“All the Evils...” Christian Petersen and the Art of War

By Dr. Lea Rosson DeLong

Christian Petersen Art Museum, Morrill Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, IA

September, 2009

Christian Petersen is often known as the “gentle sculptor,” a descriptor derived mainly from his most famous work, The Gentle Doctor, which has become a symbol of the Veterinary College at Iowa State and, to a great extent, of the veterinary profession itself. The Iowa State campus is full of works that express the delights of peace, of a fruitful and productive life, and of the pleasures and intellectual challenges of academic life.

Yet, a significant number of his works deal with war. Born in 1885 and dying in 1961, he lived through both World War I and World War II, one of the most violent periods in human history. He was deeply affected by both wars and his feelings are reflected in his art.

Like most artists, he had the ability to see violence, injustice, and inhumanity and translate it into works of art that conveyed his feelings. It is important to remember that artists of all sorts: sculptors, painters, musicians, film directors and cinematographers can deal with the most hideous aspects of human life and behavior and produce works of art on those themes but the production of a work of art requires a level of perspective, self-awareness and discipline that does not and cannot participate in the thoroughly violent activities of war. Artists can employ randomness and chance (both deadly devices found in warfare), but the outcome is seldom completely random or dispassionately observed. In addition, works of art are normally not designed to perpetuate the atrocity or the destruction visited upon humans and nature by warfare.

An artist such as Petersen may depict warfare, combat, and death, but the very process of fashioning a work of art removes it from the realm of barbarism. Significant works of art are not inhumane, either through their creation or their impact. They are not designed to coarsen human nature. They can, indeed, and often do, incite humans to take action. While often violent vengeful action, that very process usually involves an intellectual as well as emotional response. Perhaps part of the reason that propaganda seldom rises to the level of great art is because violence is antithetical to the human impulse of artmaking.

This exhibition is part of an ongoing series on the art of Christian Petersen that is accompanied by books on the artist. University Museums devotes so much attention to Petersen because he largely founded the public art on campus tradition which has led to Iowa State University having the largest such program in the U.S. Iowa State University is also the first college in the country to have an artist-in-residence, a position held by Petersen from 1934 to 1955. Throughout his career, his work was representational, based on the human form, and judging by his writings, he rejected modernism, abstraction in particular, though it is clear that he was also influenced by aspects of modernism.

Petersen’s life, in a way, was impacted by war long before he became an artist. He was born on the family farm in the southern part of Denmark, near the site of a battle fought in 1864 between the Danes and the Prussians (Prussia at that time was a section of Germany). The Prussians won, and thereafter dominated the area, leading to Petersen’s parents’ decision to emigrate out of Denmark in 1894. Their central fear was that their two sons would eventually be conscripted into the Prussian military. The enmity that the family felt toward Germany would be demonstrated in several instances in Petersen’s later life.

The young man grew up mainly in New Jersey and attended vocational schools in Newark. He learned the craft of die-cutting, in which designs are carved into metal--in many cases steel-- and then jewelry, medals and medallions are manufactured from these carvings. Petersen worked in Attleboro, Massachusetts, the center of the jewelry industry on the east coast, where he soon developed a significant reputation for his skills. Whether he carved the designs of others or designs of his own Petersen was highly regarded in his profession with small metal objects and earned a more than comfortable salary.

But he was not happy, nor was he content with his status in that profession. He preferred to be a serious artist who produced full-scale sculpture. After just a few years in the profession of die-cutting, he was striving to move beyond it.

Among the earliest known works of sculpture by Petersen are those dealing with World War I. [Editor’s Note: See Brute Force of War.]

It began in Europe in August of 1914, with the primary combatants being England and France against Germany and Austria-Hungary. The war quickly settled into a stalemate in northern France, with both sides literally dug into a series of trenches. The United States entered the conflict in April of 1917 and American soldiers (“doughboys”) soon made their way to the trenches of France. Like other Americans, Petersen enthusiastically supported the war effort, as his sculptures produced during and just after that war demonstrate.

