The Power of a Painting
In 1945, Life magazine published the now famous painting Marines Call It That 2,000 Yard Stare. It depicts the rugged and uncompromising image of an infantryman in the United States Marine Corps, his face scarred by the brutality of battle. The action shows the Battle of Peleliu, taking place on a small island in the vast South Pacific but turning into a bloody battlefield. Tragically, more than 1,700 Marines died defending the small area.
Tom Lea (a native of El Paso, Texas) created striking imagery while working as a war journalist and illustrator for Life magazine during World War II. For the most part, Lea works in a more propagandistic way with the paintings, trying to raise spirits and tell a positive story. However, the experience of seeing the horror of Peleliu seemed to leave a deep impression on him, dispelling any romantic notions about the battle.
Referring to the cold yet indifferent gaze of the young Marine, Lea’s now famous title summarizes the psychological impact wrought by the fight. Despite eventually being shortened to “the thousand-yard stare,” the terrifying stare later became a powerful representation of the tremendous psychological toll troopers had to endure in the bloody wars of the 20th century. It left a lasting impression on the devastating impact of modern warfare on people’s mental health and served as a reminder of how costly conflict can be.
In the devastating war that ravaged Europe between 1914 and 1918, troops often used the phrase “battle fatigue” to describe the psychological effects of combat. During the subsequent world war (ranging from 1939 to 1945), “shell shock” became the officially recognized word for the syndrome. In modern times, the word for the disease has changed to the more clinically dry “post-traumatic stress disorder” or PTSD. It is an overused term.
Meanwhile, time has a way of changing historical narratives; it caused a change in the title originally given to Lea’s painting. The more somber title originally given to the picture has disappeared from the pages of history, and we call it the “thousand-yard stare.”
If we look back from the perspective of the early twenty-first century to the era of the mid-1900s, Lea’s depiction of the young Marine still holds great significance. The 20th century was a period marked by great misery and nightmare in many ways.
A Century of Devastation
First, we can examine data documenting the human losses resulting from conflict over a tumultuous century. The fighting lasting from August 1914 to November 1918 (known as World War I) is a terrible example of the destruction of humanity. Its reach reached an estimated 37 million victims, a staggering number, including a heartbreaking 17 million lives lost. One million soldiers lost their lives in the Battle of the Somme alone, and another 57,000 soldiers were killed or wounded in one day. It represents a microcosm of the horrors of war.
The world was plunged into a blaze far more devastating than World War II, lasting from September 1939 to August 1945; just two decades after the start of the war. An estimated 70 to 80 million people died, and most of the victims were civilians. Having lost 26 million people in the struggle, the Soviet Union was a sad example. Regardless of the estimated total military casualties being 25 million, there is no difference between civilian and military casualties on the battlefield. The embrace of the cold earth is where the two found their final resting place. The loss of life is greater than uniforms, and we must never forget that.
The terrible calculation goes beyond the actual battlefield. An estimated 50 million people died from the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918–1919; its spread was aided by army movements during the war. The accidental extermination of 1.5 million Armenians can be attributed to the horrific acts of barbarism known as the Armenian genocide that occurred between 1914 and 1915. The atrocities of Stalinist terror in the 1930s cast more shadows, adding an estimated 2 million deaths to the grim total. It’s just a glimpse; countless “small” battles contributed to the grim events, including the wars in Korea and Vietnam, the Boer, Russo-Japanese, Falkland, Arab-Israeli, and Iran-Iraq wars.
After analyzing all the battles over the course of a century, a deeply disturbing picture of our lives on the little blue dot becomes clear. It is a sobering reminder of the devastating impact war has on humans, leaving a trail of loss and heartache in its wake.
The collection in the Twin Cities is the modest volume Cultural Calendar of the 20th Century, published in 1979 by Phaidon Press. The elegant folio-sized book was compiled by the renowned English poet and art critic Edward Lucie-Smith; it is more than just decoration for the coffee table but is a painstakingly constructed journey through a century of human existence, presented year by year until 1975 with engrossing imagery and perceptive prose. Each year has two special pages filled with the triumphs and setbacks that make up its history.
In 1900, the Paris Exposition became an attraction in itself. A visual feast of striking urban architecture greets us, including the famous Eiffel Tower, the luxurious Hotel Negresco, the art nouveau Paris Metro entrance, and magnificent Beaux-Arts masterpieces adorning the city of Nice. At the bottom of the layout, there is a striking contrast: a black-and-white image of the destroyed Peking embassy headquarters. The text accompanying it shows a world in transition. The king of Italy, Umberto I, was assassinated by anarchists, and the German government launched a massive effort to strengthen its navy. Amid political change, Max Planck published an important study on quantum physics marking a milestone in scientific history.
Ten years later, we find ourselves seeing a portrait of rebel Emiliano Zapata looking back at us; it is a symbol of the ongoing Mexican Revolution. The Casa Mila apartment complex, a work of architectural wonder by Gaudi, appeared in Barcelona, and the discovery of plastic by science marked the beginning of a new era. Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, with its revolutionary tunes, filled the air, and France introduced old-age pensions.
