Tell People The Story: The Art of Gustav Potthoff

Gustav Potthoff paints to remember his fellow prisoners of war who built the Bridge over the River Kwai and the Hell Fire Pass during World War II. Concerned that those 16,000 fallen soldiers will be forgotten, the artist paints to tell people his story and to find peace among the horrors of war by commemorating those who died while building the Thailand-Burma Railway.  

Born in Indonesia and raise in a Dutch colonial orphanage, Gus enlisted as a mechanic for the Netherlands Army Tank Battalion in Bandoeng, Java, in 1941. He was captured by the Imperial Japanese Army soon after his deployment, and remained a prisoner of war until the end of World War II. During his imprisonment, he was subjected to a brutal regimen of labor, which included the construction of the infamous Bridge over the River Kwai and the Hell Fire Pass in the borderlands of Burma and Thailand. He vividly brings to life his war-time experiences on canvas. 

In 1998, Gus returned to Thailand for a Memorial for the POWs who died building the Thailand-Burma Railway. While walking a length of the Hellfire Pass, he pulled out his harmonica and played a song for the souls left behind. As he played, a cloud of beautiful butterflies swarmed around him. He knew those were the spirits of the fallen come to thank him for his remembrance. 

When Gus visited the Hellfire Pass, he saw a tree growing in the middle of the pass. The deep cut through the mountain that cost so many lives is slowly being reclaimed by nature. The tree is a symbol of healing in Gus's art.  


At home, Gus often sits on his front porch and plays improvised melodies on his harmonica in tribute. Like his paintings, his music is a creative offering to the spirits of his friends. His paintings and songs are gifts that he freely gives so others will remember the lost POWs. When asked why he does not sell his paintings, he explains,

I do my work because I promised to do. 

The remembering of friends,

Tell people the story. 

And that's what I do [it] for, just tell people story.

 

Jon Kay

Director

Traditional Arts Indiana

Traditional Arts Indiana will present a special outdoor exhibition at the Indiana Memorial Union Garden, entitled Tell People the Story: The Art of Gustav Potthoff. The exhibit shares the life and work of Gustav Potthoff. The temporary exhibit will be open to the public from Exhibit 10:00 am to 5:00 pm from October 12 through the 16, 2011. 

There will be a special “Meet-the-Artist” program at noon on Saturday October 15, 2011. Gustav will be meet and talk to the public at Indiana University's Memorial Union Garden on that day.

Peace, War, Folklore



A quilt at the Mathers Museum  



When the American Folklore Society (AFS) selected Indiana University’s Bloomington campus for the location of its 2011 Annual Meeting, the faculty in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology immediately realized that the “Making War, Making Peace” theme resonated with much of the work done by folklorists around the world. Modifying the theme slightly, we chose “Peace, War, Folklore” as the focus for our own conference. This has proven to be extremely fruitful, and from October 12-15 almost 800 folklorists and ethnomusicologists will come to Bloomington to participate in three days of panels and presentations, many dedicated to discussing critical issues of conflict and concord around the world.

Tales of epic warriors; games played by refugee children; lucky charms carried into battle; musical commemorations for the fallen; stories recounted by grandparents, parents, and children: the experience of war demands creative responses to violence, fear, pain, grief, and memory. Similarly, the desire to transform war into peace can be performed in traditional and artistic ways, through music and dance, protest marches, spontaneous shrines, candlelight vigils, and even through play and competition. The making of war and the making of peace are infused with forms of expressive culture that have long been of interest to scholars of folklore.

Indeed, by studying how people individually or in groups articulate their history and identity, their values and beliefs, their anxieties and joys, folklorists seek moments of creativity embedded in everyday life, such as the telling of anecdotes or the cooking of food. They also explore creativity during special occasions or extreme circumstances, when festival celebration and the performance of rituals, for example, can articulate profoundly held beliefs or deep anxieties. So it is not surprising that folklorists often find themselves working to understand how people experience situations of conflict and its aftermath. Whether in war zones or refugee camps, with immigrants, with veterans, or through studying the ethnic slurs and jokes that betray distrust between people living together, folklorists explore the many ways in which people and communities are divided, or struggle to transcend division.

