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Culture and Art
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Failed Totalitarian Art: English Military Painting of the First World War

Avdeev Vasilii Aleksandrovich

PhD in Art History

Postgraduate at the Department of the Study of Art of the Contemporary Art Institute

121309, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Novozavodskaya, 27 a

2theweapon@mail.ru
Other publications by this author
 

 

DOI:

10.7256/2454-0625.2023.5.38241.2

EDN:

CPMBUP

Received:

10-06-2022


Published:

06-06-2023


Abstract: The subject of this article is subjects on the military theme in the paintings of European artists of the first half of the twentieth century.The object of the study is the stylistic and artistic features of painting by British military artists and painters of totalitarian states of the first half of the twentieth century. For the first time in domestic practice, the author offers to consider the unique phenomenon of British military painting of the First World War. She compares Italian aerofuturism, a style adopted by the fascist regime during the Second World War, which is close to her in spirit and connected with her modernist roots. The research was based on the provisions of the domestic author Igor Golomstock, who took the principle of the megamachine of the American historian and philosopher Lewis Mumford as a criterion for determining totalitarian art. The main conclusions of this study are the confirmation of the effectiveness of the Mumford formula in determining the criteria for the belonging of paintings to totalitarian art. At the same time, the considered example of English military painting, created in a democratic state, but bearing obvious features of totalitarian art, raises the question of the unambiguity of the correlation of the latter with the authoritarian form of government. The novelty of this work is the very possibility of familiarizing the domestic reader with the most interesting artistic and spiritual phenomenon - English military painting, closely related to Vorticism, the national trend of modernism, also insufficiently familiar to our public In addition, a wide range of issues related to the art history problem of identifying criteria for totalitarian art is considered


Keywords:

english military painting, vorticism, futurism, totalitarian art, Aeropittura, fascism, Christopher Nevinson, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Wyndham Lewis, World War I

Totalitarian ideology and modernism

The topic of totalitarian art today is of increasing research interest both from specialists such as historians, art historians, culturologists as well as from the general public. The relevance of the topic is confirmed by a large number of exhibitions and publications devoted to this phenomenon of artistic and spiritual life of the mid-twentieth century that has been, until recently, almost forgotten and often ignored. Igor Golomshtok's book "Totalitarian Art" became a real breakthrough in the domestic scientific and popular information space. First published in English abroad in 1990, this work was published in Russian four years later after having undergone changes in terms of artistic design.

Holomstock was not a pioneer in this direction: one of the first studies devoted to the issue of totalitarian art was the book by the German Helmut Lehmann-Haupt "Art under Dictatorship", published in 1954 [1, p. 7]. One of the main ideas of this work was the statement that totalitarian art was designed to "serve as a means of complete dissolution of the individual." Further, Lehman-Haupt concluded that "so-called modern art" was not suitable for this purpose, since, according to the author, it was "a powerful symbol of anti-totalitarian aspirations" [2, p. 3]. Since then, there has been a tendency in scientific circles to separate the avant-garde and totalitarian art as an expression of the struggle of freedom and development against mega-control and stagnation.

An example of such a radical approach was Philippe Serse's book "Totalitarianism and the Avant-garde", published in 2001 in Paris, where the radical avant-garde, represented by its most "extreme" representatives - supremacists, abstractionists, cubo-futurists, "garbage artists" - was declared an outpost of the struggle against National socialism and the totalitarian art imposed by it [3, P. 26]. Holomstock's approach was not so unambiguous. The reason for this is that he devoted a significant part of his book to the history of the birth of totalitarian art (Totarta, as the author called it), exploring in detail the artistic and spiritual climate of the countries that gave birth to it, which were also the birthplaces of their own national trend of modernism. At the same time, Futurism in Italy, Expressionism in Germany, Constructivism in Russia inevitably turned out to be in the center of attention.

Breaking the tradition of his predecessors and including Italian art of Mussolini's time in his research, Holomstock was forced to make reservations and remarks constantly, noting that one or another phenomenon typical of Totart did not fully relate to fascist Italy. After all, unlike what was done by Hitler in Germany and Stalin in Russia, Italian totalitarianism in the person of Mussolini "carried out its cultural policy of encouraging allies, not destroying opponents." "Demanding in words the truthfulness of life and a realistic form, fascism actually put up with the fact that throughout the 30s even Abstractionism continued to exist in Italy on a wide scale and range" [1, p. 118].

