A future perspective on war. A disconnected view of insanity

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) March 20, 2010 --

War has been a constant companion in the history of mankind, but surprisingly for the past few decades the majority of the world has been living in peace. There are whole generations of people who have not had intimate contact with warfare and there seems to be a trend towards peace. I personally believe this to be a passing trend before the apocalypse and the nuclear winter. Is war an integral part of our being and if so then what is wrong with us as a species to be so self destructive? Peter Mammes has recently made a series of paintings in his attempt to deal with the issue of why we as specie spend so much time, resources and manpower to build weapons of war. Peter frequents the military museums often in his attempts to grasp our insanity. Peter looks at war and tries to figure out what future generations, and perhaps other intelligent races might think of our war efforts. What these disconnected viewers might see, is the beauty and elegance in the war machines and the abomination of the intelligence behind them. Machines that were made not for any aesthetic reason, they were designed only for purpose, and that purpose; to kill. As objects war machines are fascinating they reveal so much about the time that they were made, the mindset of the people who made them, the state of the government who made them and the state of technology when they were made.

Imagine all the time and effort not to mention money that it took to research, develop and build these machines. Imagine that effort was used for research and the general betterment of mankind. Mammes’s artworks try to deal with these issues; ” I tried to paint images so that the viewer might see war in a detached and strange way, the way a scholar from a peaceful society might perceive war “ says Mammes and goes on to say: ”I look at the aesthetics of war. I try and point out the absurdity of warfare and a state of war. While madmen destroy the world, life goes on behind the scenes and ordinary people live their lives. Is it not always the innocent women, children and men who have to carry the burden of other people’s insanity? I think now in this intermission it is time to reassess our mentality.” See Mammes’s work at www.kettlehandle.com

absurd     art     War