Kit Messham-Muir, Curtin University asks what is likely to become an enduring question of our times –
What should the Australian War Memorial do with its heroic portraits of Ben Roberts-Smith?
On Friday, the Federal Court dismissed Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation case against The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times.
Justice Anthony Besanko ruled the newspapers had established, by the “balance of probabilities” (the standard of evidence in a civil lawsuit), that Roberts-Smith had committed war crimes.
Following the ruling, much public debate has focused on what the Australian War Memorial should do with Robert-Smith’s uniform, helmet and other artefacts of his on display.
Greens senator David Shoebridge called for the removal of these objects from public display to correct the official record and “to begin telling the entire truth of Australia’s involvement in that brutal war.”
The topic of what to do with Roberts-Smith’s uniform and helmet was debated on ABC’s Insiders yesterday: should the display be removed, effectively cancelled, or changed to tell the full story?
The case of the oil paintings
It is not just these artefacts on display. The memorial also has two heroic oil painting portraits of Roberts-Smith by one of Australia’s leading artists, Michael Zavros.
These paintings were commissioned by the memorial in 2014.
Pistol Grip (Ben Roberts-Smith VC) is a larger-than-life-sized depiction of Roberts-Smith, camouflage arms outstretched, mimicking the action of holding a pistol.
In an article in arts criticism website Memo yesterday, respected Monash University art historian Rex Butler and arts journalist Paris Lettau weighed into the debate.
Butler and Lettau say Pistol Grip is:
threatening, over-bearing, macho, hyper-masculine, celebratory, and enormous, like the man himself – some 220 centimetres wide and 160 centimetres high.
When Zavros created his large portrait it was a depiction of a soldier doing what he was trained – and venerated – for doing.
It is an aggressive pose that, given current developments, can be read in a much more sinister way. It touches on a far bigger question of how national institutions for the public memory of war address difficult and morally ambiguous moments in a national story.
Moral and ethical ambiguity
When the Canadian War Museum opened at its new site in Ottawa in 2005, its new displays included two paintings in their collection by Canadian artist Gertrude Kearns.
The paintings, Somalia without Conscience, 1996, and The Dilemma of Kyle Brown: Paradox in the Beyond, 1995, dealt with one of the most shameful episodes in Canada’s military history, known as the Somalia Affair.
In 1992, the Canadian Airborne Regiment was deployed as peacekeepers to Somalia. In 1993, 16-year-old Shidane Arone was found hiding in the Canadian base, believed to have been stealing supplies. He was tortured, and soldiers photographed themselves with the semi-conscious boy. Master Corporal Clayton Matchee and his subordinate Private Kyle Brown were charged with his murder and torture.
Somalia without Conscience depicts Matchee posing with the beaten Arone, while The Dilemma of Kyle Brown depicts Brown symbolically holding two potential fates in his hands: a lightly coloured cube in his right hand, and a darkened cube in his left. It addresses an ethical grey area many soldiers face during active service when the hierarchy of command comes into direct conflict with conscience.
Following the opening of the new Canadian War Museum, the presence of Kearns’s paintings sparked intense debate. Curator Laura Brandon received abusive emails from members of the public.