crawl along terrain similar to that of an actual ant hill. In addition to it being fittingly named, it positions the soldiers for a commentary on their comparative inferiority and naivety. Like humans, ants actually have complex hierarchical societies and wars of their own, often with similar tactics and economic and territorial ambitions. We tend to see ants as minute and distinctive from humans in consciousness, but this overlap is enlightening of our own inclinations and brutality. Just like the films we watched, there may be something to take from analyzing our patterns of behavior in those similar to us that have been dismissed.
I also often found myself focusing on the theme of the collective in many of these films. Specifically in The Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket, and Das Boot, the soldiers in it were rarely shown alone. If anything we learned more about their characters and the reasons for their actions by how they acted in congregation, rather than alone. In Full Metal Jacket, the shots of groups were strategically and cinematically planned using principles of composition like symmetry, proportion, rhythm, dominance, repetition, balance and imbalance. I thought those were very evocative moments of a critique on war. The soldiers' synchronicity in their preparation for war is truly ironic in comparison to the utter chaos of actual battle. For those reasons I chose to overlay the angels, a more graphic icon of two split sides, with a more spontaneous but still choreographed black silhouette of a group of soldiers. The gold on top battles with the royal blue color of the angels, further clouding the ongoing and polarizing question of right and wrong.
I find painting to be a battle in and of itself. It's a delicate formula that has to balance both simplicity and drama, detail and ambiguity, and the pictorial and atmospheric. In painting this, I interpreted this battle as yet another metaphor for the literal subject matter of war.
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