Jap

Oil on Canvas 17.5" x 22" (with Frame)

1997

Much is made of hatred as a motive for combat, though history demonstrates time and again that greed is generally the primary rationale for war. What's more is that the key requirement for the greedy to mobilize ever greater numbers of others to face both sides of murder without having to sacrifice too much of the spoils is the more universal primal incentive to violence: Fear. Hatred is too personal; it requires direct knowledge of the hated in order to take hold and comes in as many shapes as the people who engender it. It may result from warfare, but it would seem to be an unreliable fuse to ignite it. Far more efficient is the development of ignorance among the populace so that the world outside becomes increasingly abstract and potentially threatening. Once battle is joined such ignorance perpetuates itself until final victory. The Second World War was an occasion when unprecedented numbers of people all over the world gave in to their ignorance and performed acts of savagery on an proportionally enormous scale. For the United States, the ignorance of the equally blinkered Japanese led to a string of horrors at home and abroad that culminated in the dropping of the Atomic Bomb. This portrait of a Japanese soldier, burdened by modern war technology in the form of his steel helmet and machinegun while merging with the roiling nature around him, framed with the dissolving detritus of jungle warfare, represents that which America vowed to destroy with such awesome violence and ultimate dispassion. The varhish over his face curdles with heat and degradation. Still, frozen out of context in his frame, one can plainly see that he is small, frail, young and undeniably human.

Available for purchase.

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