Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The visual rhetoric of war monuments

Their names are engraved over a monument, which extends like a gigantic marble tombstone across the landscape. Dedicated in November 1982, the V-shaped monument can also be viewed from different angles, one of which captures a reflection with the Washington Monument, which appears superimposed over the names in the soldiers ("Memorial Monuments"). This monument provides a dramatic visual representation from the sheer quantity of dead and missing, a broad-brushed and universal testament towards losses and consequences of war. The New Republic known the function on the wall as being "to impress upon the visitor the sheer human waste, the utter meaninglessness of it all" (Tracy).

Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.

Three Soldiers by Frederick Hart is also a memorial for the Vietnam War and is always known as "the other memorial" (Tracy). It shows 3 young soldiers walking together, with their arms around every other's backs. Hart is quoted inside May possibly 1985 problem of National Geographic as saying that "One senses the figures as passing by the tree line and, caught during the presence from the wall, turning to gaze upon it virtually being a vision" (Tracy). Hart's memorial emphasizes the soldiers' youth and innocence from the face of war, and Hart mentioned that this contrast "underscores the poignancy of their sacrifice" (Tracy). "There is about them," he explains, "the physical contact and sense of unity that bespeaks the bonds of love and sacrifice that isthe nature of men at war" (Tracy). This monument brings the war on the individual level, depicting individual men who made the supreme sacrifice for their buddies...and for all of us.

The Vietnam Womens' Memorial by Glenna Goodacre is the third part with the Vietnam Memorial, adding yet another dimension for the Vietnam Memorial Wall as well as the Three Soldiers. Goodacre's statue depicts a couple of female American nurses in Vietnam, a single of them cradling the head of the dying American soldier as well as the other resting a hand on her shoulder but looking ahead for the next sad task. This memorial is really a reminder that women too sacrificed much within the Vietnam War and that their tender compassion eased the suffering in the wounded and dying.

In every of these four memorials, art uniquely expresses thought, values, and emotions by the way it depicts the subjects. Johns' painting flattens and decontextualizes the American flag, though the 3 Vietnam memorials each create an additional context to your exact same war. The Wall conveys the massive numbers of dead and missing, while The Three Soldiers shows that soldiers are men with relationships, feelings, and unity.

Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.

No comments:

Post a Comment