A Permanent Accusation

 

Take note of these two images. They both depict naked, hooded Iraqi prisoners of war at Abu Ghraib being stacked on top of each other, being tortured by the hands of American soldiers in power. But do we react differently to one or the other? Does torture, graphic and horrific, translate from an objective photograph to a subjective painting? What does this say about how we view art? Can something this horrific be made into ethical, acceptable art? What is exaggerated in the painting? What is captured truthfully in the photograph?

In 2004, the Taguba Report investigated the 320th Military Police Battalion occupying Abu Ghraib prison and accounts began to surface of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse of the prisoners held at the Iraqi prison at the hands of American Army soldiers.

Fernando Botero, a Colombian artist famous for his pudgy, warmly-nostalgic, folkloric paintings, was living in Paris when he saw the photographs of tortured Iraqi prisoners at the American-occupied Abu Ghraib.

He began to paint. He painted a series inspired by the Abu Ghraib photographs which is on display at the Marlborough Gallery in New York. 

A majority of the initial photographs depict a woman with cropped-cut brown hair giving a thumbs up or beaming proudly over the naked, cowering (and sometimes dead) prisoners. Her name is Lynndie England, former United States Army reservist with the 372nd Military Police Company. Since the investigation she was convicted along with eleven other military personnel by Army courts-martial for the abuse of prisoners of war. Why anyone might accept such an order from a superior officer is beyond the scope of anyone's understanding, but what is important to note about the paintings by Bolero and the photographs is the absence of perpetrators. Our focus is solely fixated on the tortured prisoners: their gaping mouths in agony, their wide, frightened eyes, their exaggerated poses, blood spatter.

In her online article regarding the art series, Mia Fineman says, "Yet Botero, by tackling this imagery in a focused and extended series, has demonstrated not only that such things can be represented in art but also that a figurative, cartoonish idiom may be the most powerful means of representing modern atrocity." 

Its true, cartoons and graphic novels have evolved into a new media form of modern-day literature and art. But where does art cross the line from being journalistic to expressive, from objective to subjective? I don't think the lines are always so distinct anymore. Photographs can be staged and paintings can attempt to portray accuracy. Botero calls art "a permanent accusation," so you could make the stretch that art is akin to journalistic reporting since his art is meant to portray something real. Botero's paintings relates to the falling man of 9/11 also in the sense that there is at times a fine line between art and journalism. As an aspiring journalist, I feel conflicted when I see art like this.

It's sort of scary and eerie to me, that Lynndie England was a 20 -year-old (like me) when she entered the prison of Abu Ghraib where they were committing these tortures. I think it's always a little eerily unsettling when we uncover something we share (like an age) with an individual we would otherwise loathe to be compared to. Since serving her jail time, she has returned to her hometown in Fort Ashby, West Virginia. I think we have yet to see the full consequences of her actions and the actions of those other Americans who have tarnished the reputation of their fellow officers and who have made military goals in Iraq that much harder.

Meanwhile the rest of us at home, American families, politicians, and artists like Fernando Botero, will be scanning the headlines on our t.v. screens, watching.