23 February 2020. Gasmask and Trees. Graphite on paper.
The gas masks showed up as I was hunting for images of the Turoń. Life-protecting, but lethal in their own way. As always with Soviet-era production, the materials and assembly were astoundingly crude--so basic and direct, the mind of the military engineer unveiled--each part connecting to the next in the most literal way. You feel you know everything about how they work, just by the way they look. And, because of this directness, they could be manufactured in great number.
Like the story of the T-34, the Soviet tank that won the war. Produced en masse in makeshift factories behind the Eastern front--again, with the most basic production requirements--crude but remarkably strong, like so much else that came out of the Soviet effort. They rolled west by the thousand.
A German battle report: "He (the T-34) drives through our line like an impregnable prehistoric monster..."
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But today? That haunting quality is still there, in part from the passage of time. As with everything else from another era--we become aware of its aura. (Walter Benjamin's definition-- the qualities of an original at a certain distance.)
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And the trees? A respite, no doubt--our backyard, bushy and overgrown, the leaning trunk of the olive, seeking sunlight, or the dense green ivy along the fence. And one of the neighborhood deer just came into view--always at the right moment. I know they know...
