The exhibition, ”Art and War,” examines the link between artistic strategies and war strategies. The conventional approach to the above question discusses the manner in which armed conflicts are expressed in art. More pertinent questions arise when art is being primarily regarded as a technique while being aware of the fact that it is influenced by techniques of war, given that modern war devices created new methods of seeing, of observation, of visual representation and the processing of data deriving from those methods.
Intensively scrutinizing fields of war causes the aesthetics of war to mold images of art, and also the other way around, art defines the boundaries of the visible.
There exists another parallel link between art and war. The artistic discourse is about breaking rules, destroying tradition and breaching taboos. In other words, Modern art does not only accompany, describe or criticize war but it wages war itself. Modern art and the Avant-garde produce new images within old frameworks and thus create a social rift; an artificial difference created by art, which functions like those ”natural” differences within society, therefore acquires the same significance and the same power. That is: art is active, it does not only accompany and describe social conflicts, but it takes active part in producing them.
In the exhibition participate artists from Israel, Palestine, Sweden, Germany and Italy. They try to examine the question of the link between art and war through both perspectives: the relationship between techniques of art and techniques of war and the role of art in creating social and cultural differences.
The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
