thedrifter
10-30-06, 09:02 AM
The tug of war
A combat illustrator captures the view from the ground in Iraq
By Ken Johnson, Globe Staff
Before Sept. 11, 2001, Steve Mumford was just another painter working his way up the food chain of the New York art world. A graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and a Boston native, he'd gotten into a good gallery and his neo-surrealistic paintings were receiving respectful reviews.
Then came the attacks on the World Trade Center and the US invasion of Iraq, and Mumford came to an unusual, life- and career-altering decision. He decided to go to Iraq: not as a soldier but as an old-fashioned combat illustrator.
With press credentials provided by the online artnet Magazine, Mumford made four trips to Iraq in 2003 and 2004, and he created hundreds of ink and watercolor drawings documenting many different experiences of the war. He drew gun battles, crowded street scenes, landscapes, portraits of local citizens, prisoners behind bars, and images of US troops playing games and sleeping. Now 41 of those drawings, plus eight from a recent series about injured troops in a rehabilitation center, are on view in "Baghdad and Beyond: Drawings by Steve Mumford," a gripping and thought-provoking exhibition at the Tufts University Art Gallery.
Mumford's drawings are made with a loose, deft touch, but they are not so technically polished as to divert attention from his subject matter. A big part of what makes them absorbing to study is his determination to get down on paper as clearly and thoroughly as he can just what he is seeing. Each has a brief explanatory caption written by the artist. Some depict moments in the heat of battle. The patrol crouched in a shadowy passageway that opens onto a brightly lit area beyond are "getting ready to bound forward to a sniper's location, minutes after the death of Specialist Josiah Vandertulip." Many show more peaceful moments, like the one of troops hitting golf balls into the Tigris from the roof of one of Saddam's palaces at sundown.
The drawings of troops in rehab are not sentimental, but they are heartbreaking in their matter-of-factness. "Staff Sergeant John Jones, 1/7 Marines, Charlie Company, lost both legs below the knee," reads the caption for the picture of a man riding a stationary bike with an American flag-patterned piece of fabric wrapped around one of his prosthetic legs.
Mumford's drawings don't tell you how he feels politically about the war. Like a newspaper reporter, he is just trying to convey what it is like to be on the ground in the midst of a conflict in a distant country. He also wrote a blog for artnet, and his drawings and writings are gathered into a book, "Baghdad Journal: An Artist in Occupied Iraq, " published by Drawn + Quarterly (2005).
http://warpost.blogsome.com/wp-admin/images/mumford12-13-3.jpg
http://warpost.blogsome.com/wp-admin/images/mumford8-27-10.jpg
http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/mumford/Images/mumford2-5-12.jpg
Ellie
A combat illustrator captures the view from the ground in Iraq
By Ken Johnson, Globe Staff
Before Sept. 11, 2001, Steve Mumford was just another painter working his way up the food chain of the New York art world. A graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and a Boston native, he'd gotten into a good gallery and his neo-surrealistic paintings were receiving respectful reviews.
Then came the attacks on the World Trade Center and the US invasion of Iraq, and Mumford came to an unusual, life- and career-altering decision. He decided to go to Iraq: not as a soldier but as an old-fashioned combat illustrator.
With press credentials provided by the online artnet Magazine, Mumford made four trips to Iraq in 2003 and 2004, and he created hundreds of ink and watercolor drawings documenting many different experiences of the war. He drew gun battles, crowded street scenes, landscapes, portraits of local citizens, prisoners behind bars, and images of US troops playing games and sleeping. Now 41 of those drawings, plus eight from a recent series about injured troops in a rehabilitation center, are on view in "Baghdad and Beyond: Drawings by Steve Mumford," a gripping and thought-provoking exhibition at the Tufts University Art Gallery.
Mumford's drawings are made with a loose, deft touch, but they are not so technically polished as to divert attention from his subject matter. A big part of what makes them absorbing to study is his determination to get down on paper as clearly and thoroughly as he can just what he is seeing. Each has a brief explanatory caption written by the artist. Some depict moments in the heat of battle. The patrol crouched in a shadowy passageway that opens onto a brightly lit area beyond are "getting ready to bound forward to a sniper's location, minutes after the death of Specialist Josiah Vandertulip." Many show more peaceful moments, like the one of troops hitting golf balls into the Tigris from the roof of one of Saddam's palaces at sundown.
The drawings of troops in rehab are not sentimental, but they are heartbreaking in their matter-of-factness. "Staff Sergeant John Jones, 1/7 Marines, Charlie Company, lost both legs below the knee," reads the caption for the picture of a man riding a stationary bike with an American flag-patterned piece of fabric wrapped around one of his prosthetic legs.
Mumford's drawings don't tell you how he feels politically about the war. Like a newspaper reporter, he is just trying to convey what it is like to be on the ground in the midst of a conflict in a distant country. He also wrote a blog for artnet, and his drawings and writings are gathered into a book, "Baghdad Journal: An Artist in Occupied Iraq, " published by Drawn + Quarterly (2005).
http://warpost.blogsome.com/wp-admin/images/mumford12-13-3.jpg
http://warpost.blogsome.com/wp-admin/images/mumford8-27-10.jpg
http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/mumford/Images/mumford2-5-12.jpg
Ellie