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WORLD WAR II AND CANADIAN LANDSCAPES
suggest its declared subject, if barely, but is very close to being a piece of
abstract art. Or the dynamic The Hitler Line, all Futuristic angles and pulsing
colours, by Charles Comfort, a future Director of Canada’s National Gallery.
Or the eerily disconcerting atmosphere of many paintings by Alex Colville, a
product of their ultra-realism, reminiscent in its way of Metaphysical painting
and the work of Giorgio de Chirico.°
The artists drew on their varying styles to treat the subject matter of their
landscapes, which often reflected the role played by the new technology in
World War II — individual tanks and tank battles, landing boats, airplanes
in the skies on bombing raids and on land being serviced, ships of all kinds
engaged in the Battle of the Atlantic and the D-Day landings. One subject one
would logically expect from war art would be depictions of dying and death.
These, however, are very rare, for a number of reasons. First of all, and most
simply, the aim of the official programmes was to celebrate the achievements
of the Canadian military; openly depicting the deaths of Canadians would re¬
mind viewers of the cost of these achievements, while depicting the deaths
of Germans might seem like gloating. More generally, recurrences of scenes
of mass destruction, any overemphasis on the theme of death, run the risk of
blunting the viewers’ reactions: more is less. Realistic depictions may be so
strong that there is a reluctance to view them at all, or if so, only for a few mo¬
ments, and with strong revulsion. Ethical concerns may also come into play,
either in the mind of the artist or that of the viewer. There are also practical
factors. In the case of the Canadian artists in the World War I programme,
most were always at a good remove from the actual action and actual death,
while others were only able to view the aftermath of war. In World War II the
situation was different — the artists were close to the fighting, at times part
of it, and in many cases had strong emotional bonds to the soldiers and sail¬
ors and airmen themselves. Nevertheless, as was the case in the landscapes
from the First World War, death is largely present tangentially in the form of
the ruins and wreckage the fighting has left behind. But there are exceptions,
and among them a few that are extremely powerful. Three examples might be
mentioned.
Jack Nichols was an official artist with Canada’s Merchant Navy in the North
Atlantic and covered the Normandy landings in 1944. In several paintings he
depicts German sailors who have been picked up in the dark in lifeboats after
their ship sank: done in dark greyish-blue tones, they capture vividly a sense of
the contingency of life in wartime. The same style is used for his most chilling
painting, Drowning Sailor. All we see is the head of the sailor, in profile, one
© Itis worth mentioning that it was through his work as a war artist that Colville honed his style
to such a degree that he was already beginning to create the kind of puzzling, disconcerting
paintings that were to make him one of the most internationally celebrated Canadian artists
of his generation.
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