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It's a great time for exhibitions right now in London....
The National Portrait Gallery has 'The Great War In Portraits' which covers the usual suspects (Douglas Haig, Hindenburg) but also the ones who fought and died. Not just paintings but photographs too :
The BBC also recently aired '37 Days' about the assassination in Sarajevo and the run up to WWI :
The National Portrait Gallery has 'The Great War In Portraits' which covers the usual suspects (Douglas Haig, Hindenburg) but also the ones who fought and died. Not just paintings but photographs too :
In viewing the First World War through images of the many individuals involved, The Great War in Portraits looks at the radically different roles, experiences and, ultimately, destinies of those caught up in the conflict.
Setting the scene in 1914, the splendour and formality of portraits of national leaders are contrasted with a press photograph of Gavrilo Princip, the 19-year-old assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The narrative unfolds with power-portraits of commanders Haig, Foch and Hindenburg, asserting military authority, which are displayed together with dignified pictures of their troops by artists including Orpen, Sickert and Nevinson. Finally, images of heroes and medal-winners are shown alongside the wounded and the fallen, representing the bitter-sweet nature of a war in which valour and selfless endeavour were qualified by disaster and suffering.
From paintings and drawings to photography and film, the exhibition considers a wide range of visual responses to ‘the war to end all wars’, culminating in the visual violence of Expressionist masterpieces by Beckmann and Kirchner.
Setting the scene in 1914, the splendour and formality of portraits of national leaders are contrasted with a press photograph of Gavrilo Princip, the 19-year-old assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The narrative unfolds with power-portraits of commanders Haig, Foch and Hindenburg, asserting military authority, which are displayed together with dignified pictures of their troops by artists including Orpen, Sickert and Nevinson. Finally, images of heroes and medal-winners are shown alongside the wounded and the fallen, representing the bitter-sweet nature of a war in which valour and selfless endeavour were qualified by disaster and suffering.
From paintings and drawings to photography and film, the exhibition considers a wide range of visual responses to ‘the war to end all wars’, culminating in the visual violence of Expressionist masterpieces by Beckmann and Kirchner.
The BBC also recently aired '37 Days' about the assassination in Sarajevo and the run up to WWI :
As Russia's forces gathered on its western border last week, we were reminded once again that history repeats itself. First as tragedy, then as a three-part BBC series.
The particular section of history dramatised in 37 Days has been repeating itself of late like a pub bore on a baked bean diet. We may have our educational lacunae in this country, but surely most viewers could now gain an Oxford history first on the causes of the first world war.
Written by Mark Hayhurst, who scripted 2011's The Man Who Crossed Hitler, 37 Days covered the period between the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 and Britain's declaration of war against Germany on 4 August. Familiar territory, then, but with some new information – I for one had never before realised that the demented assassin bore such an uncanny resemblance to the television presenter Richard Bacon.
That disturbing revelation aside, it was a meticulous rendering of the foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey's diplomatic efforts to limit the theatre of war and, in particular, to avoid Britain's involvement.
There were no romantic digressions or fictional appeals to sentiment, but instead an impressively wordy and careful imagining of the secret conversations conducted by Grey with Asquith's Liberal cabinet and various foreign dignitaries. The only notable dramatic device was to use a British and a German civil servant as the narrators. It didn't add much, but nor did it take much away.
But for all the fidelity to accuracy, and for all the complexity of the story, the drama felt rigid and simplistic, lacking an authentic hinterland, and given to dubious stereotypes and an excess of rhetorical dialogue.
Too many of the characters spoke in private conversation as if they were being recorded for Hansard or a 20th-century history of quotations. Peter Ustinov once said that diplomats were like head waiters, and in lieu of any
proper physical action there was a great deal of the sort of elaborate movements normally associated with being shown to your table in a stuffy restaurant. And rather too much marching across polished floorboards.
More problematic was the depiction of the Prussian military establishment. What with the clipped accents, those spiked helmets and the tendency to bark exclusively in the imperative, parody was a constant and distracting threat, even if the actors worked hard to defeat it. Still, you couldn't help but wonder what Wes Anderson might have done with this material.
Grey, after all, had a brother who was eaten by a lion, another mauled to death by a buffalo, and a wife who was killed by a horse. No doubt the film-makers decided not to look for comedy in the lead up to global conflagration, even when the comedy came looking for them.
Instead the focus was Grey's intricate web of diplomacy. In a strong performance as a weakish man, Ian McDiarmid essayed the thesis that Grey was too clever for his counterparts, and therefore too clever for Britain's own good. This may be so, but there was always going to be a European war in 1914, because that's what Germany wanted. The only question was whether Britain was going to take part. Spoiler alert! We did.
The particular section of history dramatised in 37 Days has been repeating itself of late like a pub bore on a baked bean diet. We may have our educational lacunae in this country, but surely most viewers could now gain an Oxford history first on the causes of the first world war.
Written by Mark Hayhurst, who scripted 2011's The Man Who Crossed Hitler, 37 Days covered the period between the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 and Britain's declaration of war against Germany on 4 August. Familiar territory, then, but with some new information – I for one had never before realised that the demented assassin bore such an uncanny resemblance to the television presenter Richard Bacon.
That disturbing revelation aside, it was a meticulous rendering of the foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey's diplomatic efforts to limit the theatre of war and, in particular, to avoid Britain's involvement.
There were no romantic digressions or fictional appeals to sentiment, but instead an impressively wordy and careful imagining of the secret conversations conducted by Grey with Asquith's Liberal cabinet and various foreign dignitaries. The only notable dramatic device was to use a British and a German civil servant as the narrators. It didn't add much, but nor did it take much away.
But for all the fidelity to accuracy, and for all the complexity of the story, the drama felt rigid and simplistic, lacking an authentic hinterland, and given to dubious stereotypes and an excess of rhetorical dialogue.
Too many of the characters spoke in private conversation as if they were being recorded for Hansard or a 20th-century history of quotations. Peter Ustinov once said that diplomats were like head waiters, and in lieu of any
proper physical action there was a great deal of the sort of elaborate movements normally associated with being shown to your table in a stuffy restaurant. And rather too much marching across polished floorboards.
More problematic was the depiction of the Prussian military establishment. What with the clipped accents, those spiked helmets and the tendency to bark exclusively in the imperative, parody was a constant and distracting threat, even if the actors worked hard to defeat it. Still, you couldn't help but wonder what Wes Anderson might have done with this material.
Grey, after all, had a brother who was eaten by a lion, another mauled to death by a buffalo, and a wife who was killed by a horse. No doubt the film-makers decided not to look for comedy in the lead up to global conflagration, even when the comedy came looking for them.
Instead the focus was Grey's intricate web of diplomacy. In a strong performance as a weakish man, Ian McDiarmid essayed the thesis that Grey was too clever for his counterparts, and therefore too clever for Britain's own good. This may be so, but there was always going to be a European war in 1914, because that's what Germany wanted. The only question was whether Britain was going to take part. Spoiler alert! We did.
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