Analysis Of Josephine Withers's Paper No More War

Art became a political statement (and a way of protest) in a way to share their opinions about the war (WWI and WWII). While millions of young men were killed in battle, the ideas of traditional Western art had changed. Artist such as George Grosz, Miné Okubo, Otto Dix, and Käthe Kollwitz reshaped art perception, and forever changed the perception of who we view war. Though, WWII had a bigger effect in the world, WWI’s classical dispute of the modern-day, not only politically but culturally as well. In Josephine Withers’s paper No More War: An Art Essay, Withers starts talking about how women have came around in the beginning of the 20th century with the peace movement during WWI, and also their subjects in their art about WWI’s brutality. Käthe Kollwitz, a German artist born in 1867, was, as Withers explains, one of the most famous artist that was against war. She was well-known as a social protest artist from her early works of art from the 1890s. Nie Wieder Krieg, translate means “never again war”, was one of Kollwitz’s most famous pieces of art she created in 1924. She got into her protest work after her son was killed in WWI. In the 1930’s, Kollwitz became persona non grata, or an unwelcome person, to the Nazi party, her art became degenerate and then, she was threatened with concentration camp internment. …show more content…
During the war, German soldiers were represented as “pure”, when women, such as prostitutes, were represented as corrupted, especially to the soldiers. Some of the artwork include Visit to Madame Germaine’s in Mericourt (Otto Dix, 1924), Front-line Soldier in Brussels (Otto Dix, 1924), Whore with War Cripple (Otto Dix, 1923), Violated Women's Corpse (Friedrich), German ‘Heroes’ in Belgian Brothels (Friedrich), The Beggars (Kollwitz, 1924), and The Survivors (Kollwitz,