Violent Art

I just came across this beautiful artwork in a New York Times article, "Military Maneuvers With Computer and Color". The piece is "PTG.32 APUS", short for "Painting No. 32, Art Project United States", by Eric Chan and Heather Schatz. The image here, the most complete unaltered version I could find online, does not include the entire 14-foot-long composition. An interactive graphic of the full piece is available online here, and there is also an audio slideshow narrated by the artists discussing this piece and another selection on "the contrast of the history of the [Manhattan] meatpackers with the proliferation of commerce and fashion."

In the article, reporter Hillarie Sheets describes how the artists, who work under the collective name ChanSchatz, developed the piece:

Using an interactive Web page featuring 12 phrases, 28 color combinations and 32 motifs by the artists that they refer to as characters, participants selected elements they liked. To represent each individual, ChanSchatz used that person's chosen motif and colors; the selected phrase of text governed how each element acted within the work. The artists were struck by how receptive the troops were to collaborating, given that the New York art world could seem as distant to them as the war seemed to the artists.

The result, as you can see, is extraordinary. While I don't want to overstate the point in my initial excitement, it seems to me a Detroit Industry for our digital age. "PTG.32 APUS" creatively and provocatively displays the violent, human, collective, alienating experience of military labor. To their credit, the artists allow their work, with its manifold political implications, to speak for itself:

"The minute you bring up war, there's politics. But we're more interested in the human side — and that there are people out there every day doing this work, just like we come to our studio every day and do our work.

"This is how we discovered the war."