Petersen’s attitude about war, about the imagery of war, and about how to commemorate war, however, underwent a change in the course of the 20^th century. We will see that his awareness of the destruction and human tragedy of war became increasingly marked through the years, and notions of victory and glory went by the wayside. However, it should be noted that at no time did he appear to be a pacifist and in no instance did he express any doubt about America’s role in either World War I or World War II. It appears that, over the years, he did come to believe that war represented a human failing and that engaging in warfare was un-Christian.

Attleboro War Chest, 1918

Many American communities like Attleboro held fund-raising drives (during both wars) to raise money from citizens for the conduct of the war. Petersen donated his Attleboro War Chest to the city’s war bond campaign, and it was given as a prize to those organizations who met their fund-raising goals. We do not know how many casts were made of this plaque; none are known to exist today.

Petersen depicts two American doughboys in the devastated battlefields of France. One is wounded while the other signals for aid for his comrade. The aid arrives in the form of an American eagle, and the inscription exhorts Attleborans to give their “eagles” for the war effort. Aside from his patriotic motivations, he must have hoped that this low-relief plaque would demonstrate that he was not just a jewelry craftsman, but was a serious artist who could tackle substantial forms and themes in his sculpture.

A bronze medal also refers to World War I, though we do not know its exact date nor for whom it was designed. The imagery is typical of American visual culture (posters, political cartoons, sheet music) in regard to the war. A man dressed in the uniform of the American Expeditionary Forces thrusts the bayonet fixed on his rifle into the mouth of a roaring dragon. Thrown to the ground is a half-naked woman. In war posters, Germany is often represented as a snake or a half-human ape-like creature, who stomps and rampages amid ruined cities or, as here, a rapacious monster.

Standing behind the American doughboy is a bearded figure in robes who raises his hand in a gesture of blessing or benediction. This figure is almost certainly God, affirming the doughboy’s mission in coming to the defense of the woman and dispatching the dragon of the German war machine. The woman represents rape victims, literally, and she also symbolizes the civilian populations who endured German aggression, especially those in Belgium.

Placing the figure of God directly behind the warring doughboy and lifting his divine hand in blessing is Petersen’s compositional device for confirming that God is on our side. The dragon appears to have come from the East (Europe), while the doughboy has come from the West (America). God also is situated in the West, with rays emanating from his body. These rays are partly the manifestation of his divinity, but they also represent the light and hope coming from the West.

These and other works by Petersen brought him some success, and in 1923 he received the commission from the Spanish-American War Veterans of Rhode Island for a major war memorial, to be installed in Newport.

The veterans seem to have been concerned that the doughboys were getting a great deal of attention—World War I memorials were springing up all over the country—and they wanted to remind people that they also had won a war against a European power.

The veterans did not wish their memorial to represent any specific branch of the military and requested that it be a classical form. Petersen’s female figure, therefore, is a classically derived form that is referred to as both “Victory” and “Liberty.” She holds a sword in her right hand, but the sword has been lowered and is at rest. She holds aloft in her left hand a bunch of laurel leaves (laurel is a symbol of triumph). Beneath her foot is the severed head of a Medusa-like creature.

As described in the Newport newspaper, “The design is the work of sculptor Christian Petersen...who has allegorically worked out the thought of victory over oppression which has always been a marked reason for the entry of this country into war. The left foot is firmly planted an ancient Greek symbol of fear and immobility the firmness of the pressure of the foot being plainly evident from the distortion of the face of the head. The face of Victory, on the other hand, while pleasing to look upon, is determination in every line.” This female figure is similar to ones Petersen had already carved for medals and similar small-scale designs. This was his first opportunity to work on a life-size scale and to produce monumental sculptures of the sort that reflected his ambitions.

In the early 1920s, Petersen must have been pleased at the progress of his career. He received several other commissions for sculptures, mostly memorial reliefs of modest scale, but still genuine and serious sculpture, and not commercial metal designs. Late in 1923, he obtained his most important commission to date and, as it turned out, one that would be his last major sculpture for about a decade.

A veteran’s group in New Bedford, Massachusetts chose Petersen to create a monument to the local National Guard unit which had been integrated into the Army’s 26th Division during World War I. Battery D was part of a field artillery group which had been engaged in heavy combat over many months in France.

