The time is mid-morning and nobody knows just what is about to happen. Seated in front of a small pile of snow, a Caucasian woman in a white gown cradles a dead, black Union soldier in her arms just as Mary held Christ. The pair is reflected in a pool of water. In the foreground lies a corpse. Behind the couple, a Confederate wife struggles to save her wounded husband.
Civil War is a heroic painting for our time.
Both Civil War and Hiroshima are subjects that seem to demand treatment on a heroic scale. Painterly tour de force Vincent Desiderio's masters are Courbet and Gericault. The left panel pictures a crime scene with a female model on the floor, possibly murdered. We get Mark Tansey's one-liners that ridicule the Guggenheim Museum and deconstructionist literary critics, and Komar and Melamid's parodies of Socialist Realism. Walton Ford's work is downright annoying.