This artwork is Crak! by Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), created in 1963/64, and is in his familiar Pop Art style, which is about my limit of knowledge here but I won’t let that stop me. I like artworks that come across as simple and neat, it gives me some sort of chance of understanding them.
The image originally came from a war comic, with Lichtenstein cropping and reshaping it into something sharper and more theatrical. I don’t know what the meaning behind this is meant to be, I’m guessing that war is made to look heroic and exciting, something that is somehow thrilling to be a part of. The artwork might be fun and cartoony, but the reality of war is something a little different. Or at least that’s what I think is the plan, I can’t imagine that this is a picture about violence.
For reasons that aren’t entirely obvious even to me as this is a very different image, but this all reminded me of this war poster at the Imperial War Museum which is riddled with emotional guilt. The artist Savile Lumley (1876-1960) later disassociated himself from the image.
They are very different works, but both seem to deal with the way war is presented to people. Lichtenstein’s image makes it look dramatic and exciting, while Lumley’s poster makes refusal look shameful and cowardly. One sells war through action, the other through guilt. Neither is really about the messy, frightening reality of conflict, but about the images and emotions used to make people respond to it. So perhaps that is why the connection made sense to me, eventually.