They became famous because of the fierceness of the barrages they laid down to protect the advance of infantry troops. They fired their guns many times beyond the normal rate. They loaded the shells immediately on the recoil after the gun had been shot and kept it up for extended periods of time. The accuracy, reliability, and intensity of their barrages were factors in American battle successes. The general of the 26th Division told the story of the captured German officer who had been wounded and who asked about the automatic weapon that was being fired against his soldiers. He was told that no automatic weapon had been used, but only the men of Battery D and their French 75-millimeter guns.

Petersen’s statue expresses the character of this kind of warfare. His bronze artilleryman is over seven feet tall and installed on a three-foot boulder. In size he is monumental; yet the effect of this characterization is not heroic. The soldier is working, completely engaged in his task, and not looking outward at the assumed enemy nor situated so that he can see his viewers. In addition, the viewers cannot actually see his face very well at all.

The artilleryman’s task is grim and serious, and his labor appears unrelenting. The action he is taking is one that we know he undertook several times within the space of one minute. There is no invention, no surveillance, no assessment of conditions that requires him to change his activity and respond as there might be in person combat.

His job on the battlefield is to service the machine, perhaps as he might have done in a factory job at home. This soldier seems to be a laborer, a worker, and a worker whose task is to monotonous and repetitive. In this regard, he represents “modern times” in the automatism of his activity and in his subservience to his machine, in this case, a war machine of which he is only a single, anonymous cog.

Most World War I memorials that feature statues of soldiers depict a fighter as if he is making an assault across the “No Man’s Land” of the trenches of France, or they show him standing with a rifle in his hand, occasionally, he is shown standing in contemplation or mourning.

A memorial statue from World War I that shows a fighter simply loading a weapon or engaged in a mechanistic task and carrying it out with such anonymity is rare, and Petersen’s soldier may be a distinctive contribution to war memorial sculpture of this period.

With these two major commissions, other smaller ones, plus some attention in the press, Petersen probably believed that his career as a serious sculptor was launched. Yet, after 1924, we see very few developments of note in his career: only occasional exhibitions or commissions are known and very little notice in the press; few works can be firmly dated from this period.

By late 1928, Petersen made a radical change in his life. A change that was likely prompted by his desire to further his career--though there were some personal issues also at work. By November of 1928, we know that he had moved away from Attleboro to the Midwest. He and his wife divorced (their three children were all nearly grown), and Petersen gave over most of his financial resources, and moved to Chicago.

His time in Chicago is difficult to trace, and we have little information about it. In late 1929, the Crash occurred, and the Great Depression began. Any prospects that Petersen had for his career in sculpture quickly dimmed, as they did for nearly everyone else in America. For a time, he went back to die-cutting where he was still able to earn a very comfortable salary. [Editor’s Note: See the most current information on Petersen’s life in the Christian Petersen Chronology.]

While employed in Chicago, he met a young woman, Charlotte Garvey, whom he married in 1931. His new wife would become his most ardent supporter and the most consistent promoter of his career and reputation – even after his death in 1961. During these difficult Depression days, the only patronage Petersen enjoyed was that from Iowa. Back in the 1920s when he was still in the East, he had established a relationship with Edgar R. Harlan, the curator of the State of Iowa’s Historical Memorial and Art Department which commissioned plaques and historical markers from him. They were not major commissions, but they were enough to connect him with private clients in Des Moines. Christian and Charlotte Petersen spent considerable time during 1932-33 in Des Moines working on various commissions. Friendship and support from these Iowa patrons led to the most significant break in Petersen’s career.

When Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932 and established the New Deal as a way to deal with the conditions of the Depression, he recognized that artists were as adversely affected as any other profession. Among the many programs instituted by the New Deal were ones aimed at artists. Not only did the New Deal provide employment but, the organizers also realized that artists could make a distinctive contribution to American culture by their public works of art.

The first New Deal art program was the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP). It was funded for only six months, but that was long enough to set in motion two major mural cycles for the state of Iowa, along with other works of art. Both of these cycles, Grant Wood’s When Tillage Begins, Other Arts Follow and Christian Petersen’s The History of Dairying, are now at Iowa State University, still installed exactly as the artists designed them.

Petersen with his Dairy Industry Building sculpture.

