Images of conflict, residue of discomfort

Galleries

Artists witness war with objectivity in ‘For the Record’

August 31, 2011|By Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent

Gerhard Richters September (detail, above) is the centerpiece of For the… (MARIAN GOODMAN GALLERY…)

FOR THE RECORD: Searching for Objectivity in Global Conflict At: Montserrat College of Art Gallery, 23 Essex St., Beverly, through Oct. 22. 978-921-4242, www.montserrat.edu/galleries/montserrat

BEVERLY - Objectivity, that lofty ideal of serious journalists, has lost a lot of its sheen in recent years. Everybody’s biased, the argument goes; nobody can be truly objective. News programs that dispense more shrill opinion than actual reporting further that assumption. There’s so much shrill opinion out there that society has become more and more polarized.

Complete objectivity may not exist, but reporting and reflecting on events in a way that allows readers and viewers to form their own opinions does. “For the Record: Searching for Objectivity in Global Conflict,’’ a sober and powerful exhibit at Montserrat College of Art Gallery, taps several artists who aim to witness war without either promoting or condemning it. They leave room for the moral complexity of conflict and let viewers come to their own conclusions. There’s nothing shrill or pat here, but there is a great deal of discomfort - which is a healthy thing in the face of war.

The show was put together by social historian Gordon Arnold, artist Rob Roy, and Montserrat’s gallery director, Leonie Bradbury, as a commemoration of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. A symposium based on the exhibit will be held on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, featuring Robert Storr, painter, dean of the Yale University School of Art, and a frequent interpreter of the work of Gerhard Richter, a featured artist in “For the Record.’’

The centerpiece of “For the Record’’ is Richter’s “September,’’ a digital print based on a painting he made in response to 9/11, depicting United Flight 175 striking the World Trade Center’s South Tower. Richter famously makes blurred paintings from photos, a practice that examines assumptions about both mediums: What is fact, what is fiction, and does one carry more truth than the other? Here, the image indelible to anyone who saw it on TV that day has been smeared with brush strokes. The blurring evokes the passage of time and the alteration of memory, yet the picture still causes a catch in the throat.

In another work, the book “War Cut,’’ Richter uses photographic details of one of his abstract paintings to illustrate news stories about the beginning of the Iraq war. The fluid, expressionistic paintings in fiery tones are not at all pictures; for the viewer, they become a screen upon which to project responses to the initial news of that war.