Days of Action, Calls For Peace

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On the Third Anniversary of “Shock and Awe”

Days of Action, Calls for Peace

Saturday, March 18, 2-3 PM Peace Parade (1st ever down center of Main)

Led by Gold Star Mother Susan House. Anti-WarProtest March. Drummers, Dancers, Stitt Walker. Prizes for Best Kids’ Signs & Peace Attire. Assemble with Banners & Flags, 12:30 MISSION PARK TO PLAZA PARK, VENTURA

Saturday, March 18, 3-5 PM “Stop the War Now” Peace Rally

Musical Groups: “Nature Gif,” “Tras of ire,” GilSOTU,” and thers. A Few Good Speakers (keynoter Hannah Beth Jackson). Dove Release, Kids Acthities, Community Groups, Raffle Prizes. PLAZA PARK, CHESTNUT & SANTA CLARA ST., VENTURA

Anti-War Film Festival Acoustic Jam Session War Photographer Keep the beat going. Join

TOPPING RM, 654 € MAIN, VENTURA } rally musicians at Ventura’s 3 favorite coffee house, and...

Peace Art Show: Teach-In: Peace Through Understanding + War, Whats it Good For?

DEUX HALL, 202A CANADA, OJAI est chanoe to gee end bey selections from show by

Mon, Mar 20, 3-529 PM renowned artist Matt Sesow. Youth Anti-War Vigil ‘THE UNDERGROUND | GOVT CENTER, VICTORIA-TELEPHONE ‘3367 TELEGRAPH RO, VENTURA|

Monday, March 20, 539-7 PM Silent Candlelight Vigil

On the 3rd anniversary of the day “Shock & Awe” began. Honoring all lives lost in Iraq. VENTURA COUNTY GOVERNMENT CENTER, VICTORIA AVE-TELEPHONE RD, VENTURA

PERCE COALITION

Events treo of charge ‘More info - 487-9109)

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The art of peace

The arts have long been a vehicle used to oppose war and “Days of Action, Calls for Peace” will include two art exhibits, a musical jam session and a film festival. One art exhibit will highlight

Washington, D.C. artist Matt Sesow, whose poignant graphic appears on the promotional material for the events. A

dehumanized, ghostlike figure with exposed bones protruding from its limbs dominates the piece. Rather than wearing a gas mask and goggles, the creature seems to have grown them as body parts. The fractured background depicts an erupting oil well and the words “Shock and Awe,” the U.S. strategy that seemed to work when Saddam’s troops melted away as coalition troops approached Baghdad, but ultimately failed to stop the resistance that fights on toda

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The Art of War An informal survey of war and warriors from cave paintings to the worldwide web.

BY JAMES SHANNON.

Sheila Jackson stands on the comer in front of the Federal Courthouse in Greenville. It's the Wednesday afternoon rush hour as thousands of downtown workers begin their trek home. Jackson is one of a hardy band of peace activists who have been on this comer every Wednesday for the past three years to express their ‘opposition to the war in Iraq. In recent weeks, instead of a protest sign, she has carried an 18x24” acrylic painting that depicts the leaders of the George W. Bush administration — Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld — Surrounded by a maelstrom of war with the pain of the dead and dying openly displayed. The countryside is in flames that also threaten the Bill of Rights, which lays in tatters in the right foreground. Subtle i's not, but the passion on display suggests a homegrown version of Picasso's Guemica, a searing masterwork whose power is, Undiminished 70 years after it was painted.

That resemblance tums out to be no accident. Jackson says that Guernica provided the inspiration for her to create this painting. Images of war and warriors have been part of the artistic lexicon for as long as there has been art, second only to myriad religions as grist for the artist's mill. Cave paintings created many thousands of ears belors the Br of Cevst thot euvive lodey conials scares of winiive berlam, os any mine vos fl needed that man's inhumanity to man has a lengthy historical pedigree.

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‘ALSO IN COVER STORY The Art of Waris an ancient Chinese book on military strategy written by Sun Tzu in the 6th century BC that is

still read and admired today for the enduring truths it contains about the field of battle. We have appropriated its title for this story about actual artwork that has war as its subject in the spirit of Sun Tzu, who wrote, “It is only ‘one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on,

‘Art employed as propaganda in a time of war is a tradition honored by time, if nothing else. In the collection of the Greenville County Museum of Art is Massacre at Dinant, a painting by the American artist George Bellows that depicts the ravishing of a Belgian village at the hands of the Germans in World War |. Bellows was openly anti-war at the beginning of that conflict, but later changed his mind and enlisted. He also created a series of lithographs and paintings of the Dinant atrocities that evoked the work of Francisco de Goya from a century before. The Third of May, 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madiid, painted in 1814, depicted the slaughter of Spanish citizens by an occupying power, in this case the French.

