The Big Crater 1917

Editor: "The Big Crater," painted in 1917 by William Orpen, rendered with oil paint... The canvas is dominated by a stark, almost lunar landscape. What strikes me most is this odd combination of beauty and devastation, an unsettling marriage of color and destruction. What do you make of it? Curator: Ah, yes, Orpen. It's like stumbling upon an alien planet, isn’t it? He paints what feels like another world—and in a way, it *was*. Imagine being an official war artist in World War I, surrounded by relentless carnage. What does one even *do* with that? He chose, it seems, not to give us the trenches directly but the aftermath, a world reshaped by unimaginable force. Do you feel the ghostly absence? Editor: Absolutely. It’s desolate. A quiet…horror. There’s that beautiful light hitting the top of the ridges. It's so surreal. It’s almost Romantic. Curator: Romantic, yes, in the original sense. Think of Caspar David Friedrich's lonely wanderers dwarfed by nature, except here, nature is war itself, creating these "big craters" --almost wounds on the earth. There’s a terrible irony, painting something so sublime when its origins are so deeply ugly. Do you find yourself strangely drawn to it despite that? Editor: Definitely. Maybe because the beauty softens the blow a bit, inviting contemplation rather than just shock. I'd never really thought of war having its own landscape before. Curator: War has always shaped landscape, visibly and invisibly. This, I think, is Orpen showing us just how profound and disturbing that shaping can be. A beautiful elegy perhaps, carved from the face of destruction. Editor: So, in a way, it's not just about depicting destruction, but how we make sense of it. Food for thought.