好，这次决定传上我在freshman必要的作文课上写的最后一个一篇文章。命题是来诠释一幅在Carnegie Museum of Art 的画。我选的是下面这幅，War Bride， 然后写了一篇文章，如下。不过，我希望大家在看文章之前，先好好看看这幅画和她的名字，想想你自己的意见，这样会比较客观得来看我的文章吧。。。
Looking back at human history, war seems to be a universal subject across space and time. The story of violence aimed for conquering never change in history although the war has brought more and more severe consequences upon the world over time. As technology advances, even war has been made mechanized and stripped away the human characteristics. From the stones and tree branches in the close bodily fight between the cavemen and sword fighting on horses around the Middle Ages, to the contemporary warfare, where canons and bombs can be dropped on the enemies without being in contact with victims or seeing their faces, the main purpose of the war shifts from resolving personal conflicts to ambitious conquest that could sink a whole nation. A fight or a war that is used to show courage and strength of the hot-blooded youth, has became a cold and calculated enterprise that, instead, toys with the passion of young soldiers. Clarence Holbrook Carter, an artist lived through the World War II, painted “War Bride” in 1940, about the start of the WWII, to stimulate the audiences to rethink what modern war represents and what intimate influence it has on the society. The painting was inspired by his dream one night, of a steel mill working in full blast, and the marriage trend he saw at the time, when his young female art students were getting married before the boys drafted in the war. In the painting, the super natural combination of the giant black machines of steel mill and the frail virgin bride invokes both fear and anticipation: fearing the possibility that the machine would crush the bride while wondering if the union of human flesh with machine is feasible. Utilizing various symbolisms of the semi-abstract object in the painting, Carter’s disturbing image persuades the audience to see the truth of war, the sinister and overwhelming power that slowly strips away the humanity by feeding on the whole society for its continuation. “War Bride” with the WWII context, which was when the painting was painted, suggests the machine’s representation as the firearms of war. The red back drop behind the machinery could be seen as blood. Although the destruction of war has always been associated with the death of the victims, Carter, by positioning the machine of war at the end of the aisle that is usually reserved for the groom, stimulate the viewers to see that war’s first victim is its contributor, such as the soldiers, rather than its legitimate enemies. The presence of the machine at the end can be seen as the substitution of the groom, or can be merely taken as to show the groom’s absence.
If the machine is interpreted as to substitute the groom, the machine could be expanded to symbolize the militaristic human weapons of war. The groom of the war bride, the soldier, is trained by the war to disregard any sympathy and humanity felt for the enemies in order to follow the commands and execute missions. As the machines are programmed, not spontaneous or emotional, the soldiers going through war also develop a machine-like obedience with numbed feelings to cope with the war. The soldiers assimilate and transform toward the image of the machine. Their emotions, innocents, and maybe optimisms and even sanities are bled out of them from the scars of war, as the machine in the picture, solemn and black, glows the cold and indifferent white hue while the passionate red dissipates behind it.
If the interpretation of the mechanized groom shows the destruction of war on the soldiers, then the belief that the groom is absent in the scene, represent the damage of war on the soldier’s family as the ceremony of holy union in marriage turns into a ritual of sacrifice. If the read background is seen as the blood of soldiers dead on the battle field, the bride is already a widow, which mirrors the real concerns of the WWII war brides who must bear the high possibilities that they will become a widow shortly after marriage. Along the isle, the presence of families and friends in the traditional weddings are substituted by rolls and rolls of steel. The black overtones and reflective surface of the machines overwhelms the picture, building a solemn and saddening atmosphere, as if to hint the hard truth of war that its damage spread across the society, that the rolls might be coffins, hosting the bodies of sacrificed husband and devoted families members and friends who fall under the control of the demanding war, or containing the hopes and happiness of marriage now repressed by war and dead. In a way, the war destroyed the social connections and unity as well as the individuals. The supposedly holy union of two individual as well as the symbolized union of their families and social circles are cut short as the procession turns into a burial ceremony for many, by war.