For the study of totalitarian art, it was extremely important to identify the signs that, in fact, allowed it to be defined as such. Holomstock tried to avoid descriptive principles, a list of which was presented in detail in the work of the modern German researcher Hans Gunther in the article "The Totalitarian state as a synthesis of arts" (2000). Gunther called "superrealism", monumentalism, classicism, nationality and heroism as indispensable qualities of Totart [4]. Long before that, Lehman-Haupt, Berthold Ginz, Robert Taylor, Martin Damus, George Mosse and other eminent researchers also tried to identify "only a set of formal elements, the range of which [fit] into the framework from the academicism of the XVIII to the realism of the XIX century" [1, p. 265].

In contrast, Holomstock started from the worldview of the American philosopher and historian Lewis Mumford, who proposed a model of a totalitarian state - a mega-machine using standardized human material to absorb resources and produce giant armies, cyclopean buildings, monumental works of art and technical structures [1, p. 9]. Following this, he recognizes not style as a sign of totart, not formal signs, but the archetypal idea of solidity, "subordination of individual parts to the whole", a built-up system of value hierarchy. And this did not make totalitarian art related to the XIX century, but to "much more distant times when a religious painting was at the center of art, and everything else mattered only as a reflection of the heavenly in the earthly and gained meaning in its involvement in something higher" [1, p. 267].

Mumford's principle in determining the signs of totalitarian art

Religious ecstasy, awe, and fear were the goals of messages transmitted by monumental art, typical of the theocracies of antiquity and actively used to control the masses. After all, "as soon as hierarchy and power appeared in societies, as it was in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, art [became] at the service of wealth and power, decorating palaces and glorifying the victories of the rulers" [1, p. 8]. A demonstration of the power and authority of the ruler - addressed to the enemies of the state, but intended for the contemplation of its own subjects - was really similar to the functions of totalitarian art of the twentieth century. Power in ancient times was associated with military force, so the main ideological motive was the scenes of battles, portraits of kings with their patron gods, all striking and captivating their enemies.

The similarity between the megalomania and militarism of ancient empires and the totalitarian regimes of the mid-twentieth century was noted by many authors in their works. Long before Cers, this idea became well-known thanks to Louis Povel and Jacques Bergier, the authors of the sensational work "Morning of Magicians," published more than half a century ago [5]. From domestic researchers, in addition to Holomstock and Andrey Vasilchenko, the author of the expanded work "Imperial Tectonics,” presented his view of the architecture of Nazi Germany as a reflection of the spirit of ancient civilizations. [6]. At the same time, when making such comparisons, of course, it was impossible not to take into account the fact that the dictators of the twentieth century were forced to act in a much-changed space: temporal, technological, cultural and informational. The level of public awareness, cross-cultural ties, and the development of media posed tasks to the authoritarian rulers that the kings of Akkad, Egypt, and Rome did not know.

Nevertheless, the basic principle of the monolithic totalitarian system according to Mumford and, consequently, the main requirement for the art that served this mechanism - to serve as a catalyst for this unity - remained unchanged. The use of mechanisms for manipulating public opinion on the basis of propaganda techniques developed by that time, and the study of crowd psychology, as well as the capabilities of the mass media became new. Unlike the kings of antiquity, it was not enough for the dictators of the twentieth century just to show the luxury of ceremonies and processions and military might in order to demonstrate the achievements of the regime effectively in a period when the state did not conduct military operations. The catalyst for a single spiritual impulse in recent times had been a sense of national pride and superiority, which was cultivated by the institutions of power, using for this the facts of the achievements of the nation and the state in some internationally significant area.

The essence of political processes remained the same, but what changed was the speed and efficiency with which it was possible to inspire not just a crowd or an army, but all citizens of the state, directing their energy and spiritual impulse to achieve the goals of one person or group of people at the top of power. An important role in the work of this totalitarian machine began to be assigned to art, designed to demonstrate and celebrate national achievements. In the changed picture of the world, an important factor, along with the grandiosity of the project, ideological fullness and artistic skill, was the presence of two important aspects: the availability of time and conditions (political and material). Golomstock wrote about this when he paid special attention to the genre of battle painting of the Stalinist Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany.

