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Wars are unnecessary and deadly, but wars have been present for different reasons. Whenever nations leaders cannot come to a peaceful agreement, they sometimes resolve to war. For example, ww1, and ww2. David Olère was born in Warsaw on the 19th of January 1902 and died on the 2nd of August 1985 in France. He was a talented painter and entered “L’ecole des Beaux-Arts de Varsovie” when he was thirtheen years old. At sixteen, he worked for Ernst Lubitsch at “L’alliance Européenne” as a painter and marketer.
He also even worked for Paramount Pictures in Europe. Olère married to Juliette Ventura in 1930. Sometime later, they had a son named Alexandre. Once ww2 was declared in Europe, Olère was drafted into the infantry regiment at Lons-le-Saunier. Consequently, on February 20, 1943, he was arrested during a roundup of Jews at Seine-et-Oise and interned in Drancy before being deported to Auschwitz.
There, he oversaw taking out bodies out of the gas chambers and burning them.
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He was influenced a lot by the war and what he had seen and lived in the camp. His journey there fueled his love for painting even more. The image I will be talking about is a painting made by David Olère in 1946. Through this painting, Mr Olère shows and criticizes the practices that took place in those concentration camps. He appeals to our emotions by identifying with the characters in the painting and depicting the harsh treatment received by inmates.
It goes without saying that David Olère was sent to Auschwitz because he was Jewish.
During his time there, he lived a lot of events that changed him. The painting he made is called “Leurs derniers pas” which means “Their Last Step”. It’s a painting that is 74*54cm. You can find the piece of art at the “Ghetto Fighter house” in Israel. In the painting there are 3 starving men almost dead in the foreground. In the background, at left, there are many people lying on the ground with their heads down with one Nazi soldier stepping on one of them and another one doing the same thing at the right and in the background, there is what seems to be an active crematorium furnace with fire and a lot of smoke coming out of it. Also, something worth noticing is that all the men have their eyes closed as if they were already dead or as if they’ve lost hope and were giving up. The painting doesn’t have a lot of bright colors.
Although, the only colors that are nonetheless bright comes from the pale bodies of the dying men. The rest of the event taking place in “Leurs derniers pas” is in despair meaning that the dominant colors are dark. In addition, the mix of red, yellow and orange create a type of fire-y, doomsday environment. To furthermore depict Auschwitz, Mr Olère chose to show what was happening there, how people were treated and the living conditions Jews had to live in by painting starving men with both a mix of soft and hard texture. The author of this fine piece of art is telling us through it that they didn’t have much food to eat which with the help of the texture used conjures a feeling of despair and death. Not to mention that, through the use of dark colors, Olère is painting a vivid image of the environment as well as the atmosphere present in Auschwitz. In fact, the camp is similar to what one might describe as hell.
The main characters of the painting being skinny also could’ve meant that they were sick, possibly from breathing in fumes of burning dead bodies or sanitary related diseases. Furthermore, by painting the SS soldiers stepping on inmates, David Olère is letting us know that Nazis had the rights to do whatever they wanted to do to them and that is letting us, art amateur, think that other despicable acts could’ve been and possibly were taking place. Example; torture, science experiment and potentially rape. As a matter of fact, the author is saying that in those camps they weren’t considered human anymore, that they left their humanity behind but instead, they were just numbers and toys. The numbers written on the men in the middle in the foreground and the SS soldiers inflicting pain to the detainees furthermore convey to that argument.
This painting is subjective in a way that even though there isn’t certain elements telling us everything that happened, we can’t help but think about how it must’ve been for them, like what type of thoughts they had and how disturbed they were getting every day seeing their friend, family, loved one or even strangers and kids go inside those gas chambers and knowing that it was the last time they would ever see each other. In conclusion, this “oeuvre d’art” is much more than just a painting. It is a way into Auschwitz.
It is an immortal capture of time. “Leurs derniers pas” gave us an opportunity to witness the environment settled in Auschwitz and possibly in other concentration camps. It showed us how Jews were treated by the SS and the kind of the moral they had. Jews They knew that they were going to die and that’s why they were all looking down. And we think about it, innocent people died because nations leaders couldn’t come to a peaceful agreement. I can’t find the words to express what I think about war so I'll use a passage from Jacques Prevert’s poem “Rappelle-toi Barbara”. In his poem he says “Quelle connerie la guerre”.
The Visual Rhetorical Analysis. (2022, May 21). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/the-visual-rhetorical-analysis-essay
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