You learn something new everyday
With Sketchpads and Guns, Semper Fi
The NYT article, by Carol Kino, is about the United Stated Marine Corp Combat Art Program. It's really amazing - I had no clue there were artists covering wars in the 20th/21st centuries (not including photographers).
“We’re not here to do poster art or recruiting posters,” Sergeant Battles, 42, said. “What we are sent to do is to go to the experience, see what is really there and document it — as artists.”
The program is not the only one of its kind in the United States military, but many regard it as the one most deeply committed to its artistic mission. Like those in the other services, it began after the attack on Pearl Harbor and scaled back after Vietnam. Somewhat unusually, however, it has kept at least one artist in the reserves ready to deploy. And while most of the services have reactivated their art programs since the start of the Bush administration’s “global war on terror,” the Marine Corps’s has been the only one to cover most of the major conflicts.
and
One thing that sets the Marine Corps program apart from those of other services is its focus on human subjects and experiences. That’s what has always appealed to Anita Blair, chief strategist at the National Security Professional Development Integration Office, who got to know the program when she was acting assistant secretary of the Navy for a year (2008-09). “When you go over to the Air Force,” she said, “the art is all airplanes. In the Navy it’s all ships. Army art tends to be more about the battle, and the Army loves trucks. They’re fixated on vehicles. But the Marine Corps is fixated on Marines.”
Unites States Marine Corp Museum