Initially, the pathos of the first shock of the five-year plans, great construction projects and the development of virgin lands was especially pronounced in the young communist state, which was reflected in the works of artists "seconded" to all these events. When later the theme of militarism, self-sacrifice and, finally, victory in a bloody war prevailed, the main theme of the pride of communism as well as the main resource of the Soviet Union was undoubtedly the human factor: ideologized and inspired masses of people. At the same time, a Soviet man, massive, but not faceless, with well-recognized "native features" invariably appeared as the main character of a cycle of epic canvases created by both pre-war and post-war "court" artists.

Golomshtok emphasized that in the USSR, which won a military victory, all conditions were created for the creation of “if I may say so, a totalitarian art of a full cycle,” in other words, its own myth about the war. And if the former front-line watercolors and sketches captured by eyewitnesses and subsequently put away in the storerooms reflected the war “not so much”, then the post-war epic canvases and huge panoramas fully met the requirements of the “heroic chronicle”. In the words of Golomstock, the drama of the “defenses” of paintings by frontline artists was replaced by the exultation of the “liberations” of canvases intended to form a sense of national pride. “The Assault on Sevastopol” (1947) by Pavel Sokolov-Skal, “The Triumph of the Victorious Motherland” (1947) by Mikhail Khmelko, and "Victory" (1948) by Pyotr Krivonogov became pronounced examples of totalitarian battle art [1, p. 226].

Nazi art, which emerged later than the Soviet one, made much wider use of the theme of the recent political struggle, the scope of party congresses and celebrations. The most famous ideologized paintings, such as "The March of November 9 in Munich" (1941) and "You Still Won" (1942) by Paul Herrmann, were created during the war, but reflected much earlier events of the Nazis coming to power. Full-fledged epic works on a military theme, similar to the cycle of frescoes by Franz Eichhorst, were devoted to the events of the First World War, and large-scale propaganda group portraits, such as "Hitler on the Battlefield" (1939) and "Reichsmarschall Goering at the Headquarters of the Air Force" (1940) by Konrad Hommel, were prepared in a single quantity specifically for the opening exhibitions, but had not become a widespread phenomenon in the conditions of the approaching military collapse [1, p. 228].

Totalitarian art in Italy

The art of Mussolini's Italy was very different from the artistic heritage of both the Stalinist Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany. A variety of factors played a role here: both political and ideological, and others, including temporary, cultural and national aspects. Mussolini came to power before Stalin and much earlier than Hitler. This explained, among other things, the different attitude to contemporary art: if in the Stalinist Soviet Union the avant-garde was associated with Trotskyism and the era of war communism, and in Hitler's Germany - with the rampant Fauvism, Cubism and Dadaism (that is, alien currents) in the Weimar Republic, the fascists of Italy, on the contrary, opposed themselves to eclecticism of the pre-war period of the 1910s, and the lush academic style associated with the era of Giovanni Giolitti, Mussolini's political enemy [7].

In addition, the Italian fascists never forgot what role their nation played in the development of world art, living in anticipation of a new Renaissance much more than their totalitarian "brothers" from the right and left camps. It is not surprising that the emergence of a true artistic expression of fascist ideology from the environment of Modernism would be more expected from them, in contrast to the search for the roots of New German art in the legacy of realistic and romantic painting of the XIX century in Hitler's Germany or an appeal to the painting of the Wanderers (which was sharply criticized in the initial period of Soviet power) as models for the creation of works of socialist realism in the Stalinist Soviet Union.

Despite the pathos of Novecento, a movement created in 1926 and supported at first by Mussolini, who declared at the same time for the first time that "we need to create a new art of our time, fascist art" [8, p. 13], an attempt to make an appeal to the past, Neoclassicism, and the basis for the embodiment of the ideas of fascism in painting soon failed, confirming the idea of the fact that an appeal to the past could become the starting ground, but not the ideological core of totalitarian art as an effective weapon of psychological influence. The new Italy needed a theme that united all citizens of the fascist state; a theme that was at the same time relevant, modern and future-oriented, because the Italian fascists, just like the Nazis and communists, considered themselves revolutionaries of the spirit.