The last time the AFS meeting was held in Bloomington was in 1968, during the thick of the Vietnam War, student uprisings, and peace protests around the world. Now, in a century already racked by conflicts and ongoing struggles for peace, a new generation of folklorists comes together in Bloomington to investigate similar issues.

In addition to academic panels and presentations at this year’s meeting, the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology is sponsoring a range of events and exhibitions in conjunction with the Themester. These include a discussion between Israeli and Palestinian scholars on Jerusalem, a Branigin Lecture on conflict resolution in Ethiopia, an art exhibit by a World War II POW, a quilt exhibition focusing on human rights, and a lecture by world-renowned folklorist (and IU professor emeritus) Henry Glassie who has long worked with communities in states of conflict, resistance, and uneasy peace. These events and exhibitions are open to the public and we hope members of the Bloomington community will join us in exploring issues of war and peace through the lens of folklore and folkloristics.

Michael Dylan Foster

Assistant Professor

Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology
IU College of Arts and Sciences 

The American Folklore Society's annual meeting runs October 12-15. Several events are open to the public. See the schedule for dates and times.  

The Face(s) of War



Chiris Keelty - Vietnam  (Photo by Suzanne Opton)



Perhaps the most important decision that citizens of a democratic polity are called upon to make concern whether or not to go to war.  The problem, of course, is that the vast majority of such citizens have no direct or immediate knowledge of war.  And so what we know comes from representations of one sort or another – news reports, novels, film, and, of course, photography.  Such representations are always once removed, and equally complicated by reports of those who have been to war that no representation—however real, however verisimilar—is ever fully adequate to the task of helping one to know what it is like to be “in harm’s war.”

War photography faces the challenge of representation as much or not more than verbal or fictional representations if only because it is saddled with the mistaken assumption that it is somehow wholly objective.  But of course we know that that is not the case.  Notwithstanding the fact that we can conclude that the thing photographed was actually there (and ignoring the opportunities made available by the dark room or photoshop),  photographers choose what to include in the frame and what to exclude.  What angle to shoot from.  What speed to shoot at.  What light to employ.  What to keep in focus and what to obscure.  And so on.  In short, the photographer’s craft is an art.  And at its best, it is an important and powerful public art that helps us to see and be seen as citizens.  And of course, the soldier or warrior is first and foremost a citizen.

Much of what we experience as war photography focuses attention on the manner in which war is fought.  And whether the photographs we see shows soldiers conducting military campaigns, interacting with local children in occupied territories, experiencing the boredom of war that punctuates the time between skirmishes, suffering from wounds or worse, or returning home to the hugs and relief of friends and families, the focus is always on what we might call “the conduct of war.” And because wars are typically fought in the name of collectivities the role of the individual is played down—not erased entirely, but nevertheless minimized, as such photographs tend to underscore the archetypal quality of the scenes displayed.  Individuals tend to stand in for something larger than themselves.  And yet for all of that, one of the genres of war photography continues to be the portrait. 



Soldier: Bruno - 355 Days in Iraq (Photo by Suzanne Opton)



The most common portraits of soldiers tend to be taken prior to battle and usually feature the soldier in full uniform.  This is of course a practice that is as old as the Civil War.  And whether taken by the military itself or by friends and family members, such portraits veil the identity of the individual beneath the uniform and mark the soldier first and foremost as a representative of the state.  In recent years a number of photographers have begun to challenge such work and in a way designed to remind us of the individuals doing the fighting.  Premiere amongst such work is the photography of Suzanne Opton.

In a series of projects beginning as early as 2003 Suzanne Opton has been photographing individual soldiers, emphasizing the artistic conventions of portraiture designed to help us engage and understand the individual qua individual.  And with stunning results. Taken “at home,” rather than on the war front, the soldiers she photographs are all out of uniform.  And thus there is a sense in which their status as “citizen” is accented, rather than their sense as warriors.  And yet they are unmistakably marked by their war experiences.  In one set of images, titled “Many Wars” she photographs veterans in treatment for combat trauma, but what marks the series is that they cut across every American war from World War II to the present.  Shrouded in cloth, and generally distinguished by age and the different wars in which they fought, they are nevertheless shown to be as one, even as they are portrayed as individuals—a paradox that underscores the in/visibility of war as it crosses generations (and more).

