Pawel Kuczynski is a polish born artist who, between the years of 2004 and 2010 became renowned for his satirical paintings, many of which centered around the art, or horror, of modern warfare. One such work, Under Protective Wing, was published, first in 2009, and has come to fame for its powerful message, and body use of color. This painting demonstrates that while War brings tragedy, there are ultimately other issues that affect decision making, and which promote the continuation of war.
At the denotative level, the image, Under Protective Wing, is relatively simplistic. It shows four vultures sitting in a barren tree near the ruins of a city, burned out by war. There is a tank driving through the background in silhouette and a dove with an olive branch sitting in the tree near the vultures, protectively drawn under the nearest vultures wing. Vultures have long been used in art, to depict the death and stench of war. Vultures are, in the natural world, drawn to the smell of carcasses, and as a result, often are attracted to battlefields, where men, horses, and other bodies of the lost are left to rot. Among the earliest of these depictions, Stele of Vultures, carved in limestone between 2600 and 2500 BCE, features vultures carrying off the severed limbs and disfigured remains of the loosing army (Kleiner 36). As such, at its simplest or most literal translation, Under Protective Wing is designed to draw to mind the death, stench, and ultimate decay of the lives lost at war.
However, this purely denotative depiction of the work fails to explain the presence of the dove, and its significant to the work at large. It is this dove, and its connotative significance that ultimately guides, or leads the observer, toward the greater meaning of the work. The dove, widely used symbolically today, has its roots in Christian art, and mythology. It is a symbol of peace, and God’s promise to man. More specifically, the dove brought an olive branch back to Noah in the ark, telling him that there was new life, on dry ground, after the destructive flood (Ferguson, 1959). Thus its connotative presence in this picture depicts that peace is near, but sheltered, kept away from, and unable to see the battle ground, as the result of the vultures protection.
It is here that the connotation begins to get more complex, and more interesting. The vultures herein could be interpreted as social pariah’s or, the vultures of war in the cultural sense. A vulture is a carrion, a creature that thrives as a result of the death of others, which can only survive where death remains and peace is held at bay. Thus, in the work in question, one must ask who the vultures of war are, which would benefit from keeping peace at bay, or sheltered away from the actual loss and destruction of the war. Connotatively, the vultures are logically used to depict war profiteers, or those who either politically, or financially benefit from war mongering.
Kuczynski would not be the first artist to embrace the political significance and satirical aspects of war mongering and profiteering through art. Picasso is well known, and highly studied for a similarly intricate and like-themed piece of work, which depicted the threat of war between 1912 and 1913. Modern scholars, including Leighton, see in his work from this period a strong anarchist theme, which speaks to the dangers of war, war profiteering and government officials that mechanize, or create reason for, war (653).
Thus, Kuczynski work can be seen as a social commentary on the effects of war, and the way in which modern governments have created war for profit. They have become the vultures who protect the dove, or those that would seek peace, from the more grizzly side of war in order to perpetuate the violent cycle for gain.
The United States, of whom Kuczynski is heavily critical, has been vilified in the media, extensively for propagating war far gain. This begin, near the time that Kuczynski began his satirical work, as the United States launched a war against Iraq for armaments that never appeaer to have exsisted. In fact, it was James Woosley, former CIA Director, who is heavily financially invested in private security firms that have profited from unrest in the Middle East, who first accused Sadam Hussain of war crimes, or nuclear armament, in the days before the U.S. launched an offensive in Iraq (Clemons 1). He has since been accused of acting not as an impartial party, but rather as a profiteer, interested in personal gain, and willing to destroy the lives of both Iraqi civilians, and American soldiers in order to guarantee his own survival. Similarly, Dianne Feinstein and her husband are profiting, in the millions, from the current war, and her husband’s business Tutor Perini Corp. in both Iraq and Afghanistan as the result of war. Given that Dianne Feinstein was one of those on the interior who voted to give President George W. Bush the authority to go into Iraq, as a aggressor, she to qualifies as a social pariah, a vulture, turned rich through the carrion of war (The Center for Public Integrity 1)
Thus at the cognitive level, Kuczynski is calling out the arms dealers, governments, and other parties acting as profiteers. Though they have been involved in the war to varying degrees, the reality is that they have acted to stave off peace, and to feed the war machine in order to gain financially (Brozoska 42). This practice that has continued for decades, despite its despicablitity, and which has ultimately led to a culture of vultures, looking for the next war to feed its need for greater gains.
Pawel Kuczynski, a polish born artist who, between the years of 2004 and 2010 became renowned for his satirical paintings, has used is artistic talents to satirically comment on the word, and perhaps especially on the American tendency to perpetuate war in search of the almighty dollar. While many of which is more well-known words of art are centered around that which underlies or drives modern warfare, one such work, Under Protective Wing, stands out for its use of natural imagery, rather than figurative imagery, to make its Satirical point. The painting, which was first published, first in 2009, demonstrates that while War brings tragedy, there are ultimately other issues that affect decision making, and which promote the continuation of war. Most specifically, war in the modern era is driven ahead by war mongers, modern day vultures who stand to gain financially from the perpetuation of war’s violent cycle.
Works Cited:
Brzoska, Michael. "Profiteering On The Iran-Iraq War." Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists 43.5 (1987): 42-45. Academic Search Premier. Web. 16 July 2015.
Clemons, Sam. " WOOLSEY WATCH: Woolsey Needs to Make a Choice Between Being a War Profiteer or War Pundit.” The Washington Note, 10 July 2005. Web. 16 July 2015.
Ferguson, George. Signs & Symbols in Christian Art. New York: Oxford UP, 1959. Print.
Kleiner, Fred S. Gardner’s Art through the Ages: Backpack Edition, Book A: Antiquity. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010. Print.
Leighten, Patricia. "Picasso's Collages and the Threat of War, 1912-13." The Art Bulletin 67.4 (1985): 653-72. Web.
The Center for Public Integrity. "Winning Contractors." Center for Public Integrity. N.p., 30 Oct. 2003. Web. 16 July 2015.