Paintings such as these not only record the horror of war, but also provoke the nationalistic fervor of the country of origin of the victims they depict. Sometimes the intent of the artist gets lost in the images themselves. That may be the case with Guemica, perhaps the most famous painting by a man who was arguably the most famous artist in the world during his lifetime. Whether Picasso intended the mural to be a rallying cry against Franco ra cry of anguish for the little Basque village in Northern Spain bombed into oblivion on November 27, 1937 by Franco's Nazi allies is almost beside the point today. If the intent was to topple Franco, the painting failed miserably. In The Shock of the New, Robert Hughes tersely notes that it didn't shorten the Franco regime by a single day. Nonetheless, Guemica stands as a monument to the 1,600 civilians who perished in the world's first sustained aerial bombardment of a civilian population, as well as a pungent protest of the ultimate human folly. Or as Emest Hemingway put i “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

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However, Guemica did not retreat quietly into the Reina Sofia, Spain's national museum of art where it hangs today. Nelson Rockefeller had a large tapestry reproduction made of the mural, which he donated to the United Nations. It was hung at the entrance to the UN Security Council, but in January, 2003 the tapestry was covered with a large blue curtain in order to provide “an appropriate background for the cameras.

This cover-up took place before Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered the regrettable (his word) casus belli for the US invasion of Iraq. At the time, Maureen Dowd observed in the New York Times, “Mr. Powell can't very well seduce the world into bombing Iraq surrounded on camera by shrieking and mutilated women, men, children, bulls and horses.

Photography altered the art of war, bringing the horrors of the battlefield home with an immediacy that paintings, lithographs and sculpture never could. By the mid-19th century, photography was advancing by leaps and bounds. Photographers working for Mathew Brady took some 7,000 images of the American Civil War, the first conflict recorded in such excruciating detall. Even today, the photographs of the Battle of Antietam in Maryland (also known as Sharpsburg) serve as a grim reminder of September 17, 1862 - the bloodiest day in American history. The battle, which was essentially a stalemate, claimed more than 23,000 killed and wounded,

Civilian reaction to photographic images of war has consumed military planners ever since, with varying degrees of censorship imposed in an attempt to curtail the unintended consequence of letting the folks back home in on the bloody little secret. Another option involved creating images that projected the desired message. One famous example was the raising of the American flag on Mount Suribachi on a small volcanic island in the central Pacific called lwo Jima. Four days after a massive landing of 30,000 Marines, they made it to the top of the mountain and hoisted a small American flag. The sight was so stirring that later that day, they staged the raising of a larger flag. Photographer Joe Rosenthal captured this second flag raising and won a Pulitzer Prize, and the image was later made into a sculpture by Felix W. Weldon that stands to this day. The heroic image represents a grim episode of the war in the Pacific. An estimated 21,000 Japanese died defending that wretched island, exacting a toll of 6,000 Americans killed and 20,000 wounded in the process.

Another image of war that won a Pulitzer Prize was a little more spontaneous. During the Tet offensive in the Vietnam War, Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams and a cameraman for NBC were on the streets of Saigon when they saw General Nguyen Ngoc Loan raise a pistol to the head of a captured Viet Cong prisoner and calmly pull the trigger. This became one of the most famous of many indelible images from that war, and one Adams would come to regret. Gen. Loan relocated to Virginia after the fall of Saigon and opened a pizza restaurant, but had to sell it when his identity was disclosed. Many credit =r blame - the Adams’ photo with helping to turn public sentiment in the US against the war.