Despite the company of all kinds of "battles for bread" deployed throughout the country, grandiose events for draining swamps and the construction of completely new cities, their pathos was obviously not perceived by either the leaders or the artists of the regime as something that allowed them to be proud of the achievements of their nation, unlike similar, but much larger-scale processes in the USSR. As a result, the Italian fascist press, having familiarized itself with the products of Stalinist socialist realism in the form of epic paintings documenting the achievements of the Soviet state in industrialization, construction and land reclamation, recognized that "proclaiming fascist art to the ringing in the ears, and then doing nothing or almost nothing to reflect the creative power of fascism, which the whole world envies, - this situation is deeply sad and striking" [1, p. 116].

The chance to present a new fascist art fell to the authentic national art movement of Modernism – Futurism, represented by its latest and most active direction of Aeronautical Painting or Aeropittura, which made the subject of its admiration for the national achievements in the field of aeronautics. There were several prerequisites for the appearance of the Aeropittura, but economic and domestic and foreign policy factors undoubtedly became the impetus for its development, spread and growth of popularity. The Duce of Italian fascism, Benito Mussolini - just six months after he came to power and inspired by his own flying experience (although it almost cost him his life) – created in March 1923 the Ministry of Aeronautics that combined military, civil and colonial aviation.

Thanks to this, Italy became the second major power after Great Britain with an independent air force. Noting this feature of the policy of the Italian fascist state, the American historian Jeffrey Herf in his work "Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich" (1984) explicitly stated that "if in Germany nationalism was built on Aryan and soil ideologies, then in Italy and Latin countries, instead of national identity has turned its gaze to the sky, strengthening national pride and technology in the sky" [9, p. 224]. In July 1933, Mussolini's efforts were crowned with a real triumph: the first transatlantic flight of twenty-four seaplanes took place under the leadership of a veteran of the fascist movement Italo Balbo.

But aviation mysticism and euphoria did not end there. In 1934, pilot Francesco Ajello broke the world record by flying a seaplane at a speed of more than 700 km/h. The exhibition of Italian aeronautics opened in the same year with the remains of the World War I fighter ace Francesco Baracchi, shot down in 1918, the airplane on which the poet and war hero Gabriele D'Annunzio flew over Vienna, the SS.55X seaplane that Balbo used in a flight across the Atlantic, and also the plane in which Mussolini crashed in 1921. All the exhibits were presented as mystical relics of a new religion, Mussolini himself presented himself as Icarus, a martyr for the cause of aviation, who miraculously survived [9, p. 225].

English military painting of the First World War

There was an interesting point in the study of Holomstock, which was usually ignored by its critics. The researcher cited the opinion of Americans William Yenn and Kate Dills, the authors of the book "German Military Art" published in 1983, who spoke of the undoubted similarity of painting samples of totalitarian and democratic countries in an area where propaganda tasks also came to the fore, along with the artistic qualities of the work. A comparison of the works of German and American artists who fell within the scope of their consideration even prompted Jenna and Dills to declare that there were no fundamental stylistic and artistic differences between the art of Nazism and American military art [1, p. 223].

But Golomstock, who built the logic of his research on the demarcation of the art of totalitarian states (USSR, Germany, Italy, China) and the art of democratic states, immediately noted that the works of British military artists were radically different from the works of Totart created on a military theme. Indeed, the paintings of war artists of the Second World War - Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and John Piper — were works done in a far from realistic manner. In the spirit of expressionism, evoking associations with the anti-war works of the Germans Georg Gross and Otto Dix, they described the everyday life and hardships of the civilian population and gloomy images of war. In the words of Holomstock, here "the heroism of battles and victories ... [was] replaced by the tragedy of destruction and death" [1, p. 225].

The author admitted that if there was any similarity, it was caused by the fact that "what in democratic countries is a product of a critical situation and disappears with it, constitutes the goal and core of all totalitarian ideologies." In other words, representatives of the nation of a totalitarian state "either wage war, or celebrate victory, or prepare for a new war" [1, p. 224]. At the same time, Golomstock, consciously or not, did not compare the works of artists of the totalitarian camp with paintings created in democratic countries, in particular in England during the First World War. The opportunity to get acquainted with these works was provided by Merion and Susie Harris, English authors who published the book "The War Artists. The British official war art of the twentieth century."

The book presented the most famous works of front-line artists who covered events from the beginning of the First World War up to the military actions of England in the Falklands War of 1982. And compared with the works of British military artists of the Second World War (with the rare exception of portraits, most of the paintings, as it was said, were unfinished watercolors, sketches, as well as examples of painting in an impressionist and expressionist manner), the painting of the artists of the First World War appeared quite differently, whose works were distinguished by much clearer contours, observance of form and, inheriting rather the techniques of poster style, at the same time referred to the later modernist works of Italian painters of the interwar period.

