Art: Military Art

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What does the artist do when he becomes a soldier? What does military life do to the artist? These and other questions are answered this week when LIFE publishes the results of a competition for artists in the U.S. armed forces.

Encouraged by Army morale officers because they thought painting might keep them out of mischief, artists in the armed forces were sketching away at odd moments long before Pearl Harbor. But this year the War Department's Office of Special Service has discovered that U.S. fighting men take a new pride in their humdrum daily tasks when they see them selves and their work immortalized on barrack-room canvases, mess-hall murals. Today, many big U.S. Army camps have their own art classes, and art workshops and army art have become the province of a special office in Washington's War Department.

LIFE'S soldier art contest, announced last March, drew some 1,500 entries, submitted by all ranks from buck privates to captains. Five experts sorted out the best and awarded $1,000 in prizes. LIFE picked 16 for reproduction in this week's issue. Washington's National Gallery agreed to put 117 on exhibition this month.

The competition proved that the capable artist, working in the heat of firsthand observation, could turn out wartime pictures that were trenchant records of life behind the guns. As one officer said: "In this war, for the first time, army and public emotions are at the same level. The army artists are putting the emotions on canvases that are good and understandable."