THE ART OF WAR

July 28, 2024 Opinion

SUN TZU, author of the “Art of War”, wrote in length on how to win battles. The timeless classic aimed to teach warriors on how to defeat their enemies in times of chaos, making the book widely sought after and now has become the bible in the art of battle. In another realm, somewhere where no weapons were used and no blood was shed, artists all over the world have depicted the grossness of war on their canvases, immortalizing scenes from reality as well as the realities posed by their imagination.

The wars to which all of us battle every day are seen in the windows of our souls, to which we sometimes choose to bare to the world. For many visual artists, images of war have been recurring. Centuries have passed for those using the canvas to fight against injustices, an era of war images are collectively kept as a reminder of how a nation has. It is melancholic to see a vision of a war past in the eyes of an artist with pale hues and somber shades filling a canvas
from which sadness will scream at you.

The depictions may be a century old but its soul will reach out like it was today, art is timeless and along with it, its
emotions cannot be embellished. We battle many wars and with it comes the fervor of emotion, among them are the
most powerful, anger, hate, vengeance and defeat. A war will debilitate, but in the hearts of warriors of the arts, it will set free a multitude to interpretation, making a blank canvas alive with emotion, in the hope to convey to the masses the soul of a war.

Yes, a war has a soul. It is seen in a period piece hanging in a museum, a book written inside the attic used for
hiding place, a rushed poem discarded for someone to read and a book chronicling the evils of an era. It is seen in the vague lines on the faces of veterans as they dwindle in number when commemorating their triumphs. It is seen on the pages of worn-out history books, even if society has made a mockery of their journey to freedom, summarizing in a few paragraphs the years they have suffered. Our personal war must be against the normalcy to which we address the battles which raged before us.