#irrational

Apotheosis of War, Vasily Vereshchagin in 1871.

Vasily Vereshchagin depicted war atrocities in many of his paintings. He illustrated many wars including the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-88, 1857 Indian War of Independence titled ‘Blowing from Guns in British India’. His painting “The State Procession of the Prince of Wales into Jaipur.” , inside Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial is the third largest painting in the world. Vasily always depicted real side of war despite the rising propaganda of obscuring failures and highlighting glories. Due to this, he experienced opposition from Russian Empire, some countries of western Europe and British rule in India. He painted ‘Apotheosis of War’ in 1871. The painting depicts a pyramid of human skulls on the background of the ruined city and denuded trees among the red hot plain. Flocks of hungry birds of prey fluttering over the pyramid, picking at their remains. Death and destruction are conveyed with extreme detail through skulls. The denuded trees represent a civilisation without humanity. The leaves of kindness and compassion have fallen. The ravens symbolises irrationality. People driven by their self interest and insatiable thirst for power, iniate wars that leads to people becoming victim of their insanity. In the background, we can see ruined remains of a fortress, conveying grief and destruction that war brings on their families. Vasily used yellow and light brown colour for the barren plain and background, juxtaposing the horrors of war. Contrasting the dull plain, clear blue sky and shining sun only emphasizes the dreadness of the picture and present us a world where we don’t want to live in. Vasily not only portrays the abhorrent nature of mass death but also emphasizes a single lost life. The pyramid of skulls shows a fragile social and political strucure built on the foundation of mistrust, self interest and hate.

Vasily is trying to show the realistic picture of war to poets and prophets who dreamt of a utopia in which war will not exist and peace will reign on earth. It can be misunderstood by some as glorification of war, but he condemns the war by showing us its brutal nature. He tries to show that men are dynamic creatures who can’t live contended merely with peace. These men don’t think about the post calamities of war but are guided by their accumulated energy filled with ignorance and hate. The tendency of modern wars becoming global is pretty disturbing to us. The fact that radical difference in policies and abhorrent political ideologies of countries cannot always be settled by mere discussion, puts us as a civilisation into a bleak and uncertain future. I do not know how many wars could be prevented by art, but i do know that any stable, lasting peace depends on creating societies with a richness of opportunity and variety that can meet human needs.

Stop trying to rationalize it…

You put yourself

In an absolutely shitty situation

Sticking with someone that was so toxic.

There was nothing rationale about it…

Especially when it comes to love.

You’ll do stupid shit

Just to prove a point.

More importantly…

You’ll do stupid shit

Just to show how much

You really care.

Loving can be a gamble.

But it’s the experiences we face

That’ll help us better our odds

The next time we decide

To put our chips down.

… Stop trying to rationalize it.

Long story short, about a year ago, there was a pretty fair chance I was gonna lose an eyebrow (I ended up only losing a very small chunk) and I called up my best friend and was like “Yo, guess what, I may not have a left eyebrow on Monday” and I was expecting him to be like “haha wut?” but he got really really upset and like, EXTREMELY and IRRATIONALLY distressed. Like wtf dude, why are you so attached to my left eyebrow????