{"id":92040,"date":"2014-04-18T08:27:53","date_gmt":"2014-04-18T12:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=92040"},"modified":"2014-04-25T09:18:31","modified_gmt":"2014-04-25T13:18:31","slug":"art-on-the-frontlines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2014\/04\/art-on-the-frontlines\/","title":{"rendered":"Art on the Frontlines"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"One<\/a>
One of Seth Tobocman’s images on display at the Contemporary Art Galleries shows two men fighting while holding a tank and a bomb, with the words \u201cTheir Weapons Won\u2019t Save You!\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In determining how it would collaborate with the Humanities Institute for the weeklong program \u201cWar and its Meanings<\/a>\u201d from April 21 to 25, staff at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center turned to the Archives and Special Collections department.<\/p>\n

A recent opportunity for the Dodd Center to acquire a series of works by radical comic book artist and illustrator Seth Tobocman inspired the idea of looking at a broad range of artistic views on the theme of war.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that makes UConn\u2019s human rights program unique is the participation of our arts and humanities departments, such as Philosophy, History, English, and now increasingly the Art & Art History and Dramatic Arts departments,\u201d says Glenn Mitoma, director of the Dodd Center, which is also home to the Human Rights Institute. “We wanted to highlight those contributions to get students in those majors excited about human rights on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n

The artistic portion of the week is titled \u201cWar, Struggle, and Visual Politics: Art on the Frontlines.\u201d In addition to Tobocman’s works, which will be exhibited at the Contemporary Art Galleries, it includes photos by Stephen Dupont from his \u201cAxe Me Biggie\u201d and \u201cWhy am I a Marine?\u201d series now on display at the UConn Co-op Bookstore in Storrs Center.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cThe<\/a>
\u201cThe World is Being Ripped,\u201d by Seth Tobocman, was originally spray painted on the sidewalks of New York City\u2019s Lower East Side in the 1980s.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tobocman, best known for his \u201cWorld War 3 Illustrated\u201d series, is among a group of artists represented during this year\u2019s \u201cA Week in the Humanities\u201d program. The week’s events include workshops by the artists, a panel discussion among scholars, and keynote remarks on April 24 by award-winning journalist Christopher Hedges and editorial cartoonist Dwayne Booth, also known by his pen name, \u201cMr. Fish.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe World is Being Ripped\u201d is a series of 14 spray and stencil works by Tobocman that will be exhibited at the Contemporary Art Galleries for the first time since it was originally created in the 1980s by being spray painted in black and red on the sidewalks of New York City\u2019s Lower East Side.<\/p>\n

The exhibition title image depicts the world being broken apart by two individuals chomping down on Earth. Another strong image in the series includes two men fighting while holding a tank and a bomb with the words \u201cTheir Weapons Won\u2019t Save You!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018The World is Being Ripped\u2019 was originally a response to the Cold War,\u201d Tobocman says. \u201cBut it came to address a larger question: In a society as predatory and self-destructive as this one, can there be any basis for morality? Is ethical behavior even possible in such a context? I like to think that in adopting these images as their emblems, people are answering that question in the affirmative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Presentations will include \u201cThe Veteran Aesthetic: A Conversation about Art, Politics, and War,\u201d by Chantelle Bateman, a poet and artist, and Aaron Hughes, an artist, at the Konover Auditorium in the Dodd Center on April 21 at 1:30 p.m. Both Bateman and Hughes are veterans of the Iraq War and participants in the Warrior Writers project and Iraq Veterans Against the War. Drawings by Hughes are on display at the Humanities Institute library, located on the third floor of the Philip E. Austin Building.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe visual arts offer a unique way to look at something that has real impact — war and its many aspects, such as violent conflict, geo political implications, and the impact on the community,\u201d says Brendan Kane, assistant professor of history in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and associate director of the Humanities Institute. “War is something that affects all of us, and the arts allow us better to speak with one another as we grapple with these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information, go to the Humanities Institute website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘A Week in the Humanities’ looks at war and its meanings through art. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":92001,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-92040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-07 04:26:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92040"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92488,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92040\/revisions\/92488"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/92001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92040"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=92040"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=92040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}