Happy Halloween Week!
Today we're highlighting an artwork currently on display in the exhibition Becoming America. At first glance, this artwork may look like a Halloween horror, but upon closer inspection, we learn that there is a much deeper meaning behind this shocking and frightening work. Claude Buck painted War Protest near the end of World War II. Rather than celebrating the end of violence, this image questions whether a war’s outcome can ever be considered a success. The destroyed landscape full of deathly figures seems to stretch on forever, as a bleak reminder of war’s constant presence in human history. Image: Claude Buck (1890-1974), War Protest, c.1945, oil on panel, 59 3/4 x 41 3/4 inches. Brigham Young University Museum of Art, gift of Leslie Buck, 1978.