War Paintings

Summary

The title War Paintings unites two characteristic aspects of Pieter Moleveld’s oeuvre: war and painting. The First and Second World Wars play an important role in Moleveld’s work, as do the memories of these wars and how those memories are kept alive. In addition, he ‘paints’ with film, in long, immobile shots, forcing the viewer to look intensely, if not to gaze.

War Paintings consists of a series of tableaux of a snowy landscape. ‘The Ardennes, in January 1999’, states an intertitle. But this is not just any landscape. The dark purple sky looks threatening, and blood seems to flow through the babbling brook instead of water. In another tableau, the water looks like a layer of paint has been scratched away, in which we see the history of that landscape: a newsreel scene about the Ardennes Offensive of 1944. The manipulations are relatively simple, but they are effective. With video, Moleveld portrays better than ever the secret of the things that he sees. Like that other painter, Armando, Moleveld wants to show us that there is such a thing as a guilty landscape.