Gassed

[loganshort]

Have a look at the Times on line for an article by Danny Kelly (sports writer) on Sargents famous painting of gass victims at the IWM. Interesting article pointing out the relationship between the gas victims and a football game going on in the background (never noticed the footballers myself before, Even in the reproduction pic it's difficult to make out so you will have to go see the large original). Extremely good article on art hidden in the Sports pages! Article is titled "Somme thing to Ponder"

[SFayers]

Here's a link to the article:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/col...icle1816691.ece

cheers

Steve

[SFayers]

......and to see for yourself:

http://jssgallery.org/Paintings/Gassed/Gassed.htm

Click on the image for a close-up.

Cheers

Steve

[cockney tone]

Had read the article in the Times, amazingly I have had a small copy of this on my study wall for the best part of ten years and never noticed the footballers before.

Thanks for the post and the link to the picture.

Regards,

Scottie.

[Dragon]

Thanks for sharing the piece.

He says that the artist is using the football game "to plant a message of hope in what would otherwise be a morass of unleavened despair". I don't agree with him at all. I think they reinforce the melancholy, resignation and pathos of the soldiers' plight. The energy and colour of the footballers contrasts intensely with their present struggling state and the foootballers' easy movements are echoed in the positions of some of the gassed men's limbs. These anguished, blinded, stoical men may have been the 'footballers' in their past and I see the sportsmen as the ghosts in their memory: once dynamic, healthy men, now lying or standing as one of hundreds in a medical facility overwhelmed and unable to cope, the painted footballers represent what they once were and will never be again.

The men on the floor are what the new arrivals will become: blind, vomiting, agonised, depressed. Even the sun is pale and dying. I don't see any message of hope at all.

Gwyn

[cockney tone]

Gywn,

interesting perspective.

Sadly my education by passed the Arts and i find it really interesting how different people can view these works of art differently.

Think I will have to get to see this picture in 'the flesh' to understand it more.

Regards,

Scottie.

[SFayers]

Thanks for sharing the piece.

He says that the artist is using the football game "to plant a message of hope in what would otherwise be a morass of unleavened despair". I don't agree with him at all. I think they reinforce the melancholy, resignation and pathos of the soldiers' plight. The energy and colour of the footballers contrasts intensely with their present struggling state and the foootballers' easy movements are echoed in the positions of some of the gassed men's limbs. These anguished, blinded, stoical men may have been the 'footballers' in their past and I see the sportsmen as the ghosts in their memory: once dynamic, healthy men, now lying or standing as one of hundreds in a medical facility overwhelmed and unable to cope, the painted footballers represent what they once were and will never be again.

The men on the floor are what the new arrivals will become: blind, vomiting, agonised, depressed. Even the sun is pale and dying. I don't see any message of hope at all.

Gwyn

Have to say I agree with you completely Gwyn. The only 'positive' perspective I could really think of with regard to this painting, and the football players in particular, is that inspite of what misery and despair may surround you - life still goes on!

cheers

Steve

[Steven Broomfield]

I also found the thought about the groups of men being eleven odd - presumably the attendant is the goal keeper.

Alternatively, maybe the army, in their wisdom, put the blokes in 'sticks' of ten per attendant.

Goes to show you can read into a painting what you jolly well want.

[ian turner]

Goes to show you can read into a painting what you jolly well want.

Quite so, and if I recall correctly (and not visible in the link to the image) isn't there a dog-fight going on in the distance too? Where would that fit into the football analogy? The hooligan fans fighting on the terraces?

Ian

[loganshort]

Great how one person's interpretation can cause good debate! Good to read all the different views you are all making some valid points and, yes, I will also have to visit the real painting and form my own views then, it was not on show the last time I visited. Thanks go to the Times writer of the piece who might have stirred some people into visiting the IWM maybe for the first time. Good to have an article about WW1 somewhere other than the Art and Education pages.

[Graham Smith]

I'm no art buff ( I never got past the big tin of Crayolas)(mostly broken)

But if the artists wanted to make a point regarding the two teams of 'healthy footballers' playing in the background......and eleven men in the 'main line' why are there only ten men in the other line approaching the first aid post (easily seen in the expanded picture off the links)

Do you see what I'm getting at?

