Trench Art: the Art of War

Every object tells a story, and among the most powerful are those associated with war. From a bullet to a tank, from a souvenir fragment of battlefield debris to a miniature token of affection, all are artefacts of conflict. Each bears witness to the transformation of matter through the agency of destruction. Unpredictable in shape, and often intensely personal, war objects take various paths through time and space, acquire and then shed meanings, and play different roles in the lives of those with whom they collide. Their sensual, emotional, psychological, practical, and symbolic social lives can be endlessly reconfigured, revalued, and re-presented through new and previously unimaginable liaisons. War objects can be striking, disturbing, and uplifting, inviting us to look beyond the physical and consider the hybrid and constantly renegotiated relationships between objects and people. They link the living with the dead in an ever-changing relationship between past and present, and as such their study is a distinctive kind of anthropological archaeology.

Arguably, the most potent and diverse of such objects belong to a category known as ‘trench art’ – a term bequeathed by the First World War and the focus of this article, though in fact a concept as old as civilisation itself. A famous ancient example dates to 479 BC, when the Greeks defeated the Persians at the Battle of Plataea and melted down their bronze armour to forge a victory monument known as the Serpent Column – set up at Delphi, though now on display in Istanbul. Its ‘social life’ spans more than two millennia, three religions – the many gods of ancient Greece, Christianity, and Islam – and momentous cultural upheavals.

Trench art is a distinctive and ‘attention-grabbing’ kind of art, not least because it often incorporates the agents of death, mutilation, and destruction directly. In this way, it embodies the relationships between human beings and the things they make, use, and recycle – in the physical, spiritual, and imaginary worlds they construct and inhabit. It was, until recently, ignored by academia, and all but invisible in public consciousness.