Blood: Symbolism of Violence
Blood Swept Land and Seas of Red was the exhibition constructed at the Tower of London in 2014 to commemorate the century of the beginning of the First World War. Comprised of 888,246 red ceramic poppies each to represent a British fatality in the war, it was designed by artists Tom Piper and Paul Cummins.
Over 5 million people visited this exceedingly popular memorial.[1078] Guardian journalist JonathanJones was not so impressed. He attacked it, noting that it was based on a nationalistic paradigm that was romantic and narrow. It was a celebration of blood and patriotism, he argued, in the quintessential nineteenth-century tradition. It narrowly focused on mourning only British not German, French or Russian victims. More than that, it was ‘a deeply aesthe- ticised, prettified and toothless war memorial', which elevated war to a noble form. War was everything but noble and should be represented as such. ‘A meaningful mass memorial to this horror would not be dignified or pretty', Jones insisted. ‘It would be gory, vile and terrible to see. The moat of the Tower should be filled with barbed wire and bones. That would mean something.'[1079] The designer, Piper, defended his artwork, insisting it was about ‘loss and commemoration' and a ‘communal tribute to a great loss of human life'. Piper argued that the representation of violent loss of life did not need to be overtly violent. He wished to make it accessible and not ‘state the obvious', as we had been ‘all inured to scenes of violence on TV and film'. Each of the ceramic poppies was sold for £25 and funds were given to charities.[1080] Critics believed ‘blood' in this instance was a purely aesthetic representation. It did not ‘truthfully' represent the impact of violence or the authentic experience of death. The violence of war was not fully captured. For some, the answer to doing so was to retrieve the bodily remnants of the victims themselves.
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- BLOOD-PRODUCT TRANSFUSIONS
- Blood, Bodies and Bones
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- Conclusion: ‘There Must Be Blood’
- Blood Ties
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