Of the works presented in the book, the realistic manner was most characteristic of the works of one of the most original military artists of Great Britain, Eric Kennington. In his paintings, this quality was combined with the contrast of colors and compositional saturation, which created associations with the style of wall paintings or monumental art. At the same time, Kennington's heroes – "Kensingtonians in Laventia" (1915) or "Conquerors" (1919) - were not superhumans of German totart or stylized athletes-heroes of socialist realism, but humanized characters with concern and fatigue on their faces. The artist's paintings were not stories about exploits and self–sacrifice, but rather about "the hardships of trench warfare and the steadfastness and camaraderie of ordinary soldiers" [10]. Interestingly, it was thanks to the success of Kennington's paintings, which were shown to the general public at the beginning of the First World War, that the British military department came up with the idea to use painting as an element of propaganda, which led to the creation of a staff of military artists.

Christopher Nevinson, at first a staunch pacifist, being an opponent of the war, began his military service as an orderly. Nevinson, who later became the most famous and scandalous painter of the First World War, was friends with the leader of the Italian futurists Filippo Tommaso Marinetti even before the latter's visit to England in 1914, when they published the Manifesto of English Futurism together and Nevinson was directly involved in the creation of the English version of Futurism – Vorticism in his homeland. It is not surprising that Nevinson's most famous military works such as his cubist "Machine Gun" (1915) and "Troops on Vacation" (1916) were clearly influenced by Cubism and Futurism. Subsequently, Nevinson moved away from the manner of Cubism, as could be seen in the example of "Figures at Dawn" (1917), a painting made in an impressionist manner depicting the attack of British soldiers against the background of a trench and a lightening sky.

Despite the proximity to the futuristic movement, the heroes of all Nevinson’s paintings were people, and not machines, technology or dynamics and the movement of light as was true for his Italian colleagues. The same could be said about the works of other authors from the staff of military artists. So, in Colin Gill’s painting “Heavy Artillery”, a multi-figure work made in the manner of frescoes, replete with technical details, and at the same time reminiscent of the Novecento style, the viewer’s main attention was also riveted to the figures of artillery soldiers with the faces of medieval statues expressing fatigue and detachment. And in the painting of the founder of Vorticism, Wyndham Lewis, referring to the tradition of surrealism, “Battery under fire”, the center of the composition was human figures presented in the form of puppets.

In the book of Merion and Susie Harris, there were paintings that could be attributed with some confidence to the genre of aerial painting. The Air Force was actually the pride of the British, who managed to create the world's first Vickers FB 5 fighter airplane in 1915, and subsequently the most powerful air force, which undoubtedly influenced the fact that paintings on this topic soon appeared. Among other things, Nevinson's lithograph "Diving on the Taube" (1917) was particularly indicative, depicting an exciting moment of an air battle against a German airplane, whose name was included in the title of the picture. The battle unfolded in the rays of the Sun breaking through the ridges of clouds, which created a visual effect consonant with the techniques of the power lines of the Italian futurists [11, p. 41].

On the contrary, Norman Arnold's watercolor "The Last Battle of Captain Ball" (1917), showing the dramatic moment of the duel of the British ace with the pilot of the German airplane "Albatross", was executed in a completely realistic manner. Almost as realistic, only already in the oil technique, Richard Carline's painting "Hermon and Sannin Mountains above the Clouds" is presented. The painting, created by the artist during his stay on the eastern front in Palestine, showed a unique picturesque landscape in the Middle East, contrasting with the severity of a fragment of a wing of a British airplane. Both of these paintings, as well as three others, were placed in a special chapter of the book called "Artists of the Royal Air Force", which showed how important it was to display plots on the theme of war in the air for British military artists of the First World War.

The case of the English battle painting of the First World War was unique: this was the legacy of the creation of real masters who went to the front and often interspersed their artistic activities with the military. "Soldier-artists" (as one of the chapters of the book is named), who used the artistic techniques of Modernism, could not at the same time be proud of the technical and military successes of the British Empire. Despite the fact that among the large number of works were performed by British war artists, there were a number of pacifist works (for example, the most famous and scandalous paintings by Nevinson) depicting the everyday life of war in a cold reportage style or even filled with a futuristic vision of war as "hygiene of the world".

