An exploration of how Australian modernist artists responded to the Second World War, Reality in Flames’ diverse collection of work reflects the challenges faced by artists in choosing how war should be interpreted by art.
No explanation is required for Samstag’s tag-teaming of its two current shows For Country, For Nation (reviewed in May TAR) and Reality in Flames. War in all its destructive guises wraps everything that might or should be said in a fog of bitter reflection or a desire to make something good come from it.
As a counterweight to these expressions of white-hot rage, images of incarceration, such as Howard Taylor’s POW camp, Germany (1942- 43) and Bernard Slawik’s small pencil sketches of Nazi atrocities make for sombre viewing. Such considerations aside, perhaps the alternative interest in this collection of work, made almost 80 years ago, is the predicament of so many younger Australian artists, grappling to come to terms with half-understood modernism, while bending it to the cause of victory.