Carter wants to show the monstrous characteristics of war, as the machines, in drastic contrast with the innocence and fragility of the lone virgin bride to warn the viewers of the dangerous nature of war, especially to warn the innocents who are not aware of their distributions to the war. In order to empathize the contrast, Carter used layers of black and red to color the machines and background while painted the bride in white gown; the violent and heavy tone of red and black dominates over the light and peaceful white. Carter molded the machines with thick stacking of oil paints and straight ordered lines while used a totally different technique with light layer and small brush to give the bride a smooth texture of soft and flowing femininity. Although the bride seems to have a glow about her in her white gown and veil, the fate, for her and for other war brides, are not bright, and is illustrated by the machines’ dominance over the bride in the painting, both in mass and color. For the war brides, whether their military husbands return physically safe or not, they will need to compensate the part of duty and support of the family that is missing from their husbands, who would be inevitability scarred spiritually by the brutality of war. Nevertheless, girls go into marriages as war brides despite the sacrifices they know they will make sooner or later. What they ignored is that their willingness to sacrifice is indirectly guilty of aiding the war. Get married and form a family is one critical event in one’s life, and the act of marriage satisfies the young soldier’s passion by having a life-long lover and also fulfills his longing to own a family. Marriage would seem to appease any regrets or discontents a youth might have that would set him back on his decision to go to war; the selfless act of girls would further encourage and motivate the soldiers to engage in the war without reserve. Marriage also leads to a reasonable possibility to bear offspring, in particular, to give birth to male babies. Thus, the war brides accelerate and strengthen the power of war by sending their husbands on the frontline while reproducing more fresh blood to further the continuation of war. In a way, it forms a union between humanity and war: the humanity supplies the fresh rage and blood, repeating the process of destruction again and again in history; reminiscent of the continuous and infinite rolls of steel in the painting, rolling along the conveyor belt to the humongous machine at the end of the isle for sacrifice. Carter, by drawing a still draped veil on the bride’s head, was attempting to warn the brides of the danger in their impulsive and innocent decisions. Veil, symbolically, can function to cover up the reality. Usually in the wedding, the groom would lift off the veil and the bride would see a clear view of her future husband and accept the reality and responsibilities associated with the marriage. The bride in the painting, however, still has the veil draping down over her head, implies that her vision has not been opened to reality and that her decision to marry is dominated mainly by idealisms, of the honor with sacrifice, for example. Carter decorates the veil with a head piece made of small white flowers, further accentuates the bride’s innocence in making the naive decision, and again points out how this innocence could be easily crushed by the reality of the war by comparing the frail flower with the massive machines.
While the symbolisms embedded in any kind of machines with any view of the bride would have successfully delivered Carter’s warning message, Carter purposefully chose the minimum but representative element and angle for his work, such as the plain steel rolls and the turning bride, which in fact maximizes the effectiveness of his messages. The steel rolls and the machine parts in the painting are big, plain and with no details, which exhibit no particular functions that could connect the machines with a specific usage while showing all the qualities of machine: the cold hard substance of metal, ordered reproductively of the machines, superior strength and persistence, and etc. The simplicity of the machines helps the viewer to draw connections to broader themes and ideas than just steel mills, such as to war. Besides the machines, Carter only draw one human being in the whole painting, the bride, who faces the aisle with back turned to the viewer, shows no face. The bride, with no unique characteristics that would identify her as a particular individual, can be viewed as the representation of millions of other war brides. By drawing the bride facing forward, Carter also constructed a unique perspective by which the audience looking at the painting would feel as if he is standing right behind the bride and is following her down the receding path. Carter, thus, encourages the viewer to stand in the same position as the bride, not only sharing the bride’s view of the machine ahead, also draws the viewer deep into the subject of the painting to envision the future and hardship awaiting the war brides as if in their shoes. In addition, since the location right behind the bride is usually reserved for the bride’s father or her very close friend to walk her down the aisle, the viewer standing at this intimate position is able to further extend the perspective to visualize the influences the war would have on the war bride’s family, friends, and society in general.
If Clarence Carter painted “War Bride” (1940) with an intention to show the reality of the war and war-time marriage to his art students, he succeeded, and his “War Bride”, in its simple form with no indications of particular time period, would continue to educate and influence its audience, not only about war, maybe even about the industrialized modern world as well.