Despite the presence of conditions and factors similar to those in which Aero-Futurism, engaged by Italian fascism, was born, this did not lead to the birth of art, which by its characteristics could correspond to the characteristics of Totart as an instrument of a mega-machine. First of all, this was due to the political differences between the democratic and authoritarian system. But there were other reasons that could be considered by tracing Nevinson's creative path. After all, his career as a military artist really began not with pacifist and decadent works depicting the rear, but with the sensational painting "Machine Gun".

This work impressed with a rigid, angular pattern, which made the soldiers seem like robotic creatures that had turned into "killing machine[s]" "with the help of incredibly powerful weapons that they [owned]." The painting made such a strong impression that almost immediately after its appearance, the authoritative critic Walter Sickert called it "the most impressive and concentrated depiction of war in the history of painting" [12]. But gradually, from the works performed in cubist and futuristic techniques ("Return to the Trenches" (1916), "Guided Howitzer", etc.), by the end of the war, the artist moved to a more realistic image and, at the same time, blurred contours and muted colors. Nevinson's paintings, full of unpleasant details of the horrors of the war, caused criticism because of their demoralizing mood, and if they were allowed to the exhibitions, they were placed away from the main flow of visitors.

It can be said that by creating a number of interesting works devoted to the technique of war, including aviation ("Spiral descent", "Diving at the enemy", "War in the air"), Nevinson was in some way ahead of his time. "It is something incredible," the famous art publisher and critic Charles Lewis Hind wrote about him in 1920, "at the age of thirty-one to be the most discussed, the most successful, the most promising, the most admired and the most hated artist" [12]. Nevinson did not accept the worship of the machine of his Italian colleagues, but at the beginning of his career as a military artist, he spoke about the war in the same way as his Italian mentor: "All artists should go to the front to strengthen their art, worshipping physical and moral courage, [with a] fearless desire for adventure, risk and courage, and free themselves from the infirmity of professors, archaeologists, guides and antiquarians" [10].

Many of his works, such as "Pointing Howitzer", "Engine Production" (1917), "From the office window" (1918) looked like the apotheosis of machine geometry, but the artist himself adhered to social views on the relationship between man and machine, noting that he was the first to show the subordination of personality to a soulless mechanism [10]. Initially a follower of the futuristic view of war, Nevinson quickly changed his worldview, gaining experience as an orderly and ambulance driver, recognizing that the essence of modern war seemed to him "infinitely alien and devoid of heroic features" [12]. But at the same time, Nevinson, who denied his admiration for the machine, continued to create images of industrial facilities and military equipment both during the interwar period and at the beginning of World War II ("Air Defense" (1940).

In this regard, the fate of Nevinson's French colleague Fernand Leger, who was a member of the pre-war Cubist association "Golden Section," looked like a sharp contrast. Leger was no less impressed by the war than Nevinson, although the effect of this turned out to be almost exactly the opposite. The French artist described his "cultural shock" when, in the midst of blood and horror, he saw the bolt of a gun, an object perfect in its beauty: "I was blinded by the lock of a 75-millimeter cannon, the brilliance of its white metal under the bright sun… I found myself face to face with a real object built by human hands, which in their work depended on geometric laws, because geometric order prevails in mechanics" [13]. Nevertheless, Leger's post-war works, designed to celebrate the beauty of machines - "Propellers" (1918), "Mechanic" (1920) - in fact had nothing to do with the strict appearance and design of technical objects that he admired.

Political and cultural conditions: Failed totalitarian art

Considering the military painting of England and the totalitarian art of Italy, it is possible to note the significant similarity of the external and internal conditions in which British Modernist military artists worked during the First World War and their Italian Aero-Futurist colleagues almost a generation later. Most of the British war artists who went to the fields of the First World War were followers of modernist trends: from the gloomy surrealist Paul Nash (also familiar with Nevinson) to the violent founder of Vorticism, Wyndham Lewis

The war artists of Great Britain were engaged by their government soon after the paintings presented to the general public received wide success in 1916. After that, with the assistance of the Bureau of Military Propaganda, a system of pieces of art selection sending to the front and material support for promising artists was created. Many of them, as it was shown above, devoted their works to technology in the war: in addition to the above-mentioned paintings of aerial battles and dramatic cubo-futurist canvases by Nevinson, there were also realistic images of tanks, a new formidable weapon of war. So, almost immediately after their appointment, tanks became the heroes of the graphic work of the same name by Muirhead Bone, the first official military artist of England.

