Musée Picardie - Musée de la Grande guerre en picardie - Past Exhibitions

Whether they is realistic, humorous or fantastic, and whatever the period (from Bécassine in the early 20th century to the recent series Le Coeur des Batailles [The thick of the battles]), the comics prove to be a veritable laboratory of imagery for the Great War. The exhibition offers a survey of the (re)presentation of the Great War in European and North American comics through seven chronological/thematic sections:

2. The high points of the Great War in the comics
3. Specific landscapes and identities of a worldwide, multiform war to be seen in the panels
4. On the battlefronts: gunfire and daily life
5. The home fronts, or how to live behind the lines in wartime
6. Representations of a society subject to propaganda and censorship
7. Confronting the war: the traces of the trauma and the weight of mourning

The original episodes of Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu (Under Fire, 1916) masterfully reinterpreted by contemporary creator François Boucq.

In partnership with Embassy of Australia in France and the Australian War Memorial

The Historial, museum of the Great War is continuing the international cooperation way this year, by proposing an exhibition of original photographs of Australian soldiers during the Great War. These photographs come from Australian War Memorial (Canberra-Australia), and were unveiled exclusively in 2008 at the Australian Embassy in France. Using a very moving chronological history of the engagement of the Australian Armed Forces in France, sixty action shots show scenes of the fighting, the desolation of the battlefield and the everyday life experienced by the Diggers, from their arrival in France in 1916 until the day after the armistice was signed. The exhibition will be enriched with objects full of memories of the Australian’s presence in France.

On November 11^th, 1918, the First World War came to its end. For 90 years, we have continued to commemorate this date. However, little by little, the traces of the Great War in the landscape of villages and countryside are inexorably being effaced by time. What meaning does this commemoration hold, then, for the people of 2008, at the moment of the construction of European citizenship? The Historial of the Great War, in privileging a European vision of the first global conflict, is the symbolic site for hosting a series of events around these questions: an exhibition of contemporary photography by Patrick Tourneboeuf and Jean Richardot.

The exhibition presents a major but unknown aspect of creation on the German side of the Rhine from 1914 to 1924. It is devoted to those German artists and writers who, confronted by the Great War, opted to denounce the inhumanity of the conflict and dreamed of a world at peace. For them, art would permit the creation of a new world and a new civilisation. Death, injury, the destruction of bodies and souls became the central themes in their work. Otto DIX, Georg GROSZ, Max BECKMANN, Franz W. SEIWERT, Gert WOLLHEIM, Will KÜPPER, Otto PANKOK, Else LASKER-SCHÜLER, Hugo BALL, Ernst TOLLER and many others were to contribute to this collective attempt to reveal and surmount the horrors of the Great War, bound together as they were by the desire for a better world.

Exhibition curators: Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann (Professor, Institut ‘Moderne im Rheinland’, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf), Jasmin Grande (teaching and research assistant, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf) and Gerd Krumeich (Professor, Institut ‘Moderne im Rheinland’, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf, and Research Centre, Historial de la Grande Guerre).

Exhibition catalogue: in French with article summaries in German. Editions 5 Continents, 112 pages, 55 illustrations, 27 €.

War in the Gulf - Michel LeBrun-Franzaroli
INSTALLATION ON THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND THE FIRST GULF WAR
EXHIBITION OF CONTEMPORARY ART

What do we show of war? The exhibition “War in the Gulf” by Michel LeBrun-Franzaroli weaves a reflection upon journalistic images by reproducing television images of the First Gulf War (1991) on Iranian rugs or carpet. How are they deformed, and how do we take them in and interpret them? The Great War was the period during which “the image of war” was born. It was the first modern war in which media coverage was able to reach a large audience, but which yielded images that were very far from the reality of the front, a reality that would have been too difficult to portray directly. Likewise, during the First Gulf War, audiences saw very little of the true nature of the war’s destructiveness. Like the permanent collections of the Historial, this contemporary artwork offers a series of reflections about the representations of war, and about life during a time of war. By having created the archetypes for the portrayal of war in moving images, the First World War again proves itself to have been a model pattern for the twentieth century. For this exhibition, the artist creates a new installation to evoke the connection between the First World War and the First Gulf War.

Catalogue of the exhibition available at the museum: 48 pages, 30 illustrations.

Inspired by the eternal theme of war, the artist shows in her oil paintings on canvas and in her ceramic sculptures (1995-1997), the absurdity of war. The works presented are part of the Historial’s collection.

These literary and artistic works were created based upon the thematics of the GreatWar and the collections of the Historial, by schoolchildren of the Somme (in Mers-les-Bains and Amiens). Due to their quality and the depth of reflection that they portray, the Historial has decided to exhibit them in the museum.

The Anmals' War

30 June - 25 November 2007

The First World War not only mobilized millions of men but also required the use, for various tasks, of millions of animals: horses, dogs, carriers pigeons, cattle… These animals played, at the same time, a tactical, symbolical and nutritive role. The interactions between men and beast are however forgotten in today’s history despite the fact that these ties are revealing of the physical and cultural conditions of these societies at war. The Great War is now seen as incredible acceleration towards modern warfare but this view nevertheless hides many still « archaic » aspects. The war of 1914-1918 was therefore also the animals’ Great War.

Wake up, America! 1917-1918

The Historial’s American posters

90^th anniversary of the United States declaration of war (1917-2007)

23 March – 27 May 2007

The Great War saw the explosion in poster propaganda, then the only wide-spread and efficient way of communicating. The United States printed over twenty million copies of 2500 different posters, more than all other warring countries combined. This unparalleled effort affected all aspects, from recruiting to production and relief for the deprived populations. Posters became very modern. They opened the way to the century of pictures.

Cemeteries of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission

90^thanniversary of the Commonwealth War Grave Commission (CWGC)

7 June – 26 August 2007

Designed in 1917 and built as soon as 1919, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s cemeteries dot the landscapes of Belgium, northern France and the Somme. These places of remembrance, scars of the Great War, have been cared for by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for 90 years (established in 1917 by a Royal Charter). The memory in its safekeeping serves to transmit the history of those times. In 2007, the Historial, in partnership with the CWGC, will host an exhibition of photographs showing the importance of these cemeteries and memorials in the landscapes and everyday life. Highlighting this, the work of artists Vincent and Martine Blary show us how these cemeteries are part of today’s landscapes. The photographs on display are taken from the book Remembered, a History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission which was made for the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Commission.

The unpublished pages are taken from the artist book Lieux de mémoire, paysages d’un territoire ordinaire (Places of memory, landscapes of an ordinary territory) made by Martine and Vincent Blary.