Brush, Canvas, Paint, and Uniform Malak Karsh’s portrait photographs of Second World War Canadian War Artists

In the spring of 1946, Ottawa photographer Malak Karsh, brother of the well-known photographer Yousuf Karsh, took several photographs of the official Canadian war artists for the Montreal Standard’s magazine to document them completing their paintings. This series of 23 highly staged portraits is unique in Malak’s oeuvre and it serves as an excellent research source on the Second World War Canadian war artists’ program. By comparing different versions of photographs at the Canadian War Museum with the Standard images, it becomes obvious how the magazine reduced Malak’s documentary and at the same time creative approach to emphasize the patriotic content. Resume : Au printemps 1946, le photographe ottavien Malak Karsh, frere du celebre photographe Yousuf Karsh, a pris, pour le magazine Montreal Standard, de nombreux cliches d’artistes de guerre officiels du Canada dans le but de documenter la completion de leurs peintures. Cette serie de 23 portraits fortement mis en scene est unique dans l’œuvre de Malak et constitue une excellente source de recherche sur le programme des artistes de guerre canadiens de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. En comparant differentes versions des photographies conservees au Musee canadien de la guerre aux images publiees dans le Standard, il appert a quel point le magazine a reduit la preuve documentaire de Malak et son approche innovatrice pour accentuer une approche patriotique. Ca na di an W ar M us eu m 1 97 10 26 142 88 © Canadian Military History, Volume 21, Number 2, Spring 2012, pp.58-68. 2 Canadian Military History, Vol. 21 [2015], Iss. 2, Art. 6 http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol21/iss2/6 60 only unique in Malak Karsh’s oeuvre, it is also a tremendous research resource on the implementation and outcome of the Second World War Canadian war artists’ program. Furthermore, the history of Malak Karsh’s postwar commission sheds light on the different interests of photographers, art historians, and the public media at the time when it came to imagery and its use. According to an 8 March 1946 letter from Phillip H. Surrey of the Montreal Standard to Colonel G.G. Yates, director of public relations with the Canadian Army, Surrey planned a photo story on “the work being done by the war artists in uniform.”5 The upcoming war art exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada that opened on 14 May 1946 was quite likely one incentive.6 The military’s public relations department was delighted with this news. Yates wrote back to Surrey on 12 March 1946: “I have also spoken to the Director of Historical Records [at the Department of National Defence (DND)], who is quite happy about the whole affair.”7 Journalist Gerald Waring was asked to write the story and Malak (who went by his first name so as to distinguish himself from his older brother Yousuf) received the commission for the pictures – a series of portraits of the 23 Canadian war artists working at that time in Ottawa. Malak created them at the artists’ studios in the old military stores building at Cartier Square, National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa.8 The Montreal Standard magazine published Malak’s photograph of Nichols, together with 22 other Canadian war artist portraits, on 25 May 1946 under the title “Road to Victory: Army Artists’ Canvases Record the Long and Bloody March from Camp Borden to Berlin.”9 The caption under Nichols’ image reads: “Youngest and one of the most prolific Navy war artists, Lieut. Jack Nichols of Ottawa, is shown here with recently completed canvas of a drowning sailor.” What the Standard did not do was use the entire photograph as Malak composed it but a cropped version. This is also the case with the other published subjects. In so doing, much of what Malak intended and captured in his portraits was not shared with the Standard’s readers. They did not see Malak’s unique photographs as they were intended or understand the significance of his decision to portray the artists in front of their finished paintings with their equipment around them. But there is even more to the photographs than this. In many ways, the material Malak included in his images encapsulates the nature of the program itself as experienced by the artists, and references a long tradition of painted self-portraiture. Government funded, the war artist program commissioned 32 artists to create a pictorial record of Canada’s involvement in the Second World War. It started more than three years after the war began because at first the government was not interested in such a scheme. Following lobbying efforts on the part of the arts community, however, in January 1943 the Canadian War Records (CWR) committee consisting of H.O. McCurry, director of the National Gallery of Canada, and senior military personnel from the three services was set up. The program had three main goals: to document the Canadian mission, to build Canadian morale, and to promote civilian interest in the war effort. Its purpose was stated in the “Instructions for War Artists” sent to each artist: “As a War Artist appointed to one of the Canadian Services you are charged with the portrayal of significant events, scenes, phases and episodes in the experience of the Canadian Armed Forces, especially those which cannot be adequately rendered in any other way.”10 As Andrew Bell points out in his 1945 Studio “War Art” article, “It is only the artist who has the means to ‘fill the eye’ with the atmosphere and spiritual shadings of the struggle.”11 During military operations and behind the front lines, sketchbooks were essential for the artists to create sketches or watercolours on the spot. At the end of the war, the artists returned to Canada where a majority received studios in Ottawa to complete a number of canvases based on their works on paper where Malak photographed them. As Laura Brandon, historian, art and war, at the CWM points out, the program resulted in no huge memorial compositions focusing on destruction and misery as had occurred in the First World War. Instead, most of the 5,000 artworks are small and documentary depicting the locations and events on all fronts in an “oftendepersonalized manner.”12 This can be seen in the painting included in Malak’s portrait of Lawren P. Harris in which the artist holds a brush up to his already finished painting, Reinforcements Moving up in the Ortona Salient.13 Harris, shown in his army uniform, looks very seriously at the painting. The Montreal Standard states of its cropped version: “Stark desolation of war is chosen by Capt. Lawren P. Harris, ARCA, of Toronto, a backdrop for painting of tank men in Italy.” The painting demonstrates a somewhat documentary approach. This was characteristic of the program’s art: it never glorified the war nor showed the extent of the devastation but tended to be strictly representational.14 N a t i o n a l G a l l e r y c u r a t o r Donald W. Buchanan criticised this documentary approach in a review of a 1945 exhibition of war art in Ottawa in the journal Canadian Art and expressed a hope for more complex works with the passage of time.15 He stated that the war artists would need a certain amount of time after coming back from the conflict to reflect on their experiences, and to study the mass of sketches they had created during their deployment: 3 : Brush, Canvas, Paint, and Uniform Malak Karsh’s portrait photographs of Second World War Canadian War Artists Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2015 61 If that privilege is given them, then we can hope for some truly significant art to result. This time for reflection is essential. Let it be denied them, and then altogether too much of this project for Canadian war art will turn out to have been nothing but the dutiful accumulation of

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