{"@context":["https://schema.org","https://art-official.org/ns/"],"@type":"VisualArtwork","@id":"https://bernardbolter.com/world-war-one","name":"World War One","url":"https://bernardbolter.com/world-war-one","dateCreated":"2022","creator":{"@type":"Person","name":"Bernard Bolter","alternateName":"Bernard John Bolter IV","identifier":[{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"Wikidata","value":"https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q140782973"}],"@id":"https://bernardbolter.com/bio#person"},"artMedium":"Mixed media on canvas","width":{"@type":"QuantitativeValue","value":80,"unitCode":"CMT"},"height":{"@type":"QuantitativeValue","value":80,"unitCode":"CMT"},"isPartOf":{"@type":"CreativeWorkSeries","@id":"https://bernardbolter.com/series/mediums-of-perception#series","name":"Mediums of Perception","url":"https://bernardbolter.com/series/mediums-of-perception"},"image":"https://pub-6a869efbfec4404396a52a3b7056bfc7.r2.dev/world-war-one.jpg","additionalProperty":[{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"art-official:intent","name":"Intent","value":"This is a painting about medium hidden in the fog of war — using the physical density and chaos of compositing dozens of photographs to make the recording medium itself, not just the war it depicts, the subject."},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"art-official:formalContributionAssessment","name":"Formal Contribution Assessment","value":"The first return, in 20+ years, of the Art Collision 'unrepeated hybrid mode' — visible composited photograph and visible hand-worked paint coexisting on one surface. Where Art Collision's digital compositing erased seams for false continuity, here paint takes over the *function* (not the method) of digital collage: connecting and containing many discrete photo-fragments into a landscape-like reading. Recognized only now, through the cataloguing process itself, not at time of making."},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"art-official:consciousRejections","name":"Conscious Rejections","value":"Rejected letting the composited photographs achieve false continuity (the Art Collision digital-compositing move of erasing seams to create something that never existed). Every photo-fragment here stays discrete and legible — paint does the coherence-work without hiding the seams."},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"art-official:intentVsOutcome","name":"Intent vs Outcome","value":"Originally intended as an 80x80cm test toward a larger, more spaced-out format (~120x180cm, using leftover stretcher bars). The test became its own finished series instead — the resulting density and closeness, rather than being a limitation, became a deliberate evocation of war's chaos. Meaning followed from a practical/material constraint, not the reverse."},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"art-official:makingNote","name":"Making Note","value":"Made 2022 at the Markgrafendamm studio, Berlin. First ACH work to composite dozens of source photographs onto one canvas rather than a single transfer. Conceived first as a black-and-white/color/film idea, then built by physically printing and trial-and-error laying out photos until a compositional plan emerged — the paint plan came after, not before. Composition rises from a sparse sky (aircraft/balloon photos) through a horizon line to a dense mid-ground (ships, trenches) to the most intimate, densest photos at the bottom (faces, wounded). The horizon deliberately drops top-to-bottom as a literal timeline. [Corrected 2026-09-06: previously stated the row-layout scaffolding was worked out in World War Two and confirmed here — the artist has since clarified World War One was painted first. The bottom-row connecting technique (lines and shadows linking discrete photo-fragments) originated and was refined within this painting itself, forced into existence under the density pressure of the bottom rows specifically, then carried forward into World War Two already-refined.]"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"art-official:directInspiration","name":"Direct Inspiration","value":"The concept of rendering each war in the recording medium dominant to its era (b&w photography for WWI, color photography for WWII, film stills for Vietnam) came first, before any compositional decisions."},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"art-official:workContext","name":"Work Context","value":"First work in the planned 'Mediums of War' sub-series of A Colorful History. A fourth, unrealized member (drawings, black-and-white, era undecided — candidates considered: Napoleonic, Civil War, Seven Years' War) was conceived but never made."},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"art-official:seriesContext","name":"Series Context","value":"Sits within A Colorful History as the founding work of the new 'Mediums of War' sub-series, and is retrospectively read as the reactivation of the Art Collision hybrid mode after two decades in which every intervening series took forward only one half of it (either photograph or paint, never both visibly at once)."},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"art-official:artHistoricalContext","name":"Art Historical Context","value":"Two resonances identified as retrospective, not influences at time of making. Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others: WWI photography's aftermath-only character reflects period camera limits; Sontag's own use of a color combat photograph to argue color can intensify rather than distance violence complicates Bernard's black-and-white-equals-distance instinct — this tension is logged as preserved, not resolved. Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: the aura/reproduction concept was already consciously known; the postscript's argument that fascism aestheticizes politics ('Fiat ars — pereat mundus') was not consciously known, and its resonance with Bernard's own longstanding fatalism is logged as an unconscious coincidence."},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"art-official:sizeTier","name":"Size Tier","value":"xl"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"art-official:orientation","name":"Orientation","value":"square"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"art-official:catalogueNumber","name":"Catalogue Number","value":"BB-ACH-2022-007"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"art-official:reasoningStatus","name":"Reasoning Status","value":"complete"}],"art-official:recordUrl":"https://bernardbolter.com/api/corpus/world-war-one","art-official:indexUrl":"https://bernardbolter.com/api/corpus/index","art-official:sessionsUrl":"https://bernardbolter.com/api/corpus/world-war-one/sessions","art-official:sessionsPageUrl":"https://bernardbolter.com/world-war-one#sessions","art-official:scope":"work","art-official:depth":"record","art-official:tier":4,"art-official:availableTiers":{"1":true,"2":true,"3":true,"4":true,"5":true},"art-official:tierMap":{"1":{"url":"https://bernardbolter.com/api/corpus/index","scope":"corpus","depth":"gist","description":"triage — identity, series, gist"},"2":{"url":"https://bernardbolter.com/api/corpus/index?depth=survey","scope":"subset","depth":"survey","description":"narrowing — description, intent, colors, keywords"},"3":{"urlTemplate":"https://bernardbolter.com/{slug}/vision","scope":"work","depth":"vision","description":"vision analysis — HTML page of model analyses for this work"},"4":{"urlTemplate":"https://bernardbolter.com/api/corpus/{slug}","scope":"work","depth":"record","description":"full record — all fields, all vision analyses"},"5":{"urlTemplate":"https://bernardbolter.com/api/corpus/{slug}/sessions","scope":"work","depth":"sessions","description":"session transcripts — how it came to be known (HTML copy on /{slug}#sessions)"}},"art-official:relatedByThroughline":[{"name":"The hybrid mode returns","url":"https://bernardbolter.com/statement/throughlines/hybrid-mode-returns"},{"name":"From hidden seams to open record","url":"https://bernardbolter.com/statement/throughlines/hidden-seams-open-record"},{"name":"Fatalism, prophecy, and spectacle","url":"https://bernardbolter.com/statement/throughlines/fatalism-prophecy-spectacle"},{"name":"Learning to perform for the camera","url":"https://bernardbolter.com/statement/throughlines/camera-awareness-chain"},{"name":"Moral credit spent down","url":"https://bernardbolter.com/statement/throughlines/moral-credit-spent-down"},{"name":"Anachronism leaks both directions","url":"https://bernardbolter.com/statement/throughlines/anachronism-leaks"},{"name":"Random sourcing protects discovery","url":"https://bernardbolter.com/statement/throughlines/random-sourcing-discovery"},{"name":"The Peace Walk as root","url":"https://bernardbolter.com/statement/throughlines/peace-walk-as-root"}],"art-official:visionAnalyses":[{"@type":"art-official:VisionAnalysis","text":"The canvas reads almost like geological strata. A pale flat sky at top, dotted with tiny archival photos of planes, biplanes, and zeppelins — some barely more than specks, drifting free in the color field rather than sitting in a clear \"photo\" frame. Below that, a wide band of flat painted terrain (sand, pale green, grey, a wedge of teal) that acts as a stage rather than a real landscape. Scattered across that terrain, dozens of small black-and-white photo-transfers: ships and naval wreckage on the left, then a shift into trench warfare — soldiers, artillery, ruins, wounded — moving down toward the bottom edge, where the photos get denser, smaller, more intimate (a group of women in white, close groupings of soldiers). Unlike the single-transfer intimacy of Gates of Perception, this is dozens of images arranged almost like an index or field of specimens, held apart by the flat painted ground — many images organized by paint rather than one image interrupted by it.","art-official:model":"claude-sonnet-5","dateCreated":"2026-09-04"},{"@type":"art-official:VisionAnalysis","text":"The canvas reads almost like geological strata. A pale flat sky at top, dotted with tiny archival photos of planes, biplanes, and zeppelins — some barely more than specks, drifting free in the color field rather than sitting in a clear \"photo\" frame. Below that, a wide band of flat painted terrain (sand, pale green, grey, a wedge of teal) that acts as a stage rather than a real landscape. Scattered across that terrain, dozens of small black-and-white photo-transfers: ships and naval wreckage on the left, then a shift into trench warfare — soldiers, artillery, ruins, wounded — moving down toward the bottom edge, where the photos get denser, smaller, more intimate (a group of women in white, close groupings of soldiers). Unlike the single-transfer intimacy of Gates of Perception, this is dozens of images arranged almost like an index or field of specimens, held apart by the flat painted ground — many images organized by paint rather than one image interrupted by it.","art-official:model":"claude-sonnet-5","dateCreated":"2026-09-04"}]}