Sur la ligne de feu c. 1914 - 1919

Curator: This stark image really gets under my skin. A lone figure, almost swallowed by the immensity of what surrounds him, it whispers of isolation and the crushing weight of…everything, really. Editor: And here we have Jean-Louis Forain's drawing, "Sur la ligne de feu," or "On the firing line." Created somewhere between 1914 and 1919, it’s a chilling, direct response to the First World War. He primarily uses pencil and charcoal, resulting in the somber tone that you picked up on immediately. Curator: Somber is an understatement. It’s a howl frozen on paper! You see the ambulance—it’s almost comical in its squareness—stuck, bogged down. And the soldier; his resignation feels palpable, like he’s waiting for the inevitable. What a devastatingly truthful rendering of wartime helplessness! Editor: Forain’s work here served a critical purpose. His drawings and prints circulated widely during and after the war, shaping public perception and memorializing the conflict's profound impact on French society. Notice the sketch-like quality. It’s not polished or idealized; rather, it speaks to the rawness of immediate experience. Curator: That raw immediacy is key. It’s not glorifying anything. There’s no heroics, just bleak…witnessing. Makes you think about how we, even now, try to sanitize and romanticize war, when really, it's often just a ditch, a broken-down vehicle, and a man staring into the abyss. Editor: Exactly. Forain rejected those heroic narratives. His focus was always on the individual human cost and the absurdity of it all. He wanted to record what he saw, so the future will remember, lest we repeat it. Curator: Art as witness, right? And a darn powerful one at that. It sticks with you, doesn't it? Long after you've moved on to the next pretty picture. Editor: Absolutely. Forain’s visual record gives us more than mere history; it’s empathy incarnate, and it compels us to think critically about the stories we tell ourselves about conflict.