Two fit teams of blokes running about behind two blinded 'teams' of blokes would have a massive impact (on me anyway) So why only ten men in the second line?

Perhaps I'm putting two and two together and coming up with six!

I too never realised just how huge the original painting is. Brilliant

[Dan Morton]

I'm a bit reluctant to put in my tuppence here and do not intend to offend anyone, but...here goes.

Thinking about what Sargent intended us to feel or analyzing the meaning of the football game in the background is missing the point IMHO. When an artist creates a work, she or he is not thinking about...well...hum...I'll just stick this football game in the background because that will make my viewer think about A, not B. In the best possible sense, art is about feeling - evoking emotional and human responses - soul to soul. Sargent's subject is certainly about pathos and the tragedy of war. But an artist doesn't [and I include Sargent is this overly broad description] want you to think...ah pathos and the tragedy of war - how awful!. I can't tell you what Sargent wanted to do with his painting. Nobody can. But if I had been the artist, I would have wanted to kick the viewer in the gut with this scene. Isn't it gut-wrenching to you? It's the PBI as wounded animals in terrible, almost hopeless pain and despair, blinded by a sickening weapon. What have these men to look forward to? Mustard normally had limited physiological effects if the wounded soldier received reasonably capable treatment. But what was next for them? More of the same!

Feel some pain. Shed a tear for the poor ********. Again, just my humble opinion. But to me that's what Gassed is about.

Dan

[Dragon]

When an artist creates a work, she or he is not thinking about...well...hum...

We have a reasonably good idea about JSS’s thought processes because ‘Gassed’ was commissioned and intended as part of a planned official memorial scheme. It was supposed to be both epic and elegiac and he wrote numerous letters and notes as he sought in frustration for a subject that he thought would allow him to fulfil the requirements. It was not to be sentimental or over-dramatic, it was not to be triumphantly victorious, it was not to be idealised. It had to hold interest and fill a massive space and have sufficient gravitas to communicate the profundity of the war and its effects. I believe that it was supposed to be on the subject of Allied co-operation, but he abandoned this theme.

It is perfectly legitimate to try to analyse what a work of art – any creative art – means to us as individuals, which includes thinking about the effects of imagery and semiotics. I suggest that implying that an artist (word used loosely) arrives at completion with any symbolism having appeared accidentally along the way is rather dismissive of the intellectual effort which accompanies any original piece of creative art. We know that JSS spent some time in a dressing station where gassed cases arrived; his friend’s letters record the effect this had on him. Apart from his response as a horrified and compassionate human being, JSS the visual artist was witnessing the effects of blinding gas on young men who might never again be able to use their eyes. I think it is therefore reasonable to assume some level of intention in the scenes depicted in the painting.

There’s nothing at all wrong with responding to it as a piece which has harrowing immediate impact – and that would apply to any piece of original creative art, whether it’s writing, music, photography, or whatever else. Far from missing the point, though, I think that examining a piece for meaning enables us to uncover the levels of interpretation to which an artist of JSS’s calibre would almost certainly consciously refer; and perhaps better to understand the impact which touches us in seemingly inexplicable ways.

Gwyn

[Mark A]

Interesting thread.

Here's another more hopeful reading of the painting. Geoff Dyer on Gassed:

"In Gassed there is little suffering. Or rather, what suffering there is is outweighed by the painting's compassion. In spite pf the vomiting figure the scene has almost nothing in common with Owen's vision of the gas victim whose blood comes "gargling from froth-currupted lungs". What Sargent has depicted, instead, is the solace of the blind: the comfort of putting your trust in someone, of being safely led. At the same time the light seems enough to restore their sight, light so soft that it will soothe even their gas ravaged eyes. Pain is noisy, clamorous. In Sargent's painting coughing and retching are aborbed by the tranquility of the evening... the scene is already touched...by the beauty of the world as it will be revealed when their vision is restored.

Dyer then goes on to talk about the football game glimpsed between and its associations with the Great War.

M