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I was looking up information on the illustrator of my favorite vintage 7th grade religion textbook – Nina Barr Wheeler – and stumbled upon this fascinating slice of Catholic and American history, and one more hint about what we lost when we severed beauty from faith, and decided that sitting around in folding chairs looking at each other was not only the best we could do, but perhaps even the height of worship. Also note a lived-out sense of communion here: people using their gifts to help each other in troubling, difficult situations – in concrete ways.
During World War II, a group called the Citizens Committee for the Army, Navy and Air Force commissioned artists to make portable triptychs for use during Catholic Masses.
One of the artists and organizers, Hildreth Meière, wrote:
During the Second World War, being too old for the Waves, I taught First Aid, and as Vice-President of the Citizens Committee for the Army, Navy and Air Corps, Inc., organized a group of artists who designed and painted portable triptychs for the Service chaplains. We sent out over five hundred, of which I did over seventy.
A triptych could transform any military site into a temporary chapel. Each unit requesting a triptych received an original design inspired by the unit’s needs.
Underlying all these paintings, regardless of their style and theme, was a desire by the artists to relate to young servicemen. Sensitive to the servicemen’s anxieties, homesickness, and yearning for familiar religious symbols, the artists asked them to renew their faith in a common God while fulfilling a patriotic mission.
Upon his division’s receipt of a triptych, a brigadier general wrote:
The triptych was dedicated in a colorful and impressive outdoor ceremony. The massed colors of the artillery organizations of the division flanked the work, which was mounted on two of our howitzers. The inspiring ceremony will long be remembered by those present. It is hoped that the altarpiece may accompany us wherever we go in the days ahead.
The initial artists for the triptychs were selected through a competition held in 1941. Their triptychs were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and two were reproduced in the New York Times, including Triptych 9 by Meière and Louis Ross depicting the Lions of Judah.
Now, get ready:
There is a collection of images of some of these gorgeous works of art at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. Here are a few for you – click on each image for a full view.
Violet Oakley (1874-1961), one of the first American women to find fame in the burgeoning field of public mural painting, in addition to success as an illustrator and stained-glass designer, devoted her 60-year artistic career to the quest for a just and peaceful world. Inspired by the Quaker faith, she considered her art to be a vehicle for social change, believing that beauty could lift up communities and give rise to a moral society.
During World War II, the elderly Oakley continued this artistic mission through her work with the Citizens Committee for the Army, Navy and Air Force. Originally founded to provide leisure materials and entertainment to boost troop morale, the Committee adopted a new initiative in the fall of 1941 to produce portable altarpieces for on American battleships, military bases, and airfields around the world. The Committee hoped that these triptychs (three-paneled altarpieces) might “carry comfort and strength to this generation in its overwhelming task of defending the present and preserving the future.”
Oakley’s The Angel of Victory Triptych, painted for Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field and now in the Museum’s permanent collection, was one of the earliest triptychs commissioned by the Citizens Committee. It was the first of 25 wartime altarpieces the artist created for the Committee, completed just two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. This exhibition reunites the finished painting with preliminary studies for the project for the first time, allowing an exploration of Oakley’s creative process. Oakley responded to this volatile moment in world history by infusing her religious work with a democratic spirit echoing her lifelong desire for peace.
Finally, here’s a video about a few of the artists and their process. There’s no sound.
In the comments – wise words from Fr. Fox:
I’m curious how these struck others; here’s what struck me, considering both the depictions and the context. It seemed to me that many of the authors wanted to remind the men and women that there is an objective Truth, objective Good, objective Beauty, and — to borrow from Tolkien — that these things are worth fighting for.
In the years since 9/11, I have had depressing conversations with friends and family members, in which people I hoped would know better would defend use of torture or quasi-torture, because the situation is so unparalleled, and we just have to, it can’t be helped, but above all, because the end justifies the means. And these images take me back to a time of intense war, to harrowing experiences that almost no one alive experienced, to a time of crisis and fear and horror that vastly exceeded those of our time. No, not in potential, I suppose; but in actual experience.
No doubt there was plenty of ends-justifying-the-means circa 1942. Plenty of examples can be cited on the part of decision-makers, and we can guess what it was for commanders and warriors on all the fields of battle.
Did these artists realize they were providing a powerful antidote? I don’t know, but they did: above this horrible battlefield, there is a God, whose “will is law,” and that God merits the adoration of all. To me, this art says not, “we fight so we can be on top,” but rather, “we fight so that we can remain human.”