In addition, the PWAP, short-lived though it was, did exist long enough to put Petersen on a path that led to the realization of his dreams of being a full-time fine art sculptor. Friends of Petersen’s in Des Moines suggested to Grant Wood, who was head of the Iowa PWAP, that he hire him, so Petersen and his wife moved from Illinois to Iowa permanently in January of 1934.

President Raymond Hughes of Iowa State College in Ames wanted art to have a higher profile on his campus, believing that it was an important aspect of the education of his science, engineering, and home economics students. He asked Petersen to create a sculpture for the Dairy Industry building on campus, a request that Petersen expand it into an entire installation along one side of the building made up of a low relief sculpted mural of six large panels, a central fountain and pool. It was not finished by the time Congress ended funding for the PWAP funds, so Hughes, determined that both the painted and sculpted murals for his school be completed, hired Petersen as an artist-in-residence--the first such position in an American college. Along with creating works of art for the campus, such as Three Athletes for State Gym, Fountain of the Four Seasons, the Veterinary Medicine Mural, and the Gentle Doctor, Petersen was also discovered to be a popular and effective teacher.

The Second World War began on September 1, 1929, when Germany invaded Poland. From then, the Nazi forces continued to invade one country after another, eventually bringing most of European continent under their domination. As the 1930s wore on and war drew closer, Petersen was quite aware that the next war would be fought by his students. We do not know the date of this sculpture for certain, but Petersen’s first biographer believed that it came from early in World War II and was Petersen’s reaction to the effect of the Nazi attacks on civilian populations.

At first, Old Woman in Prayer (The Refugee) appears to be a conventional religious sculpture, but Petersen’s wife and his first biographer both explained that the sculpture was a war subject. His wife recalled how they felt in those days, “Christian was deeply moved by the barbarism of the pogroms and the bombings. We were stunned by the tragic suffering of innocent civilians during World War II--he brooded about it.”

The sculpture is roughly carved and focuses on the face and folded hands of an aged woman. The expression on her face does not seem serene or peaceful, but instead evokes the terror ordinary people felt as the Nazi war machine rolled through their countries. Germany did not declare war against any of these countries before invading them, and the effect of the Nazi attacks was felt strongly among civilians.

War (After the Blitz War) also reflected Petersen’s feelings about the toll the war took on civilians. In these sculptures, he shows the most vulnerable in these populations: women, children, and the elderly. Here, a woman tries to shelter her child as she looks backward. When Petersen says, “Blitz War”, he is probably referring to the blitzkrieg, or “lightning war,” that the Nazis carried out in country after country on the European continent. Blitzkrieg refers to the shock, the suddenness, and the overwhelming force with which these invaders entered a country and drove it into submission.

Another meaning for Blitz War might be the London Blitz, a campaign of bombing which Hitler carried out again Great Britain from early September 1940 to May of 1941. Known as the Battle of Britain, this campaign was waged entirely by airplanes and bombing raids against British cities.

We cannot tell if this sculpted woman is fleeing from bombs falling from the sky or from advancing ground forces, but her terror and her vulnerability are clearly conveyed by her nudity and her lack of resources for defending herself and her child.

The above drawing shows how carefully Petersen worked out his composition and shows that he made some subtle changes: the woman in the drawing looks upward as if responding to an air bombardment while the figure in the sculpture gazes more toward the back, as if responding to something on the ground or some sort of pursuit.

This Christmas card designed by Petersen is undated, but it is probably from 1941, just days after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The war in Europe had been going on since 1939, and for nearly two years, the US avoided the conflict. The surprise attack propelled Americans into a new role in the war, and Petersen’s Christmas card–-so radically different from the usual season’s greetings--reflects the shock of the population. The sculptor is at work on a globe when two explosions come out of it, astounding him, and causing his wife to enclose their daughter in her embrace. The US would now be fighting a war on at least two fronts: Europe and the Pacific.

When Petersen began his career on the faculty in the mid-1930s, only women were allowed in his classes because these courses were taught in the Applied Art Department of the Home Economics division, and men were not allowed to enroll in any of the Home Economics offerings. Within a few years, however, enough male students expressed an interest that they gained the privilege of attending his sculpture classes.

