History Revived

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Adad Hannah, “Gassed Redux,” 2018, photograph

By filming models posed as injured soldiers, Vancouver artist Adad Hannah recreates the 1919 painting Gassed by American artist John Singer Sargent for the Founders’ Gallery at Calgary’s Military Museums.

The original painting, held by the Imperial War Museum in Britain, shows soldiers, with eyes bandaged, lined up to be treated following a mustard gas attack during the First World War. They trudge through a battlefield with scores of other wounded and suffering on the ground.

To create the video images in Gassed Redux, on view until Sept. 9, Hannah organized tableaux vivants, with models posing for up to five minutes at a time. He spent 12 days building sets, filming and editing at the gallery, working with his assistants and 40 community volunteers recruited with the help of curator Lindsey Sharman.

Sharman had hoped to include the original Gassed, now touring North America to mark its centenary, but decided that at 7.5 feet high by 20 feet wide the painting was simply too large.

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Adad Hannah, “Gassed Redux,” 2018

installation showing reproduction of “Gassed” at the rear (photo by Dave Brown)

Hannah maintains a niche for referencing art history in tableaux vivants.

“I originally thought of Adad because of his experience with historical works and activating them in a way that engages the audience,” says Sharman, who starts soon as curator at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton.

Hannah's previous projects have been seeded by works such as The Raft of the Medusa (Théodore Géricault), The Burghers of Calais (Auguste Rodin), Ophelia (John Everett Millais), Las Meninas (Diego Velázquez) and Guernica (Pablo Picasso). He also has a forthcoming Eugène Delacroix project.

But the Gassed project was different for Hannah, recently appointed to the board of the National Gallery of Canada.

“With war, I think I feel more tentative,” he says. “The other day I gave an artist’s talk and used the word the costumes and somebody said, ‘those are uniforms, not costumes,’ and I realized he is right.”

Hannah says war has always been “a bit strange” for him. “My parents were basically hippies and my father was a pacifist. He is from Israel and at some point he had to join the army, and he actually stood up in protest to using a gun.” Although “anti-war” himself, Hannah says he is “glad that soldiers have fought for things that are important.”

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Adad Hannah, “Gassed Redux,” 2018, installation (photo by Dave Brown)

In the darkened gallery, Hannah’s installation glows in silence. Like massive pages of an unfolding book, 21st-century soldiers glimmer in new dimensions based on Sargent’s broader narrative. 

This assemblage of eight large panels is arranged in an accordion-like diorama, experienced in the round. Edited video of the procession of soldiers, a diverse multigenerational cast of men and women, some wearing makeup or jewelry, are projected onto double screens, mimicking excerpts of the original. They’re flanked by camouflage netting and painted sketches based on details from Gassed.

“By choosing to eschew historical accuracy, Hannah’s Gassed Redux conveys broader themes and issues that are not of one time but are ongoing,” says Sharman.

Gassed Redux, in part, is the theatre of film noir activated by viewers’ subjective experiences. Here, soldiers blindly lead and follow into hazy and unknown territory. They are anonymous anti-heroes in uniforms without insignia, trapped on the front lines. As we become aware of them, we become more aware of ourselves.

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Production shot of Adad Hannah’s “Gassed Redux” (photo by Theo Terry)

Hannah does not intend to create carbon copies of historical works. Nor does he intend to be overtly political. Gassed Redux, like Sargent’s work, pays homage to the victims of war. But it is also an experience in viewing “them” as “us.”

“Rather than being models, they become real people,” he says. “You are forced to think about the person and what they are doing and why they are doing it – who they are – and, through that, yourself as well.” ■

Gassed Redux is on view at the Founders’ Gallery at The Military Museums in Calgary from June 22 until Sept. 9, 2018.