Connections/War and Conflict

My name is Dirk Breiding. I'm a curator in the arms and armor department, and I work with objects every day that in some way or another are connected with conflicts and wars.

If you think about conflicts and wars, you're basically thinking in extremes, that on the one level

you have war as something abstract, but I then you realize that there would be no war unless

individuals took part in it. Wars can be

fascinating when you just have to study them.

They must be absolutely horrifying when you're thrown into a war. And I've always been much more interested in

how individuals are affected. When I look at Washington Crossing the Delaware, he's obviously portrayed as some kind of a hero and

there's a lot of determination on his face, but what happens in war must be utter chaos. You can

only imagine when you look at the battlefield of Gettysburg, for example, you almost cynically think if you're thrown in the midst of something horrible like this, maybe you're the lucky one if you don't survive.

I wanted to look at people who did survive the war. The Veteran by Winslow Homer--you wouldn't even know that it is a veteran if the title didn't tell you. There are hints, but at first glance you would have no idea. I'm sure he's in some way happy that the war is over, but is he proud? Is he tormented by what he's experienced? You don't see the face, you can only guess really.

When, by contrast, you know this painting has all sorts of levels. He's obviously survived, but not only is he a Union soldier but he's also African American. If you just take him as a soldier and you look at him, he's still saluting despite his horrible injury. Is there some social commentary, you know, what was the artist trying to say or if you take the person at face value, what is he actually thinking at that point?

One of the things that armor does is it obscures the face. You have no idea what the person wearing a helmet with a visor is thinking, which makes armor to some people very scary. One of the

questions that doesn't seem to let me go is whether war is some kind of human condition, and that battle is not only a grown-up concept

even little children argue over the smallest things. And that almost lends a comical level to conflict.

You know, any victory that's been achieved, yes it's shaped history in a certain way but there's no way of telling how lasting the effects may be.

I like the intelligent way to show with humor how even the most serious of human endeavors can be completely useless. I think one of the problems is that we cannot pass on experiences. It sort of gets lost in time.

I'm German, and the second World War to my grandfather was a very real event that he lived through, to me it is a historical event that I relate to in a way, but I haven't experienced it. I think art offers one way of passing experiences on.

Of course art has a certain responsibility there as well. You can use art for propaganda purposes, and art can glorify war, but at the same time it can relate

some of the horrors. The danger is of course that you fall back into the safety again, that you look at the horrors and you take on the position of a voyeur, but that is

left to anyone, you know, how you want to look at art. Do you want to learn something? Do you want to enjoy it? Do you want to always see something uplifting? Or do you want something

thought-provoking?