Petersen’s studio classroom was unique on the campus in that it always had a coffee pot going and the radio was on. Students must have listened, along with Petersen, to the news of the growing conflict and then the progression of the United States’ involvement. As they all listened to the news, they thought of the former students who were now in military training or already sent overseas.

When the US declared war, Petersen seems to have thought a good deal about his role as an artist. He had attempted to enlist in the armed forces but, as a man in his late 50s, he was turned down. In handwritten notes for a lecture, he seems to have addressed this question of how he might contribute to the war effort, concluding that his role was to inspire, to help maintain morale, and to provide a “spiritual stimulus,” especially during the dark days at the beginning of the war.

The subject matter of war, he wrote, provided a “richer field for the practice of art,” but more importantly, the artist had the opportunity, “by the practice of his or her art to be of great service to the country in this time of war. We need to produce food, clothing, implements of destruction--more’s the pity--but we also need to keep our spirit and that is not the least important. Witness the gallant stand of MacArthur and his men; were it not for the spirit they would long ago have quit.” His comments must date from some time before May 6, 1942, when American defenders on Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippine Islands surrendered to an overwhelming Japanese force and soon began the Bataan Death March. MacArthur actually left the Philippines on March 12, so Petersen’s comment may be prior to the general’s evacuation.

For Petersen, the most personally meaningful and distressing part of the declaration of war was the knowledge that it was his students who would be doing the fighting and the dying. His awareness of the sacrifice of these youth may have been a significant factor in the change shown by his art of World War II. Sometime in 1942, he began work on a new war sculpture that had quite a different tone from those he had done for World War I.

Men of Two Wars [Editor’s Note: This sculpture is now called Carry On.] expresses the idea that a new generation must take up a renewed fight against the same enemy. The dying figure on the ground is a soldier of World War I while at his side is a second soldier wearing the uniform of a World War II G.I.

Petersen based the prone expiring figure on a sculpture he had designed earlier, though its exact date is not clear, known as Carry On. [Editor’s Note: This sculpture is now called To You from Falling Hands.] This single youthful figure uses his last strength to lift a torch, a narrative inspired by the popular 1915 poem of World War I, In Flanders Fields.

“Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.”

Carry On [To You from Falling Hands] may have been from the early 1920s when Petersen was seeking commissions for memorials of the Great War or it may date from c.1932, when it was illustrated in a Des Moines newspaper. The papers at that time were full of reports about the Bonus Army which had recently been routed from Washington D.C., and the Iowa American Legion had expressed sympathy for their fellow veterans. Petersen proposed his Carry On [To You from Falling Hands] to the Legion, but it was apparently never purchased and now cannot be located.

In Men of Two Wars [Carry On], the torch held by the World War I doughboy has been eliminated, but the continuing fight, which it symbolized, is now being taken up by the World War II soldier who kneels at the dying man’s side. The dating of Men of Two Wars [Carry On] is firm because it was included in a major exhibition of Petersen’s work at Iowa State in December of 1942. An article about Petersen in the student newspaper included photographs of the artist with his new “patriotic” statue.

A sheet of soldier sketches, including the portrait of uniformed man with a medal, is one of the most intriguing and atypical drawings known by Petersen. It is undated and could be dated to as early as the 1920s or as late as the 1940s. It is discussed here because it includes World War I soldiers in poses similar to that of Men of Two Wars [Carry On].

The most distinctive images are the two that seem to deal with soldiers after the war who express the horror that still haunts them. The largest is a bust portrait of man still wearing his World War I uniform with a medal prominently displayed on it. His face holds an expression of distress in the extreme, with darkened, terrorized eyes. Nearby is a soldier in the same sort of uniform, sitting slightly slumped, legs together, and hands held close to the side or even perhaps tucked under the legs a bit. Above that sketch is another one that also explores this posture that is less heroic than pitiful. These sad and defeated-looking figures are unusual characterizations of American soldiers, whether they were done in the context of World War I or II. Dealing with the psychological impact of warfare was a topic not much explored by American artists, even those inclined to produce war memorials. It is intriguing to wonder where Petersen might have encountered such damaged men.

