A quick search under Steve Mumford Iraq will yield a number of images.
Posted on 10/30/2006 5:57:01 AM PST by Republicanprofessor
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.
Article Tools Printer friendly Single page E-mail to a friend Theater/Arts RSS feed Available RSS feeds Most e-mailed Reprints & Licensing Save this article powered by Del.icio.us More: Globe Living/Arts stories | A&E section | Latest entertainment news | Globe front page | Boston.com Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
A quick search under Steve Mumford Iraq will yield a number of images.
Art ping.
Let Sam Cree, Woofie, or me know if you want on or off this art ping list.
Wow, these are great!
Terrific stuff, wish such illustrations would have a wider print audience.
He's really GOOD!!!
I don't know much about art, but I know what
I like and I really like this guy's stuff.
Less dramatic (some might say overly dramatic) than Floherty (American WWII) but with the same command of pen-and-ink line.
The ink-and-wash technique and the picturesque atmosphere is reminiscent of Ardizzone (British WWII) but Ardizzone never handled human figures convincingly, IMNSHO.
He reminds me of Harvey Dunn (American WWI), my favorite combat artist, but without the monumental weight.
I like him, and I hope we see more of his work.
Much as I love photography, a good painter can capture the spirit of a time or place in ways that a photographer cannot.
Where is that middle image set? Reminds me of Moore's subway drawings from WWII, but the setting is very different.
Ardizzone is probably best known for his "precious" Victorian illustrations of children's books. He was a dab hand at creating atmosphere, but his peculiar distortions of the human figure always put me off a little.
(from Trollope's Barchester Towers)
His portraits, especially of children, are beautiful, saying much with few lines.
Bill Mauldon of WWII was the best....
He drew a weekly cartoon for Stars & Stripes, they were gritty and realistic, and Willie and Joe are the classic archetypes of the weary dogface . . . but Mauldin's work was editorial, not reportorial (and occasionally got him in trouble, especially with Patton).
"Radio th' old man we'll be late on account of a thousand-mile detour."
All that said, he was a brilliant cartoonist, won the Pulitzer after the war for one of his editorial cartoons.
Fire and Ice
Combat art and personal reflections from the War on Terrorism
http://mdfay.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the ping. These are really good.
You're right, nice correction. The guy was brilliant.
Awhile back, the Freeper Foxhole published an interview my daughter did with my dad when she was in 5th or 6th grade. She illustrated the interview by juxtaposing Mauldin's cartoons with (completely unauthorized) pictures taken by my dad. Amazing how often the two went together!
ping to pics!
Bump - good illustrations!!
Thanks for the ping!
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