The art of war can be used to agitate for or against any particular conflict, an attribute not necessatily reflective of art but of human ambivalence either to the entanglement in question or to war itself. The speed and pervasiveness of intemet communication has infused the art of war with even more immediacy. The electronic graphic called War President was crafted for a weblog by a guy identified only as Joe. In no way a commercial venture, it was widely circulated in a matter of weeks. This portrait of George W. Bush is a mosaic made up of some 700 individual pictures of members of the US Armed Forces killed in the war in Iraq. The power of the work derives from multiple sources — and make no mistake, it is a powerful image indeed no matter your point of view upon encountering it

The individual sacrifice represented by each face tears at the viewer; the sense of loss, of waste of human life almost palpable. For many, the fact these men were sent to die by others who declined to serve on the front lines in the war of their generation compounds the tragedy — and the crime of which Hemingway spoke. George W. Bush spent his portion of the Vietnam conflict in a “champagne” unit of the Texas Air National Guard reserved for sons of the rich and powerful where he knew he would never face the enemy. Even that was more than Dick Cheney managed, taking five student deferments to avoid military service in the Vietnam era because he had “other priorities.” These artful dodgers confer yet another meaning on the art of war, with the names of the 58,000-plus on the Vietnam memorial who died in their place compounded by the faces staring back at us from War President.

The anonymous artist, the guy named Joe, turns out to be Joe Wezorek; his blog is called American Leftist. Wezorek understands the powerful image he created: “Given this image's inflammatory nature, | posted it with a great deal of trepidation,” he writes. “I had a hard time deciding if it was the right thing to do, and | am stil not sure. No, | didn't have the consent of the families of those pictured, and | apologize for any additional pain that this image causes them. That said, | must say that it is my belief that one distinguishing characteristic between art and other forms of speech is that art takes risks, and if we, as a society, value art, we must allow it more leeway than other modes of expression to incite or offend.

Finally, we consider a more traditional expression of the art of war. Matt SeS0W is a 39-year-old artist working in Washington, DC whose sense of outrage at the US invasion of Iraq informs his canvases with an explosion of passion and energy. A software engineer by profession, he began painting in 1993 and has only been a full time artist since 1997. But the quality of his work merits its inclusion in our admittedly subjective survey of the art of war. Of all the atists on the contemporary scene encountered in researching this piece, none surpass the power and burning truth of Sesow. He describes War Call, depicted on the cover, as “a play on words, done in reaction, in February [2003] to the call to war.” It is his visceral reaction to these truths that cause the twinge in our own viscera.

A group of more than two dozen of these images can be viewed at www. outsiderart.info/sesowwar. htm. You can take the full measure of the artist at www.sesow.com.

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On the Third Anniversary of “Shock and Awe”

Days of Action,

Calls for Peace

‘Sun, Mar 12, 3:00-5:00 PM Town Hall Meeting Panelists Reflecting Dyers Polnts Unitarian Unersllst Church of Ventura

‘of View on How to End the Iraq War. 53654 Ralston St ‘Sponsored by Ventura County for Democracy Ventura Public Forum The Underground 3367 Telegraph Rd

Ventura

‘Art Show:

“War, What Is It Good For?” Area {856 EThompson Bi (east of Ash t) Ventura Opening and Artists’ Reception Featured Guest Artist, Matt Sesow, Washington, D.C. Plus Works by some of the Ventura Aroa's finest Artist, ‘Sponsored by the Peace Coaltion withthe ‘SupportofArt for Action. q

Selections From: “War, What Is It Good For?” Tho Underground 3367 Telegraph Rd

‘Art Show: “Sea Shovel” Upfront Gallery 2675 Laurel St Ventura ‘tists’ Lecture by Megan and Muay ‘Median on thelr New Art Video Instalation,

‘tists an Youth of lL Ages: Discuss ‘Word Events with Open Hearts and Minds. ‘Sponsored by At for Acton & BION Ventura

“Peace Though Understanding: Deux Hall ‘Teach-Inon iraq” 2028 canadast Sponsored by Osi Peace Coalton Oat ‘Anti-War Film Festival

Topping Room, Foster Library ‘SLE Malnst Ventura Volees in Wartima. The experience of war sharply etched through powerful Images and the words of poets.

Unitaran Universalist Church of Ventura ‘5654 Ralston st Broken Stionce. A series of fv fms ‘about courage, herolsm, and triumph ‘over adversities during World War Il.

Topping Room, Foster Library War Photographer. Portralt of word- B famous war photographer (Rwanda, ‘Bosnia, E Salyador) James Nachtwey. ‘Sponsored by Citzens for Peaceful Resolutions

Acoustic Jam Session ‘The Underground 3367 Telegraph Rd at gong ater the Parade and with Musiclans fromthe

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