Petersen’s best-known sculpture about World War II is his Price of Victory, also known as Fallen Soldier. Again, we do not the exact date of this sculpture, but it is believed that it may be Petersen’s response to the mounting American casualties as more and more occupied lands were re-taken--at great cost--in Europe, the Pacific, and Asia. Possibly, it represents specifically the D-Day landings on the Normandy beaches as Allied forces crossed the English Channel and began the invasion that would force the Nazis out of France and the other countries they were occupying. Petersen’s wife, Charlotte, told his first biographer, Pat Bliss, that one night he left their home in silence, very disturbed, and went to work at his studio.

The sculpture depicts an American G.I. at the moment that he falls in combat. Did Petersen intend it as a sequel to the G.I. who joins the World War I soldier in Men of Two Wars [Carry On]? He is in the act of running when his life force is stopped; his momentum is slowed and within a second or two, he will fall to the ground. One hand hangs limply at his side while the other is held at his torso, perhaps where the wound is felt. One leg is bending at the knee, losing support for his body, while the other leg no longer carries any weight; the foot of that leg is already decomposing.

We do know that this sculpture was exhibited in the Memorial Union at Iowa State some time near the end of the war. However, public reaction was such that it was removed from view. According to several sources, Petersen regarded this incident as the greatest compliment ever paid to his work. Yet, we also know that Men of Two Wars [Carry On] was exhibited, with no recorded protest, perhaps throughout the war years. Price of Victory was among the last works in which Petersen would show conflict or even refer to it. The exception was a short series of drawings he made as illustrations for a story on World War II.

Among Petersen’s most evocative and disquieting sculptures is Unknown Prisoner. [Editor’s Note: This sculpture is now called Unknown Political Prisoner.] Again, the date is not firm, but was supplied by Petersen’s first biographer. It may have been one of the artist’s proposals for a postwar memorial. At first, this sculpture may also appear to have a religious component because of the cruciform shape of the support and the hanging position of the figure. It is almost certainly, however, a World War II subject. See additional research on this sculpture.

The figure shown in Petersen’s small sculpture, and in his drawings for it, has not been crucified in the traditional sense. He appears as a victim of torture or of execution by some other means. We cannot tell if he is dead or is still alive. The male figure is a strong-looking, muscular one (a forerunner for Christ with Bound Hands) who has been strapped against a slab with two truncated cross-arms, creating a reference to the cross of Christ’s crucifixion, but he is held against the slab by straps that look as if they could be used again, for the next victim.

An important element here is the anonymity of the figure. He bears no resemblance to art historical depictions of Christ, but appears to be an ordinary human. He could be anybody. He surely symbolizes all the victims of torture and of unjust persecution, not just in World War II, but in any conflict. By placing his figure against a cross shape, Petersen may be referencing the concept of Christ as the innocent victim, whose torture and death was an injustice.

None of Petersen’s sketches are dated, so we do not know which were done during World War II and which were done afterwards, but it is clear that he had begun thinking about war memorials even before the war ended.

This drawing, Let the Voice of Silence Speak for Those Loved Ones Who Made the Supreme Sacrifice for God and Country, may represent one of his earliest ideas in that regard. The inscription he included so prominently here and in another drawing make it clear that it is an elegiac situation, surely related to World War II. It could be applied in many situations and Petersen did use it variously but, in this drawing, he coupled it with a horizontal shape that included the heads in profile of five figures who appear to be children or young men. The fact that there are five of these heads associated with the inscription about supreme sacrifice leads to the suggestion that Petersen may have been designing a memorial for the five Sullivan Brothers of Waterloo, Iowa. In one of the tragedies of World War II, all five sons of the Sullivan family died when the ship, on which they were all serving, was sunk during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in November of 1942. Ranging in age from 20 to 27, the brothers had enlisted together in the Navy with the condition that they be allowed to stay together. Reluctantly, their request was granted by the Navy, and all were part of the crew of the USS Juneau.

