Liberators 1943

Alexandre Hogue made this lithograph, "Liberators", in 1945. I imagine him sitting at the stone, carefully hatching with his crayon, building the forms of the flag, the planes, the doves, and the clouds. The drawing is so precise. Each mark is carefully placed to describe the folds of the flag, the curves of the planes, and the soft texture of the clouds. It’s a kind of slow looking and slow making, a thoughtful and almost reverent depiction of the war. I see something of Charles Sheeler in the American, machine-age precision, but with a dose of social realism, the flag as a symbol of freedom and hope amidst the war. Drawing and painting can be about a way of understanding the world through focused looking, and a kind of dedicated process of mark-making. Hogue asks us to reflect on the complexities of war and peace, the intertwined symbols of freedom and the tools of destruction.