Suzanne Opton's Soldier Billboard Project

In one of her most recent works, titled “Soldiers” she photographs veterans returning from Iraq, by asking them to lie on the ground with their faces at rest, almost as if they were preparing to go to sleep.  The pose not only resists the typical conventions of portraiture (showing the individual sitting or standing up straight, shoulders back, emphasizing their strength and agency) but locates them in that liminal state between full and active consciousness and the dream world of sleep. In surely operates as a visual metaphor for the condition of such individuals.  There is also a gesture here to the “two thousand yard stare” that recurs as a convention of war photography, made all the more haunting by the fact that these individuals are out of uniform and thus that much closer to us as citizens on the homefront.   These photographs were part of a provocative and controversial “Billboard” campaign which, in their own way, demonstrate the sense in which the soldier has become more or less invisible in the contemporary landscape.

Whatever one makes of Opton’s work, it is clear that she is challenging us to think about the representation of war, and more, the implications for how we experience and engage such representations as we go about our daily lives.  She will be speaking on campus on Monday, October 10, 2010.  The title of her presentation is “Many Wars: The Difficulty of Home” and it will take place in Fine Arts 015 from 7:00-8:30 p.m.  The public is welcome (and encouraged) to attend.

John Louis Lucaites

Professor, Rhetoric and Public Culture

Department of Communication and Culture

IU College of Arts and Sciences

Professor Lucaites co-hosts the blog www.nocaptionneed.com, which regularly discusses the visualization of war in contemporary photojournalistic practice.



Ashes and Diamonds

Since Ashes and Diamonds is such an iconic film, one which every Pole or fan of Polish culture has seen, I asked friends in both categories to share reminiscences of the first time they saw Popiół i diament (as it’s titled in Poland – for some reason, only one “diamond” in Polish!).

It was “my first unadulterated experience of the Polish spirit,” one recalled. “I was deeply moved by its passion and by the emotional uses of light (or actually shadow) and space.” Wrote another: “Ashes and Diamonds had an almost mystical feel for me – and yet it was also full of unambiguous action. I knew only that the lead actor was supposedly ‘the Polish James Dean’, and Zbigniew Cybulski was everything Dean was, and more. Most of all, I remember that strange feeling when I realized the film’s message: for Poles in 1945 the war was over yet it wasn’t over at all.” Another, recalling his first viewing some 40 years ago, puts Ashes and Diamonds in the company of the greats of European cinema: “Up until my mid-teenage years I had only been exposed to Hollywood films, so seeing Bergman, Wajda, Polanski, and Ophuls in college was a liberating experience. … The quality of the print was not good, but somehow that enhanced the essential grittiness of  the film.  The fact that the story did not end well impressed me.  This was not the first non-Hollywood film for me.”

Well, no worries about the print: we’ll be seeing an excellent print on Sunday. And we’ll also have an expert introduction. Mikołaj Kunicki of the University of Notre Dame is researching the filmmakers of Communist Poland. I asked him about his first reaction to the film, and he had this to say:

“I do not remember when I saw Andrzej Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds for the first time -- I have seen it and taught on it so many times, but what I do recall is that this movie was always discussed and present in the Polish intelligentsia households. Times have changed, so has the state of film culture. But more than fifty years after its completion, the film continues to amaze viewers, including American college students with little exposure to Polish history and culture. This universally acclaimed reception of an otherwise ‘Polonocentric’ film demonstrates its universal legacy. The plot is still riveting, but above all, what makes this film so fascinating and wonderful to watch are Wajda's iconography with the masterful use of national symbols and metaphors, Jerzy Wójcik's outstanding camera work, and, last but not least, the truly mesmerizing performance of Zbigniew Cybulski.”

All true. See for yourself Sunday at 6:30. And please note that Professor Kunicki will be giving a talk the next day, in the Walnut Room in the IMU, entitled “Men for All Seasons? Polish Artists and the Problem of Collaboration during WWII and after.” Both Wajda and the novelist Jerzy Andrzejewski, on whose book this film was based, have been accused of collaboration with the Communists. Kunicki will examine the phenomenon of collaboration in the Polish artistic community under Nazi and Soviet occupations, its different treatment by the resistance movement and the postwar government, and the very applicability of the concept of collaboration for evaluating actions taken by Polish artists.

