Opening speech by the Hon. Martin Hamilton-Smith,
Leader of the Opposition at the
‘WAR, Der Kreig’, The Prints of Otto Dix
Exhibition at the
Art Gallery of South Australia
Thursday, 29 November 2007
Speaking as Leader of the State Opposition and as a former Officer in the Australian
Army’s Special Forces, it is an honour to be opening this powerful exhibition of Otto
Dix’s “Der Kreig”.
This is a special exhibition. It is both confronting and emotionally powerful. It will be
controversial but it is an exhibition which must be seen.
Along with Francisco Goya’s ‘Disasters of War’ and Pablo Picasso’s
‘Guernica’, Dix’s ‘Der Krieg’ is universally acclaimed as one of
the greatest anti-war statements in the history of European art.
The Gallery’s own collection of Goya’s prints highlight the direct influence
Goya had on Dix’s work. ‘The Disasters of War’ prints detail Goya’s
account of the horrors of the Napoleonic invasion and the Spanish War of Independence from
1808 to 1814.
Dix’s war was a very different one.
War for Goya was an intimate horror, its effect localized and individualized.
Comparatively, Dix’s war is a modern war,
the scale is vast. It is horrific. It is awful. It is deeply human.
The Peninsula War, the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, was characterized by the first modern
guerilla conflicts, as Spain struggled towards liberation. In fact the term guerilla or
‘little war’ was first coined at this time.
As a contrast World War 1 was characterized by trench warfare, grand offensives across
vast trenches and fortifications 600 kilometers long, artillery and machine guns. It was
bloody and brutal.
Critics of Dix’s work highlight the truth that he exhibits in his etchings.
The ugliness of and, the beauty of the ugliness, the thrill of adventure and the curiosity
that he captures.
At the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 Otto Dix volunteered for service in the German
Army. His service was not inspired by patriotism or honour. Dix is a mysterious man. He
has form and attitude mixed with a special insight. His work suggests that even in war he
was pursing realism for his art.
Much later in 1963, he explained his need to experience war:
‘I had to experience how someone beside me suddenly falls over and is dead…I had
to experience that quite directly. I wanted it…I’m such a realist, you know,
that I have to see everything with my own eyes…I have to experience all the ghastly,
bottomless depths of life for myself…’
He was assigned to a machine-gun unit and found himself at the Western Front by 1915.
Among other battles, he fought at the Somme during the major allied offensive of 1916. The
suffering, the pain and death he witnessed there were all too real.
By all accounts Dix was a brave soldier who served his nation well. Wounded several times,
once almost fatally, Dix earned the Iron Cross (second class) and reached the rank of
vice-sergeant-major before the wars end. Profoundly affected by the war, he often
described a recurring nightmare in which he was crawling through the remnants of bombed
and shelled houses. It has been suggested the nightmare is reflected in his well-known
piece, ‘Lens being bombed’.
Dix was both horrified and yet fascinated by the experience of war.
It’s curious to me that Dix’s ‘Der Krieg’ is owned by Australia and
admired by Australia, perhaps more than in Germany, the country of his birth.
I recall my visit to the Normandy coast where a German friend and I visited the Omaha
Beach graves. Six thousand dead allied soldiers entombed gloriously in marble, replete
with grand avenues and plantings, fine tombstones, well ordered places. As a student of
history I felt compelled to find the German graves. After a long search they were found. A
single grave yard with over thirty thousand dead men in tombed beneath solemn stone. Many
graves were unmarked. “An unknown soldier of Germany” so frequently the only
sign of a soul lost and a family forgotten. To the victors goes the glory.
Australian graves in France are so glorious, we remember the fallen. Some people known to
us or our families would have faced Otto Dix and his German comrades in the trenches.
But Dix tells us of the other side of war and death. Dix tells us of the vanquished who
suffered perhaps even more.
The characters portrayed by Dix are desperate, suffering souls, mostly now forgotten. Otto
Dix reminds us that in war it is often not what a soldier has done but, what he has not
done that haunts him the most. The act of bravery not undertaken through fear. The act of
mercy or grace forsaken out of anger or rage.
When I view Dix’s work I’m reminded that at the time his characters were living
through the war, their own personal hell and in the post war years as they reflected on
the horrors they were either witness to or involved in, there was no study or science of
psychology to speak of. So many of these men, on both sides of the battle front returned
with hearts and minds ruined. The term “post traumatic stress disorder” was
unheard of. Instead the wives and the children must have borne the brunt of their pain and
slow rehabilitation……. or the pub, or the lonely lane or park bench….. year
after year. In Australia perhaps Anzac Day and comradeship provided a psychological
refuge, but what became of the characters Dix portrays? Dix’s characters are the
vanquished.
People wrote diaries. My own uncle, a former journalist was killed in one of these WW1
battles and lies in an unknown grave. Many of us would share such a story. He wrote
beautiful letters but kept the worst to himself. The written word is commonly used to
“get things off your chest” in the form of letters or diaries. Otto Dix used his
art, these most powerful etchings to write his letter home. Today, through this exhibition
we can see what he has to say and try to begin to understand his mind.
Humanity has been told by great thinkers that ‘Those who forget history are condemned
to repeat it’! Otto Dix reminds us with this work of events and experiences - none of
us would ever want to see repeated. How lucky we are not to have lived through it!
This is a wonderful opportunity for South Australians to view the complete 51 etchings
that form Dix’s ‘Der Krieg’.
I’m sure it will be very popular and a great success.
I would like to thank the National Gallery of Australia for affording South Australians
the opportunity to view this most spectacular exhibition. I commend it to all South
Australians.
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