Critique #1

                                                                                 Kerrin Hughes

                                                                                WAVI Block G

                                                                                 3/6/11

                                                                                 Critique #1

    

            “Eat, Wash, Eliminate” Harriet Caldwell (1994)

As I research my genealogy I struggle with my findings of historical records involved in the Holocaust. I began to focus on the abundance of children who were washed of their innocence in unethical conditions, and express them in my pieces. Victims of the Holocaust were brought to concentration camps where they were tortured, worked excessively hard labor, where they contracted illnesses, were experimented on, and ultimately murdered after being targeted for their race, religion, ethnicity, etc. These people were fed minute rations of soup and bread while longing for health. Once given the opportunity to shower, they took it, however they had been tricked and instead of water falling, a poisonous gas covered and killed the mass of innocent people. Harriet Caldwell was investigating her family when she came across this information. Her family had perhaps been some of the Jewish population killed in the event, some of them young children. The horrific findings led her to begin an artistic project expressing the events and feelings of the Holocaust. In her painting “Eat, Wash, Eliminate”, Harriet Caldwell uses fading strokes of earth tones, a child’s solemn face, and numerous bowls in order to symbolize the multitude of wrongly gassed people during the Holocaust.

Based on the title of the piece it is determined that the distorted and smoky strokes of pastel and earthly tones are a symbol of the gassing during the Holocaust. “Wash” symbolizes how the people were lured into thinking they were going to the showers, while “Eliminate” symbolizes how they were eventually killed in the chambers. Caldwell’s use of beeswax and oil shows how she purposely made the earth tones to look like gas. The child’s picture being faded also shows how after being gassed their identity disappears. Harriet Caldwell spreads these strokes over the entire piece, the majority being on the two outer panels with the center panel being more distorted. This is an effort to show and emphasize how exactly the gas killed many of the victims and the vast overall impact of the Holocaust.

The child’s image in the center shows how the involvement of children during the Holocaust affected Caldwell. Many of Caldwell’s pieces depict a child’s image. The placement of the image in this piece makes the viewer think of how important the child is. There were so many children killed during the Holocaust for awful reasons. The child symbolizes the majority of innocent people who were targeted and killed. These victims had done practically nothing other than being Jewish, Polish, gay or being strong enough to stand up against the murders among other reasons. Harriet Caldwell uses the sullen child’s face to emphasize the thoughtless murders of millions of men, women and children.

Also in the painting, Caldwell used xerography to import images of the bowl memorial and uses oil to paint the numerous scattered bowls. These bowls represent the victims of the Holocaust, and the abundance of these bowls represents how many of these victims there were. There was a memorial where mourners had put lit candles in bowls to show respect for the dead, this was presented in the center panel. Residents of the concentration camps were abused of healthy amounts of food in bowls like in the painting.  Caldwell also paints some bowls on the outer panels but has them unclean and carelessly placed and treated, very similar to how the Holocaust victims were treated. The involvement of bowls as a symbol of the victims during the Holocaust is very evident in the painting “Eat, Wash, Eliminate”.

Harriet Caldwell’s painting is very symbolic of some of the events in the Holocaust. “Eat, Wash, Eliminate” has many elements that emphasize certain stories and things that happened in the event. Caldwell uses spreading strokes of earthly and smoky tones to symbolize the impact and effects gassing had. She also uses the focal point of the child’s picture to symbolize the innocence of the victims. Another element in the piece is the number of bowls on each panel; Caldwell uses these bowls to symbolize the issues all these people went through. “Eat, Wash, Eliminate” has many elements of the Holocaust and symbolizes the feelings and events of this calamity.