To make comparisons between the military situation in England during the First World War and in Mussolini's Italy, there was also a similarity in the military organization of these two seemingly different political systems. The works on the history of the movement of the British Union of Fascists noted the role in the formation of the political views of the future leader of the movement, Oswald Mosley, played by the experience of his acquaintance with the state system of wartime during his work first in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and then in the Ministry of Armaments. Prime Minister Lloyd George, who received almost dictatorial powers after 1916, together with a five-person military cabinet, made decisions on all possible governance of the country, eliminated the opposition, introduced censorship and banned strikes [14, p. 27].

The last aspect that played a significant role in creating the complex of conditions and prerequisites described above for the emergence of totalitarian art should have been a single theme reflecting the scope of achievements, reflecting the power of the state and having the most important national significance. In the classical totalitarian system, such a sphere was, as was shown above, the human factor: the heroes of construction projects, the development of virgin lands, politically motivated and fearless fighters, and finally, just a people ready for self-sacrifice. Fascist Italy, after much hesitation, chose the topic of aviation success. But for Britain, neither the status of the world's largest empire at that time, nor military power, nor success in creating new types of weapons became a symbol for the birth of ideologized art.

There were primarily political reasons for this. Totalitarian ideology was alien to the mentality of the British, who were proud, among other things, of their oldest parliamentary tradition in Europe and the system of political freedoms. The position of Great Britain as a victorious country also played a role, which affected the economic situation and deprived political extremism of the possibility of using revanchist sentiments, as it happened in Germany that lost and Italy that was deprived of victory. In addition, the peak of the artistic and spiritual rise of Great Britain took place in another era when, at the end of the XIX century and at the turn of the century, the best creations of the Arts and Crafts Movement and national Art Nouveau were created. The authentic trend of Modernism – aggressive and energetic Vorticism (which became the English response to Italian Futurism and undoubtedly influenced the emergence and development of British military painting) disappeared almost immediately after the end of the First World War.

As already mentioned, English military art was closest in spirit and artistic expression to the late Italian Futurism, which took shape as a trend by the end of the 1920s. But what is important here is that despite the similarity of the subject matter and some stylistic closeness, British military artists created during the war or, in the words of Holomstock, "maximum exertion of forces." There are obvious associations with the Russian revolutionary avant-garde, which also arose during the Civil War and died out with the transition to a (conditionally) peaceful way of life. The work of British military artists also lost its energy and expressiveness during the peace period, having been reborn by the beginning of the Second World War into surrealistic abstract painting, with the rare exception of ceremonial portraits, political posters and the creations of such odious personalities as Nevinson.

The short life of national modernism was undoubtedly influenced by the absence of an element of admiration for industrial successes in the mass consciousness of the British during the period of the events described, in contrast to the situation in Italy and Russia, which only relatively recently embarked on the path of industrial development. In his book "Militant Modernism" (2014), the English art critic Owen Hatherley described exactly what historical facts have traditionally been associated with the industrial rise and success of the British Empire for its citizens. The key figure of these events was the "poet of metal" engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whose projects (shipyards, railways, steamships, bridges and tunnels), which were created in the middle of the XIX century, radically changed modern technology and transport system. Largely thanks to Brunel, Great Britain became what the founder of Vorticism, Wyndham Lewis, called an "Industrial Island Machine" [15, p. 24].

Lewis himself denied the relevance of the topic of machine geometry for twentieth-century England, constantly emphasizing that Vorticism "did not sing romantic odes to cars in a futuristic manner, but rather reflected the aesthetic aspirations of those whose perception was deformed by the presence of machines from their very birth." "You are constantly talking about drive belts and fuming about internal combustion engines," said Lewis Marinetti, who came to London in 1910. "We have had cars in England since time immemorial, they are not news to us" [15, p. 28]. Becoming just "a symptom of a rather uncharacteristic extremism for Britain," Vorticism lasted only a few years, releasing two issues of the magazine "Blast" (the name of which was invented by Nevinson) and being noted in history for its role in creating "blinding camouflage" for Navy ships.

