The whole book can be viewed HERE
Otto Dix's series of 51 prints, Der Krieg (1923-4), modeled on Goya’s 82 print series Los Desastres de la Guerra (1810-20) is not only an account of his own horrific experiences, but is also a master-class in etching, I always wanted to test myself like that.
The last few years we have been surrounded by conflict in the Middle East, and it is impossible not to be deeply affected by the rampant destruction and continuing displacement of so many people like you and I. Although, like most people in the West, I have no direct experience of war, I feel compelled to ask myself how would I behave in such a brutalized society.
These images do not offer easy answers or solutions; instead they prompt questions. As one viewer told me, they are hard to look at but even harder to look away from. Their main subject matter is what lies beneath the shiny veneer of civilization that allows people to live their lives without thinking about or questioning the horrors that lie a step or two away from the lives that most of us live?
For me an artist’s responsibility is to make people think and reflect. But more selfishly, depicting uncomfortable aspects of the world that we live in also acts as a safety valve- “self reflection or you burst.”
Increasingly uncompromising images of societal breakdown and degradation appear on TV and in newspapers. Yet there is always the danger that these images translate as ephemeral spectacles, their power diluted by information overload.
Each plate in The Crying Game combines different etching techniques and each image confronts the viewer with a different kind of violence.
Etching, with its harsh bitten lines, offset by the poetry of aquatint, is the perfect medium in which to give voice to this uncompromising question.
The fully illustrated book features reproductions of the entire suite of 30 etchings, alongside an introduction by the artist & essays by Laura Gascoigne and Julian Page.
The whole book can be viewed HERE
