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05/09/2005: "War doesn’t have its own colour."
Late at night, in a room sheltered from the wind and rain, a man and a woman lie in a tender embrace. In another part of the world, while the sun rises over a calm and transparent sea, a jet bursts suddenly and noisily through the sky, peppering the sand on the beach with rounds of ammunition: two soldiers lie still, their escape halted in dust and blood.
The sun keeps shining, ignoring the devastation of war. And the night falls on times of peace. No light and shade, black or pink, to represent fear and serenity. So we see that in the natural world there are no colours of peace, or of war. And yet black, leaden grey, dirty white, and violent contrasts of light appear to be most fitting in representations of death, destruction, terror and all the disasters caused by war. But these are not the only colours of war; but rather the modern conventions we use to represent it. 
In the church of S. Francesco in Arezzo, Piero della Francesca depicts a terrible battle in a great cycle of frescos, using a completely different range of colours. (Battle between Heraclius and Chosroes, 1460 ca.) There are spears piercing through bodies, the heads of dying soldiers glimpsed between the horses’ legs, elegant coats of armour, and standards waving in a cobalt blue sky. The Renaissance artist held firmly to his principles. The ancient masters believed that "in colouring, we intend to show the colours of things as they are, whether light or dark, according to how they are illuminated" (“colorare intendiamo dare i colori commo nelle cose se dimostrano, chiari et oscuri secondo che i lumi li devariano”)
However, in the second half of the seventeenth century, battle scenes became a pictorial genre, like a great epic, with horses and riders combating in a vortex of dust among leafy trees, under skies variegated with gilded clouds.
Only in 1808 do we finally see the traditional representation overturned by Antoine Jean Gros and his Napoleon at the battle of Eylau. “For the first time a painter of violence does not embellish, does not transform carnage and death into a festive occasion, full of scenic beauty” (Á. Masson). Immediately afterwards The retreat from Russia, the great and terrible canvas by Nicolas Toussant Charlet, irreversibly leads us to associate black and grey with the representation of war.
Then the moving images of film arrive, using colour to indicate the psychological, tragic and foolish, as in All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Delbert Mann in 1930.
And only recently we became spectators, through television, of a green backdrop with shadows stirring in the midst of white flashes on screen. It looked like part of a video game, but was, in fact, the war in Iraq, with its infrared rays: the most terrible war, the night bombardments in "Verona" green.
Finally, in coming to terms with war, there are the colours of our words, beliefs, feelings, our hopes and fears and, at the same time, the bitter colour of opposing views, which every war renders implacable.
Even though it is never easy to distinguish right from wrong, when we are at war, experiencing the devastation it produces, any kind of distinction becomes almost impossible. Truth and Untruth often look very similar, and the differences must be smaller than we think, if it is so easy to present falsehoods as the truth. And yet that difference, so difficult to perceive, contains the implacable contrast between the two terms. But is it true that these two expressions are only, and always, contrasting?
I have often heard people say: “It’s the lesser of two evils.” Or “It’s black and white”. However, I have always been very wary of what people claim to be absolutely clear and obvious, and I continue to believe that the truth is so hidden under appearances that it is not easy to make it come to light. Is it true that only history can disclose the real meaning of events, enabling us to understand the hidden meaning behind what we thought we saw? Or will even history continually have to be rewritten? Or will art, instead, nurtured by ambiguity, adventure and judgement, be able to represent the unthinkable connection between truth and untruth?
Alberto Sughi,
Rome May 2005
www.albertosughi.com
