Returning to the Trenches 1914 by C.R.W. Nevinson - Essay Example

Returning to the Trenches Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889-1946) was born Britain and more specifically in London where he attended the Slade School and associated himself with a notorious gang called coster gang. This was a group of students considered as iconoclastic. At first he was influenced well by impressionism together with post-impressionism that made him to start affiliating himself with a movement of Italian Futurist being attracted to it by how they celebrated modernity, warfare and even technology 1.  Nevinson was only 25 years old when the First World War broke. He was a British war painter who preferred to represent the mechanical nature of war something that separated him from his wartime colleagues was a pacifist. During the outbreak of the First World War, he refused to be on combat and instead chose to volunteer with the Red Cross where he worked with the Friends Ambulance unit which was set up by the so called Quakers. Nevinson was so much shocked and affected by the experience in the Western Front and this is believed to have clearly informed his art. By 1914 Nevinson was already an established landscape painter and had become associated with the Italian Futurist movement and more so Marinetti the painter.  In the year 1915 he was writing in the daily express where he once wrote that Some scholars argue that artists should go upon themselves to go to the front and increase the strength they use in the art by worship of moral courage and physical worship and having no fear to adventure, taking risks by themselves. All artists should enlist and go to the front no matter how little they owed England for her contempt of the modern art but to strengthen the art of courage morally and a desire that is fearless of adventure daring and risking. Nevinson was later dismissed from the army after contacting rheumatic fever. While in the process of recovering he made several paintings based on his wartime experience with the army in France. In his own words, he confirms to have seen the Great War as an event that was so tragic. Nevinson still made the argument that the only way to express violence, brutality and the crude form is to use the futuristic technique. This technique is used to express emotions that appear in battle fields in Europe. This is clearly seen through his painting called, Returning to the Trenches, which he painted concerning the Western Front. One of its critics, P.G. Konody on the 14th March 1915 noted that “returning to the trenches” is rather a different but interesting picture where he found an extreme formula for the rhythm of a marching body, which is of a French infantry man who is armed fully.2 Shown first during the Galleries exhibition in Leicester the year 1916, Returning to the Trenches was among Nevinson’s paintings of the Great War that are recognized immediately. The futurism language that the artist proclaimed prior to 1914 is clearly carried in the image of the column of marching French soldiers together with the recurring pattern of the soldier’s legs and the exaggeration and animation of their movements by the extended force lines.2 The use of such manner by Nevinson, however, becomes more powerful in the monochrome of etching by combining the experimental techniques used to express movement with a great emotive subject. This kind of combination is able to simultaneously suggest that the group of men have a grim determination to move forward at some speed, they immediately strike a chord with people and makes people believe that Nevinson has forged a style, which in turn brings together the truth of a matter through an avant-garde manner. In fact, the painting returning to the Trenches was perhaps supposed to remain as Nevinson Great War image painting that was most abstracted. This painting apparently captures all 3the conflicting elements which he brings collectively so deftly based on how he observed during his first time on the war front in the late 1914. Nevinson in some way deftly sidestepped the issue of patriotism by choosing to use French soldiers as also seen in some other early war paintings.3 A clear point that comes out of the painting is how Nevinson was associated with Futurism. Even though images of combat are seen in the painting it does not mean that he supported destruction whatsoever since being at the war front as an ambulance driver he had been affected so much. He therefore chose not to depict soldiers as human but rather as rather dehumanized soldiers who were part of the great machine that which is the modern war. The marching troops on the painting are used to bring out the ever changing energy of the war machine something the futurists praised as the best way of cleansing the past in the modern world.3 The painting depicts a battalion marching together in relentless uniformity although in anonymity being led to their destiny where their death awaits them. The painter however by then may have lost illusions. A keen look at the soldiers will show you nothing heroic about them not even enthusiasm. They have too much weight on their backs together with the guns that makes them bend forward moving as fast as they can to the trenches. Nevinson in a Futurist manner divides the foreground up with slanting lines so as to add meaning to the feeling of precipitation this on the other hand seems to make the colors of the uniforms that is the blue and red to fade away in the midst of the ochre and the greys.4 Nevinson seems extraordinarily successful and powerful in suggesting movement which implies that just like the very many of his paintings modern war is not all about individual soldiers but rather as just parts of a complicated machine. The scant bright colors against black and the sharp surfaces emphasize the mechanistic brutality that occurred during the First World War. It would be expected that the uniforms would be dirty and bloody but that is not the case with the painting which means that today’s cotemporary would question it.4 The mechanization of men and also dehumanization does not depict the current contemporary’s set of mind since the painting shows men made with angular faces, geometrical packs of their bodies in uniform, their gleaming metal helmets, their cleanliness in strikingly precise. In this painting it is in vain for someone to search for blood, pain or even agony, panic or any trace of men in war. From the picture, it can be deduced that the painting has some features that can be visually analyzed based on how they appear. With attractive artistic features, the painting gets the attention of the viewers and lovers of art. In the world of today, the painting has a lot of significance and relevance. It depicts the events that take place during a war. With the representation of soldiers who took part in the First World War, the painting rekindles the moments and brutality of this war and the effect it had on those who took part in it. 5     Bibliography John, Morrow. 2004. The Great War (An Imperial History). London: Routledge. Tim, Armstrong. 1998. Modernism, Technology and the Body (A Cultural Study). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. W.S, Dippiero. 1991. Out of Eden (Essays on Modern Art). California: University of California Press. Read More