The National Gallery of Victoria is currently showing a collection of etchings made by German painter Otto Dix after the First World War. These are dark expressionistic works, in part influenced by the reccuring nightmares Dix had after fighting in the ‘Battle of the Somme’ in 1916.
What struck me while looking at these images was how appropriate a medium etching is for exploring images of trauma. The violence of the strokes made by the acid eating into the plate seem to possess all the destructive energy of war. In many of the prints Dix used a hardground etching, aquatint, and drypoint, to create a rich spread of different lines and tones. The drypoint marks, with their wide, burred edges seem particularly evocative of horror – they are akin to barbed wire, rough unshaven whiskers, dry twigs and grasses, and hoarse, throat tearing cries.
These are works that make no concessions regarding the suffering caused by war, however Dix did not see himself as an overtly political artist. According to Dietman Elger and Hugh Beyer in Expressionism, Dix saw the role of the artist as an observer rather than activist. He said, ‘Artists should not improve or convert others. They are far too insignificant. But they must bear witness.’
In the above image, Stormtroopers Advancing Under Gas (1924), the gas masks look like bare skulls, as the soldiers rush forward into death. In another image, a soldier gulps down food from a tin, surrounded by piles of bones. There are faces distorted by screams, by disease, by injury.
It seems that by expressing the personal, human experience of war, Dix’s images cannot escape taking a political stance. And I think it is the bearing of witness that is often a catalyst for change.