As 1914 drew to a close and the destructive “guns of August” began to roar, calm gave way to chaos. The terrible Battle of Verdun raged on the Western Front in 1916. Although James Joyce published his self-reflective book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the Easter Rising, lighting a fire in the hearts of the Irish, was far more physical. The picture entitled “The real but sad epic of the Western Front” illustrates why Lucie-Smith was right to keep the focus on the enormous human cost of the war: two soldiers struggling to pull their dead comrade out of a shell hole while German troops trudged past mud in Verdun.
The Great War ended in 1919. However, peace did not come without consequences. When the harsh Treaty of Versailles was signed, a young Adolf Hitler founded the National Socialist German Workers’ Party; it was the seed of the horror to come. The despair of the Great Depression hampered the joy and sense of freedom of the 1920s in the following years.
Hope Amidst Darkness
Towards the 1940s, another conflict hit the earth again. Images of Hiroshima from 1945 are shown; the city has been destroyed by an atomic bomb, making it a desert. A chilling reminder of humanity’s inhumanity to each other is seen in the horrific images of naked bodies piled high in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
However, hope still appears even amid darkness. The image of Stalin, Churchill, and Truman shaking hands at Potsdam shows how their choices impacted many lives. The image is next to a sculpture by Henry Moore entitled Family Group, showing a happy family consisting of a man, wife, and children. The statement, “Art affirms human values,” raises an important question: does Lucie-Smith persist in optimism in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary or does she engage in ironic cynicism? The only other image in this layout (a mushroom cloud appearing over Hiroshima) elicits a chilling response. Lastly, Animal Farm by George Orwell highlights the apocalyptic fears of the year.
A new period of fear gripped humanity after World War II, even as the destruction in Japan continued and war criminals were tried through the Nuremberg trials. The “age of anxiety” was accompanied by the arrival of the nuclear age, leaving humanity facing the possibility of total annihilation. Students were taught the maneuver of “duck and cover,” providing little protection against the force of an atomic bomb. Ironically, the only defense is a weak terror known as Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD. However, scary information and even ways to make “dirty” bombs seem to continue to spread, creating the possibility of an even worse future. Even biological weapons, with their designed poisons and enormous potential for destruction, are within reach.
Even with all the nuclear worries, there was still hope in the 1950s as Lucie-Smith describes it. It was an age of artistic discovery, as demonstrated by the enchanting Lavender Mist by Jackson Pollock, the controversial Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, and the enchanting but ultimately tragic lives of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. The spirit of a carefree lifestyle and seeking pleasure is summed up in the film La Dolce Vita by Italian maestro Federico Fellini. Some comedic relief can be found in Robert Rauschenberg’s witty collage Monogram at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, although novels such as The Tin Drum and The Naked and the Dead, are grim reminders of the horrors of the recent war.
The Turbulent Sixties
As the 1960s wore on, the clouds lifted again. In 1963, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was a momentous event that had a long-lasting impact on Lucie-Smith’s book cover years. As if out of control, the world embraced a psychedelic and disorienting aesthetic. A series of assassinations during this period (James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, and Lee Harvey Oswald) are associated with the period. One of the most moving images from the era shows the two remaining Kennedy brothers and their wife Jackie standing next to the president’s casket during JFK’s funeral cortege. Other images include Roy Lichtenstein’s iconic pop art masterpiece, a painting of fighter jets engaged in comic book warfare, emblazoned with the bold onomatopoeia WHAAM! perhaps as a striking counterpoint, perhaps not.
The Vietnam War came to the fore as the mid-1960s progressed, bringing with it a concoction of drugs, sex, and rock & roll. Although the My Lai tragedy left a lasting mark on the era, anti-war songs such as Hell No, We Won’t Go! echoed throughout. After the atrocities of war came the political scandal of Watergate, contrasted with the naïve idealism of the Beatles’ We All Live in a Yellow Submarine. Following the horrific terrorist attacks on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, the contradictions remained. The world has become dangerous and open to a new kind of enemy: nationalist terrorists using violence as a tactic. Despite the dangerous groups, they do not have the nihilistic radicalism to be associated with the future.
A Cry for Help
In 1975, Lucie-Smith ended his work with a sense of closure. The latest spread features a large and ominous image of the great white shark from the popular film Jaws. The image is combined with the sculpture Cry 1 by Ludmilla Seefried-Matjekova. The statue shows a man being imprisoned, his hands raised in a pleading gesture and his lips parted in a soundless cry imitating the vicious mouth of a shark. It seems that the work of art is a universal cry for help. Against the grim backdrop of South Vietnam’s collapse, the civilian staff of the US Embassy in Saigon was evacuated. Additionally, Woody Allen’s Love and Death offers a very funny examination of death. Finally, Lucie-Smith adds a touch of absurdity to the image of a naked assailant being arrested by police at an English football event. A moment of wild joy amidst general fear.
Bibliography
- Caltrider, M. (2022). When Truth Became a Casualty in World War II, Combat Artists Sought To Revive It. Coffee or Die Magazine.
- Campbell-Dollaghan, K. (2013). Infographic: How People Died In The 20th Century. Fast Company.
- Dingus, A. (1994). War Paint. Texas Monthly.
- Lacy, R. (2016). Notes from a Nightmare Century. The American Interest.
- Lockett, E. (2023). The Thousand-Yard Stare: What It Is and How to Cope. Healthline.
