L'expérience W de Ward

The foot soldier's experience of W

The artist Otto Dix was 23 years old when he volunteered for millitary service in 1914, then he served in the army during WWI.Among artist Dix was one of those who depicted the horrors of war and the numerous cruelties of modern society.Prostitutes, poverty and crimes are among his pictural subjects. Dix worked on this large format (78x98'') from 1934 to 1936, now exposed at the  Staatliche Museen Preubischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.

The painting shows a battlefield in Flanders, devastating where copses and mud predominates.In this picture 3 important points stands out :

Firstly the 3 soldiers in the foreground, they are wearing a french uniform with a helmet whithout spike, are covered of mud. All the soldiers are wearing the same uniform teared to shreds, brown and dirty. The middle soldier isn't recognizible, all we can see of his face is his moustache. I could be a will of the artist to show she soldiers in general, not particaulary a face or another. The middle soldier looks quite and peaceful. He could be death or asleep. At his right the second soldier is alive, curled up in the fetal position, he tries to protect himself with a little blancket. It shows that he's powerless in front of the attack. He looks like a child, frightened, the spirit tortured and looking to the sky. There is a contrast between the 2 characters, one who symbolyses the death and the other who represents the life. The third soldier is more like a deformate mass than a body. In front of them there are tree branches, dead trees which remind us the soldier's situation.

The second important point we must analyse is the destroyed battlefield in the foreground. The tree truncks spread everywhere give us a violent impression of a storm and fights. Suggesting a hostile and thorny landscape covered whith a dirty veil of mud. In the right part of the picture, under a sort of tent, we can see a white character. It could be a ghost soldier lost in the limbs.We can also find different colours like light blue which reflects the sky, it's a massive quantity of water which had soaked the trenches, maybe drowned some soldiers, and had formed a blue diagonal which extends up to the horizon. Here and there are sparkling touchs of white, that represents with red and black the flesh in decomposition, like if the picturewas gnawed by some acid baths. The landscape is undulated like a gaping wound caused by shells, and the painting technique, with heavy lines, contributes to a bursting impression.

Finally the 3rd point of analysis is the importance of the sky, very low, which take a large part of the picture, like to suggest that death is everywhere and that the soldiers still alive are very close to her. In this part the lines are more thin and airy but we can see in the upper right hand corner dark blue shadings, bringing a contrast with sky's light blue. In the upper left hand corner the sky emits red lights, like the rests of a fire badly extinguished. It reminds the violence of the fights, blood and death. Te middle of the sky is very luminous and shines, the light extends on the landscape and illuminates the picture.

Through this picture we watch the soldier's awakening after a night of violent and devastating storm and war fights while

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