The War, and the Art that Came Later: Aftermath at Tate Britain

Near the top of our list of exhibitions we want to go and see: retrospectives of relatively neglected women artists. Also right up there: Nordic painters we would like to learn more about. So it's no surprise we were keen to explore Harriet Backer (1845-1932): The Music of Colours at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Backer was Norway's most renowned female painter of the 19th century, if little known outside her homeland. We must have seen her work in the past in the old National Museum in Oslo, but she'll have been one of many unfamiliar names. Now, though, she's getting the full retrospective treatment with a show that's already been seen in the Norwegian capital and in Stockholm. Backer's paintings are mostly intimate depictions of interiors, both domestic and church. There's a calmness to them, and often a very interesting treatment of light, with Impressionism showing an influence from time she spent in France. One or two of the pictures on show are

The War, and the Art that Came Later: Aftermath at Tate Britain

There are some harrowing images in Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War I at Tate Britain: dead bodies, mutilated faces, mechanised slaughter. It's not exactly a feel-good exhibition. But it does contain a lot of uplifting art, some of it stunningly displayed, and it's well worth seeing.

Millions died on each side between 1914 and 1918; millions more were wounded. At the start of this exhibition we see in a glass case three steel soldiers' helmets, from Britain, France and Germany, the three countries the show focuses on. The abandoned helmet was widely used to symbolise the death of an individual combatant, and William Orpen was among the painters to adopt the image in A Grave in a Trench. This, like many of the works early on in this exhibition, is from the Imperial War Museum.

More explicit images of death were not wanted by the military authorities. Christopher Nevinson's Paths of Glory was censored, but the artist defied the ruling by including it anyway in an exhibition, making his point with a brown paper strip across the canvas concealing the bodies of the dead soldiers and bearing the word "censored".

Perhaps the most striking work in this first room is a sculpture. Wilhelm Lehmbruck's stricken, helpless Fallen Man was made for a war cemetery in his home town of Duisburg. You can see why it drew the criticism of the conservative press. After working briefly in a military hospital, Lehmbruck fled to Switzerland and killed himself in 1919.

Félix Vallotton depicted another military cemetery, at Chalons-sur-Marne, with tightly packed wooden crosses spreading into the distance, noting that his image displays the "mathematical carnage which we have become used to".

There's another terrific sculpture in full view as you enter the next room: Ernst Barlach's The Floating One (also known as the Floating Angel), dramatically lit to create the supersized shadow on the wall behind it. Barlach's 1929 cast to commemorate the dead from the war was installed in Güstrow Cathedral but was removed by the Nazis, who considered it degenerate art, and melted down. The mould survived, and this is one of several versions recast after World War II.

There's an uncompromising sculpted memorial by Charles Jagger in the same room, No Man's Land, depicting a soldier hiding among the bodies of his dead comrades to listen in on the nearby enemy.

These are memorials to the dead. What about the wounded? Otto Dix, George Grosz and Heinrich Hoerle were among the German artists who criticised the marginalisation of disabled veterans. In France, the wounded featured prominently in victory celebrations, but in Britain, war wounds, and particularly facial disfigurement, was generally only shown in a medical context. These works are by no means light or easy viewing, and nor are series of anti-war prints by Max Beckmann, Käthe Kollwitz and others.

Just when it's getting perhaps a bit too grey and grim, the curators lighten the mood, reflecting the swing in the post-war period away from the avant-garde and back to realistic painting and traditional genres such as landscape and portraiture. After the mechanical carnage of Vallotton's military cemetery, here's the calm of his Road at St Paul in Provence painted just a few years later.

There are rural-themed works, too, from Paul Nash and Marcel Gromaire that contrast sharply with their wartime paintings. Germany's New Objectivity movement is represented by, among others, Christian Schad's Self-Portrait (where did he get that transparent shirt?), while Dod Procter's Morning was picture of the year at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1927.

Religious subjects had a revival too. Stanley Spencer's Christ Carrying the Cross through Cookham on the Thames is hung right next to Christ getting a sceptical reception on the streets of Berlin in Cross Shouldering (Friedrichstrasse) by Albert Birkle.

Post-war society and the arrival of jazz also came under the spotlight. Glyn Warren Philpot's Entrance to the Tageda nightclub in Paris provides a memorable image, the top-hatted black doorman holding the curtain aside for a couple who don't look at him. Less exalted but just as sharply observed nighthawks are to be found in Edward Burra's Snack Bar.

But the picture that possibly defines this exhibition is Grosz's Grey Day. A caricatured bureaucrat walks away from a disabled veteran. In the background, a faceless worker crosses the square.

This is one of the best exhibitions we've seen at Tate Britain recently. Hugely interesting and informative, well thought-out and well put together. To be recommended.

Practicalities

Aftermath is on at Tate Britain until September 23 and is open daily from 1000 to 1800. Full-price tickets cost £18, or £16 if booked in advance; they're available online here. The nearest London Underground station is Pimlico on the Victoria Line, about five minutes' walk away.

Images

Christopher Nevinson, Paths of Glory, 1917. (c) IWM

View of exhibition with Wilhelm Lehmbruck's Fallen Man. (c) Tate photography (Joe Humphrys)
View of exhibition with Ernst Barlach's The Floating One. (c) Tate photography (Joe Humphrys)
Félix Vallotton, Route à St Paul (Var) (Road at St Paul (Var)), 1922. Tate
Edward Burra, The Snack Bar, 1930, Tate. (c) The estate of Edward Burra, courtesy Lefevre Fine Art, London
George Grosz, Grey Day, 1921, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie. Acquired by the Federal State of Berlin. (c) Estate of George Grosz, Princeton, N.J. 2018.

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