The “Mortification of Air”: War and Peace in Literary and Iconographic Imagination

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a significant atmospheric-affective transformation took place that marked a turning point in the history of war, technology, culture, and society. Air lost its innocence, transforming from a life-giving element into a force of death. This lethal power manifested in the development of airborne weapons, such as airplanes and poison gas. This article will analyze several texts and images (by B. von Suttner, W. Owen, P. Klee, E. Erler, O. Dix, W. Roberts, J.S. Sargent, E. Janicka, J. Armstrong, and Banksy), focusing on the largely nonrepresentational phenomena of air and atmosphere from the First World War to the present. The analysis will demonstrate how modern artistic discourse reflects on the technological conquest of the air and atmospheric terrorism and how art participates in this discourse. Of particular interest is the question of radical artistic acts of protest that focus on the seemingly invisible and intangible element of air to express hope and the desire for peace.