Conclusion

The example of English military painting of the First World War considered in this paper presented a unique opportunity to test the validity of the model of totalitarian art proposed by Mumford and supported in his research by Holomstock. We see a historical example of creativity engaged by the government, which itself at that time carried some authoritarian features. These works, united by a single theme, plot, as well as tasks that, according to the idea of the British Bureau of Military propaganda, were supposed to promote the rise of military spirit and civic enthusiasm, were created in conditions close to those that existed in Germany and Italy generations later. Nevertheless, with the exception of the comments and reservations of individual researchers, the example of British military painting is not considered in the context of studies of totalitarian art.

A comparison with the case of Italian Aerial tourism as an art in the service of a totalitarian regime that preserved a certain set of democratic freedoms made it possible to understand the reasons why the work of military artists in England could not be attributed to Totart. It is obvious that the principle proposed by Mumford requires clarification as soon as the works of democratic countries of similar stylistic orientation and ideologically charged no less than samples of totalitarian art of reactionary regimes of the twentieth century will be in the field of consideration. Probably, the answer to the question of why the birth of Totart did not happen in a warring democratic country is contained in the book by English researcher Paul Gough, author of the work "Terrible Beauty (2014) [16].

Commenting on Gough's research, the English author Jerry emphasized the most important feature of artists who came out of the schools of "militant modernism" and were hired by the War Ministry to promote and raise patriotic sentiments and militaristic spirit, who "instead created art that questioned the purpose of the war and in which the horror of war [was] felt" [17]. It seems that the example of English military painting is one of the keys to finding an answer to the question of how to define, distinguish and combine among themselves those examples of painting that in the scientific literature of recent times have been attributed to totalitarian art. The very question of what totalitarian art is remains open for further research, and at the same time its relevance does not decrease at all. Interestingly, the theme of battle painting also remains relevant. Frontline artists continue to accompany troops on time around the world, and at exhibitions you can see their works, no less interesting than those of their colleagues a hundred years ago [18].

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Peer Review

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The article submitted for publication in the journal "Culture and Art" is "Failed totalitarian art. English military painting of the First World War" is devoted to the consideration of an undoubtedly urgent problem of the development of totalitarian art in the first half of the second quarter of the XX century. As the author of the article rightly notes, this relevance is confirmed both by exhibition practice and the need to return to consideration of this issue several decades after the publication of landmark publications on this topic. Even more relevant is the stated perspective – the consideration of "failed totalitarian art" as a subject, which is not obvious in the context of the totalitarian state (Great Britain). The methodology of the study was not clearly articulated by the author in the text, but this remark more than pays off with an impressive introduction to the problem, which is a fairly detailed historiographical block, including the work of domestic and foreign specialists. On the positive side, it should be noted that this historiographical review is fully disclosed, the author is not limited to a brief listing of the authors' surnames, titles of works and a description of the main ideas. The author manages to present both the ideas of researchers and their concepts and approaches in studying the problems of totalitarian art within the framework of several thematic blocks allocated by him at once. The article has an undoubted scientific novelty due to the unusual angle of consideration within the framework of the problem of the development and definition of signs of totalitarian art – a phenomenon ambiguous and ambiguously presented by specialists, including due to the socio-economic and political agenda, within which there is a specific researcher. The author's reference to English painting in this context, an attempt to compare it with the "classical" examples of totalitarian art of the USSR, Germany or Italy allows us to expand the research boundaries within the framework of the problem under consideration. The style of presentation chosen by the author corresponds to the principles of scientific texts. The only thing that one could pay attention to is sometimes the author's excessive fascination with direct quotations. It seems that a number of quotations do not represent such an important author's position that it is necessary to repeat word for word, and not to present it in a summarized form with the same reference to the study. The structure of the work does not raise any special questions, especially if adjustments are made in connection with the previously stated remark about the excessiveness of direct quotations (in particular, this will help to somewhat reduce the volume of the first few blocks of text preceding the conversation about English painting proper). The bibliography, as well as the previously noted rather scrupulous historiographical review, satisfies the level of a scientific article. The author has mastered the main scientific works on the problems of totalitarian art, including works in English. To summarize, we note once again the need to reduce the number of direct citations that cause a feeling (only a feeling!) some abstractiveness of the first thematic blocks of the article. In general, based on the above, the article is recommended for publication in the journal, because it is one of the few examples of scientific treatment of the topic of totalitarian art, requiring the researcher to focus not only on artistic issues, but also an understanding of socio-political processes.