New history paintings tell stories old as war

August 25, 2010|Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent

George Washington appears in long johns and boots beside his cot in a tent in “Washington Slept Here,’’ one of the more comic of Betty Herbert’s war paintings at Childs Gallery. Herbert, 82, is an unschooled artist who started painting at 54. Her exhibit, “America’s Wars,’’ is a sweeping trip through selected conflicts from the Revolutionary War to the war in Iraq.

Like history painters of old, Herbert is a storyteller. She packs her paintings with action, humor, and pathos. These are fervent, declarative works, brushed and smeared and dripped onto the canvas with great heart. She has nothing of the skill we associate with past painters of history — think of the precision of Jacques-Louis David — but her naive depiction of figures and occasionally awkwardly skewed perspective fits right in with a style popular now with many young, art-school trained artists.

The Civil War painting “Blue at Bay’’ captures a blue-clad Union soldier ducking beneath two angry steeds — one fiery red, the other a fierce, mottled gray-brown. Lines are fluid, colors pop, and the lush green background has such vibrating energy it hardly feels like background. “Collapsing Buildings,’’ a depiction of ground zero, shows jagged shards in thickly laid-on paint — the material and gesture carry the emotion of the scene as much as the image does. The skeletal remains of the twin towers lean away from each other, and smaller, nearby structures bow, as if in mourning.

Herbert also captures small, human moments, as in “Skittles,’’ from the Iraq series, depicting a green-beige jumble of helmets and shoulders, bent over a single red package of the candies. “King George and Queen Elizabeth in London during the Blitz’’ revolves around the demure Elizabeth, in a pink suit and pearls, standing amid gray rubble.

These are stories of heroism in the face of devastation. Most contemporary artists take a more confrontational approach to war; last year, British artist Jeremy Deller made a road trip around the United States towing the shell of a car bombed in Baghdad. Herbert’s paintings are not so unsettling. They are dramatic, sympathetic rallying cries — the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air! — in all, a delightful assortment of war paintings. Maybe that in itself is unsettling.

Blurred boundaries