Padraic Kenney

Director, Polish Studies Center, Indiana University

Ashes and Diamonds is one of two films sponsored by IU Polish Studies Themester, and IU Cinema. It is being show Sunday, September 25 at 6:30 p.m. at IU Cinema.

Leo Tolstoy’s War AND Peace



Sara Stefani's well-worn copy of War and Peace.


Tolstoy obviously didn’t use all caps for the conjunction in the title of his great masterpiece. Although I have read and taught War and Peace several times, I find that I am looking at it somewhat differently this semester. Perhaps not really “differently” – I have always taught my students to see the connections between the “war” scenes and the “peace” scenes – but I think that the Themester goals have made this issue of the connections between war and peace come into clearer, sharper focus. I am currently teaching a course on War and Peace as well as conducting an on-line discussion group of the book, both as part of IU’s Themester program. Since one of the goals of this fall’s Themester is to question the relationship between war and peace, and whether it is even legitimate to separate the two, I find myself coming back to this issue in relation to Tolstoy’s novel. I do think Tolstoy wants us to question whether we can truly separate war from peace. With the Themester goals in mind, however, I am starting to realize how much it is in our human nature and human psychology to do just that – to ignore Tolstoy’s conjunction, to separate war from peace and assign them to different realms of experience.

Tolstoy’s novel opens with a set of “peace” scenes in Part One of Book One and is followed in Part Two by a set of “war” scenes. In my first on-line chat session with the discussion group, one participant made the comment that Part One is all domestic, as if Tolstoy is trying to give his readers a peek into everyone’s “normal” lives before the war drops like a cannonball into their midst. But the war is a palpable presence even from the first lines of the book. Tolstoy doesn’t start us off with a piece of description (“It was a dark and stormy night”), but with the speech of a society hostess who welcomes a guest to her party by proclaiming, “If you won’t say this means war [with Napoleon] … I shall disown you.” War and peace are intertwined from the beginning. Another participant asked the question, “At the time Russia was fighting battles all over the place – so did war become a part of ‘normal’?”

In many ways, this question applies as much to our modern experience as to 18th- and 19th-century Russia. Tolstoy himself was a soldier, and he took part in one of the bloodiest battles of the Crimean War in the 1850s. One of his goals in War and Peace as well as in his earlier “Sevastopol Stories” is to de-romanticize war. His narrator (especially in the “Sevastopol Stories”) lets the reader know quite explicitly that the reality of war does not conform to the idealized image you have of it from books. But in this day and age when we rely less on books for our archetypes than on television, movies, and the Internet, our experience of war may be more immediate, but is it any less romanticized?

One of the participants in the discussion group raised the following point about the male characters in War and Peace: “How much do these men really know about actually being in war? They seem almost to regard it as a game.” Another participant responded with, “Don’t all young men heading into war try to somewhat regard it as a game? How else could you manage to do it?” And another stated, “Men never learn from history. They keep getting pulled in to war even when they know it will not be the glorious experience they envision.” Such comments illustrate the continued relevance of Tolstoy’s novel for us today, teetering as they do on the brink of chronology – are we discussing Tolstoy, or our contemporary experience? 

There are scenes in War and Peace where war and peace converge. The war is no longer just a subject for drawing room conversations. Characters face execution at the hands of a firing squad or are forced to evacuate and abandon their homes – the war literally shows up on their doorstep. But in addition to the intrusion of actual, physical war into the characters’ lives, their personal relationships often seem to be based on the tactics of war. Many seemingly “peaceful” events are fought as if on a battlefield. Marriages are not arranged based on love and companionship, but by one side ambushing another. Romantic and familial relationships are often antagonistic and occasionally violent, and characters ruin (or attempt to ruin) each other using subterfuges that are as strategic as any battle plan. Tolstoy’s novel should make us question our relationships with those around us. Why do we so often treat other people as if they were the enemy and we were at war with them?

Even though War and Peace was written in another time (the 1860s) and another place (Russia), and deals with an enemy who no longer threatens us (Napoleon), it still holds relevance for us today. After all, how much have we really changed since the 1860s? It is a mistake to ignore Tolstoy’s conjunction. We have to see the connections between war and peace. How can we possibly change the former if we don’t change the latter? How can we get rid of war if we can’t get peace right?

Sara Stefani
Assistant Professor, Slavic Languages & Literatures
IU College of Arts and Sciences