A war and its images: as photographs and films dealing with the Iraq War become the subject of partisan debate, the author considers their ethical and historical context

Art in America, Oct, 2004 by Eleanor Heartney

Xie's almost romantically painted newspaper still lifes brought to mind the elusive images in Gerhard Richter's painting series "October 18, 1977." These blurry, photo-based 1989 paintings were taken from prison images, snapshots and death-scene photographs of the members of the Baader Meinhof gang who terrorized Germany in the 1970s. Richter's hazy paintings seem to point to the fading of memory into nostalgia or romance. Now Richter has published a book rifled War Guts that is intended to bear witness to the current Iraq conflict. It is a strange document. Snippets from newspaper articles from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of Mar. 20 and 21, 2002, the beginning days of the war, are paired with photographic details of one of Richter's abstract paintings from 1987. The pairings seem arbitrary, though there is a broader sense of connection. The fierce colors and jagged edges of the details in this context evoke explosions, bursts of gunfire, and the cinematic spectacle of "shock and awe." But in another context they could have a completely different meaning.

In an interview with the New York Times, Richter says he chose this painting for dissection precisely because it was "close to being uncommunicative." He deftly sidesteps assigning any specific meaning or judgment to the book, noting, at one point, "This is also why I absolutely avoided expressing an opinion, which is completely useless here and obstructs the attempt to come somewhat closer to the truth." (5)

There could not be more distance between Sontag's hopes for the humanizing potential of photography and Richter's resistance to the possibility that visual art might provide any moral clarity. Where does that leave artists troubled by the war? Despite the fact that images have been so central to our understanding of this conflict, visual art seems at a loss. Evidently, for now we must look elsewhere for creative works willing to bear witness to the complexity of the situation and to our own complicity with it.

(1.) Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, New York, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2003, p. 110.

(2.) Ibid., p. 115.

(3.) This controversy is discussed in several articles in the January 2004 issue of artpress.

(4.) Chris Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, New York, Anchor Books, 2004, p. 165.

(5.) "A Picture Is Worth 216 Newspaper Articles," interview between Jan Thorn-Prikker and Gerhard Richter, New York Times, July 4, 2004, Arts & Leisure section, p. 27.

"War in Iraq: The Coordinates of Conflict, Photographs by VII" was seen at the International Center of Photography, New York [Mar. 12-May 30]. The exhibition was organized by Peter Howe and Edward Earle. A 415-page book published by de.MO in conjunction with the exhibition is titled War: USA, Afghanistan, Iraq. "Inconvenient Evidence: Iraqi Prison Photographs from Abu Ghraib" is on view this fall at the IGP [Sept. 17-Nov. 28] and the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. It is accompanied by a brochure with an essay by Seymour Hersh. Gerhard Richter's War Cuts is co-published by Walther Konig and the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.