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images of strong, silent and grieving women. However beautiful and accessible this
mode of work is, many artists now find Kollwitz’s figurative and maternal style
incompatible with contemporary expression. The industrialised suffering of the
twentieth century demanded new ideas, new materials, and new approaches towards
art production as the artistic depictions and practices of the past were no longer useful
metaphors. Therefore, most of the artists discussed in this thesis not only created
works of art responsive to trauma, but also a new language in which to express that
trauma. Finding the art conventions of their time unsuitable to meet their needs, some
chose to abandon the narrative form or the conventions of composition and use of
materials to express trauma, and instead embedded their intent into a different form of
art-making.
Visual languages, or visual dialects as I think of some, were created to speak to the
uniqueness of individual experience and to move outwards from the artist to
communicate with and touch wider audiences. Many of these artists’ languages or
dialects eventually became absorbed into mainstream visual language and are now
widely used. For example, in Der Krieg 11 – a suite of prints portraying aspects of the
First World War – Dix purposefully abuses the etching technique to “portray the
successive stages in which individuality was suspended or brutally destroyed” (Karcher
49).
Joseph Beuys, 12 in his post-Second World War work, determined that a new visual
language was required to articulate and communicate his vision of the war and its
violations. Working to make sense of this seemingly senseless period of German
history, he evokes trauma through an eclectic range of materials and objects that he
reshapes into assemblages, places alongside other objects or configures into
something new.In responding to the changing world, he “took up and perhaps
transformed the stance of artists to suit the wiser and sadder age” (Joachimides,
Norman and Wieland 18). His radical departure from the use of traditional art
materials and methods established a new means of expression that not only served his
creativity but also became extremely influential with other artists, including me.
11
Viewed at the Historial Museum, Peronne France 2002 and The National Gallery of
Victoria, 2008.
12
Viewed at the Schloss Moyland, Germany, March 2008.
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