Edward Ardizzone’s Multimedial Play with Format in his War Diaries

Julie Leblanc

doi:10.4000/interfaces.2358

Abstract

The object of my article is Edward Ardizzone’s manuscripts of his four illustrated war diaries (1943-1945) preserved in his archives at the IWM in London, the published edition of his diaries entitled Diary of a War Artist (1974), the larger ink/watercolors commissioned by the WAAC during WWII which ensued from his preliminary sketches introduced in the bound pages of his diaries and finally the numerous unpublished images embedded between the manuscript pages of his diaries. His diaries represent a rich literary and pictorial context to study the aesthetic and transformative elements of format. Ardizzone’s play with format is multidimensional and complex as he uses various media (pencil, pen, watercolor, ink and wash) and different supports (pages of his bound diaries, sheets of paper, graph paper, watercolor paper) which vary greatly in dimension. The ever-changing format of his handwritten diary entries punctuated with sketches which visually interrupt his narrative, enhances the complexity of the diaries’ formats. Finally, the discrepancies I have observed between the manuscript versions of his diaries and its published edition adds another layer of complexity to my study of how format influenced Ardizzone’s creative output but also imposed physical restrictions on his artistic endeavours.

Highlights

Les contenus de la revue Interfaces sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
As a commissioned war artist, he travelled with the British Army, visiting Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Scotland, Egypt and Algeria
During his travels he kept diaries to document his impressions of war and sketched what he witnessed in these war-stricken countries. Some of his detailed descriptions of warscapes, images he sketched or painted, helped in the execution of larger ink washes and watercolors for the WAAC. His record of WWII is contained in some 275 drawings, ink and washes as well as numerous watercolors all in the collections of the Imperial War Museum in London

Summary

Julie LeBlanc

As a commissioned war artist, he travelled with the British Army, visiting Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Scotland, Egypt and Algeria He travelled to Italy with the 50th Battalion during the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, which marks the beginning of his first diary. He concluded his travels in Germany with the 8th Hussars in May 1945 describing and sketching images of the closing months of the war in his fourth and last diary His travels throughout Europe and North Africa between 1943 and 1945 are documented in four illustrated diaries published in 1974 and entitled Diary of a War Artist. During his travels he kept diaries to document his impressions of war and sketched what he witnessed in these war-stricken countries Some of his detailed descriptions of warscapes, images he sketched or painted, helped in the execution of larger ink washes and watercolors for the WAAC. When one compares the placement of the sketched image in Diary of a War Artist to the original manuscript of the same diary entry (Fig. 4), obvious discrepancies between the published edition and hand-written manuscripts are recognizable. © The Ardizzone Trust

Support and format

The formal constraints of the bound pages of the diaries

Works cited