Monsters, The Bomb and the Development of Modern Art

• As I read the news today “Oh Boy” as the lyrics of the famed Beatles song goes.

The age of Nuclear War has not ended, the player’s have changed but the game is the same.

Recently the United States announced the intention to deploy an anti-missile system in eastern Europe. The Russians have strongly denounced the plans as an aggressive act of nuclear escalation.

• The rhetoric of war has become a policy of diplomacy with regard to negotiations with Iran over their nuclear programs.

Recent air strikes into Pakistan a nuclear power with an unstable government should be getting far more attention than they are in the media.

As I watched the movie Thirteen Day’s last night, a movie about the Cuban missile crisis, I began to think about the impact of the Bomb on modern culture.

• The Cuban missile crisis is a point in world history where the unthinkable almost happened because the leaders of the then Soviet Union and the Untied States almost lost control of the Monster of Nuclear Power.

Accidents, miscommunication and the inability to control the military and allied governments involved nearly took us to the point of Mutual Assured Destruction. “MAD” as the doctrine that governs our nuclear strategy in known.

• In a nut shell the strategy implies if you attack us we will retaliate with all possible force and the end of the civilization will result. Game over, period.

That is the stalemate of nuclear strategy.

But wait the model changed from two super powers playing a dangerous game of chess with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

Others have gotten into the game on a smaller but still deadly scale. Pakistan, India, China, North Korea, Israel, all of the former Eastern Block countries, NATO powers and now Iran and who knows who else perhaps independent terrorists.

What lead up to the Cuban Missile Crisis can be summed up as a technological short fall of the era.

• The long range ICBM, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles where still in the developmental stage.

Cuba was close to the Untied States and positioning missiles within range of the continental US was a practical move on the chess board for the Soviets at the time.

That move not only demonstrated the practical limits of technological advancement of 1960 era weapons systems it tested the fundamental theories of their use and the doctrines that controlled the game.

• Frankenstein had escaped the laboratory and the villagers were in a panic.

He was none to soon reined in and the Mad Scientists went to work on bigger and better monsters.

The technology improved over the years to the point where it doesn’t matter where the monster lives it can come to your house in a matter of minutes.

“It’s Alive”! Today we can be sure that the technology has caught up with the idea, the ideas of arrogant power and the fallacy of mans control over nature, perhaps better said the nature of man.

• For some time now I have thought about the impact of the Bomb, the impact of technology, of War and the juxtaposition of art related to science.

The symbolist writers of the late 19^th century started the discussion about the industrial revolution, Mary Shelly gave us Frankenstein.

Then the artists responded to the horror of WWI with abstraction and the birth of modern art.

The period before WWI was the gestation. The Cinema brought the monsters of technology to life with images and science fiction stories as a metaphor to combat the reality of what had become human history.

• Godzilla may be one of the most unrecognized original creations of Modern Art.

I don’t know of any serious Art Historian who is looking at Monsters, Godzilla, Frankenstein and Alien as serious art as images.

I guess what started this was the references that E.H. Gombrich makes about comic book images he felt they have been over looked by Art Historians. Of course he is a serious Art Historian. I personally feel a strong connection to these images and ideas. I have been using them in my artwork for many years.

These images are the language of my generation. Saturday Matinées where countless hours were spent in the 1950s and the 60s watching the Monsters wreck havoc over the world.

This was all in the shadow of the ultimate threat of nuclear destruction.

Godzilla is the First Son of the Atomic Age.

He was incubated from the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. His gestation period was from the beginning of World War One to the end of World War Two.

He followed the development of Modern Art.

• Godzilla was the explanation the world needed to come to grips with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The development of Modern Art followed the same violent path, from WWI through the end of WWII.

It was the European Artists that fostered the rise of new imagery that attempted to express and explain the madness of the modern world.

No representational image could come close to describing the carnage of WWI.

It was the first modern war in all of its horror. Godzilla was the explanation of the next war.

Much of what went on in the arts after the war was the formation of images that were in search of meaning or perhaps meaning in search of images.

The new images were outside of what the human visual experience had been able to comprehend and understand as was the war.

Artists in all mediums pushed the boundaries of imagery.

• The birth of Fascism in Europe gave rise to Modern Art in America.

As the creative minds of Europe fled the Nazi’s they brought with them the visual lessons of the First Great War as well as the developing language of the coming war.

That was hardly experience enough for the event of WWII. From Auschwitz to Hiroshima reasonable minds searched for an explanation.

Modern Art was the answer and from Modern Art, Godzilla was crowned King of the Monsters, a Mutation of nature.

How else could the Japanese deal with the horror of the War, which their leaders brought upon them?

The destruction in Japan was beyond compare to anything ever experience before in the history of the world.

• Science wielded all of its genius into one horrific invention that was incomparable with any previous invention since the creation of the known universe.

Humans had become Gods, Gods of destruction.

• Still today the threat of the bomb is greater than ever before with governments around the world lusting for its power.

In America we fear anyone who may acquire the Bomb, to such a degree we continue to develop Bombs that are usable Nukes.

These are Bunker Busters Bombs that can get an enemy who is hiding in underground fortresses, insulated from conventional weapons.

They are not the big city busters that were developed in the 50s and 60s these are small target specific weapons that minimize wide spread damage.

• But like Godzilla and Frankenstein they will be impossible to control.

They are Threshold devices that will eventually be used for the good of Mankind. It is always for the good of Mankind that drives the development of destruction.

This is the Symbolism of Godzilla, Frankenstein and of course King Kong.

Mary Shelly set the tone with her work Frankenstein. I would have to attribute her work to the age of symbolist writers at the turn of the last century.

Man can not control the forces of nature; because of the lust within, he will turn that power to evil.

Every child knows this instinctively. Children create images of Monsters in their dreams as a way to rationalize their fears, nightmares which are abstractions of reality.

Monsters are an important part of the language of a modern Art, an Art that is rooted in symbolism, expression and abstraction.

It is from these abstractions that we as humans are able to develop rational ideas about our survival and our future.

• That is if we allow ourselves to have a future.

At this point I think Super Hero’s are a way to justify the development of superior powers to combat our enemy’s.

We associate Hero’s with good intentions, their power over comes evil.

I think we need to beware of where our leaders take us in this quest of good before they lose control of the monsters.

Perhaps it is the Creative artists today that need to help our nations find new ways to deal with the uncontrollable powers created by men of good intentions.

• I mean seriously did Robert Oppenheimer really think he was doing something positive when he led the effort to create the Bomb?

After its use he realized that he had become death, well duh.

Kim Welcomes the Monster

Filed under: Art, Environment, Nuclear War, On Art, Politics, The Bomb , Frankenstein, Godzilla, Monsters, Nuclear Power, Science