Why did Petersen depict these sailors as children? In 1944, a movie called The Fighting Sullivans was released in which most of the story was taken up with the growing-up years of the brothers. It showed their childhoods and the bonds they formed as boys. The Petersens, according to his wife’s interviews, were avid movie fans, and it is reasonable to assume that Petersen saw this film. He would have had particular interest in it because the Sullivans were an Iowa family. The movie showed the devotion of the mother of the family, and Petersen’s proposed war memorial may have focused especially on the mother’s grief. It may have been an homage to the memories of the little boys she had brought up only to lose them all, every single one, in World War II. Other war memorial drawings contain many female figures, and Petersen seemed to see the female, especially the mother, as the most evocative figure for his war memorials.

Petersen with Christ with Bound Hands, 1945

Christ with Bound Hands is dated 1945 based on an article in the student newspaper, the Iowa State Daily Student, in which Petersen described it. The figure is a muscular male whose hands are tied in front of him, the lower half of his body is robed and shaped into a cylinder, the simplicity of this shape helps to focus attention on the hands--which are slightly overlarge.

In the August 17, 1945, issue of the newspaper, the student writer reported Petersen’s explanation of his statue. “The figure is that of Christ as he would appear on the earth surveying our present day humanity....The Son of God has a rope tied firmly around his large muscular hands which fall prominently in front of his body. His face has a stern expression as he views the war-torn world, its atomic power.” As with earlier sculptures, what appeared at first to be a totally religious image is actually one of war. The article appeared only three days after the Japanese surrender. Victory had been won in Europe in May of 1945; on August 6, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima; on August 9, the second bomb fell on Nagasaki.

The Iowa State campus learned after these atomic bombings that crucial research on the development of the A-Bomb had been going on at Iowa State College, led by Professor Frank Spedding of the Chemistry Department. Like other Americans, Petersen was strongly affected by this unprecedented weapon and what it meant for humanity. It seems that Petersen intended his statue to represent a new concept of Christ, a Christ for an atomic world. He told the student reporter, in regard to the powerful body and the tied hands, “It is as if he holds an atomic bomb in each fist.”

Petersen’s idea for Christ was truly a new one and one that made a distinctive statement. He emphasizes Christ’s displeasure, but also his forbearance. In the light of the United States’ complete triumph in World War II and the fact that we alone possessed atomic bombs, Petersen was using his figure of Christ, an all-powerful divinity, to model behavior of forbearance, of deliberately not using the power he actually held in his hands? His plan for his statue would have made his statement even more emphatic: he hoped to carve it in stone, at a height of 9 to 10 feet.

This undated drawing, All the Evils Which Have Kept Him Prisoner, probably comes from after Petersen designed his Christ with Bound Hands. It incorporates the figure with tied hands and places him atop a globe. In Christian art, Christ (or the cross) has often been in that position, usually to denote the kingship of Christ and his rule over all of creation, but the combination of his placement at the apex of the globe and the bound hands, as they were prior to his crucifixion is unknown. Blending these two different concepts of Christ in a single image changes his role and presents him not as a victor or a ruler.

Around the base of the globe are three sketchily indicated figures whose relationship to this figure and to the earth against which they throw themselves is not clear. Are they entreating Christ to intervene? Expressing despair? Also on this page is a study of the head of Christ which clearly shows his stern and troubled expression. It is an expression that implies not just an emotional state but a tone of judgment as well. Though this drawing appears at first as a proposal for a religious sculpture, I believe Petersen intended it as a war memorial.

During the postwar years, Petersen made many sketches, a number of which appear to be designs for war memorials. He seemed to be obsessed with the idea of creating a war memorial that would mourn the conflict rather than commemorate its victory. In none of them does he propose a military figure or a soldier. They are always a female figure in mourning.

Several of them employ a form that is particularly associated with World War II; the helmet placed of a fallen soldier, often placed on some sort of vertical support. This form relates to a battlefield marker for a casualty, used as an impromptu tombstone and notifying all who see it that a soldier died there. In the field, the support is usually the soldier’s rifle. In every case, a desolate female figure stands nearby, mourning the loss.

Julegranen drawings or for The Yellow Envelope, 1953

In 1953, Petersen was asked to provide illustrations for a story in Julegranen, a Danish-language magazine published in Iowa. Only two illustrations for The Yellow Envelope by the Danish-American writer, Jens Christian Bay, appeared in the magazine, but Petersen carried out a number of drawings on the theme.

The story is about Peter, a young man from a Midwestern Danish immigrant family who is serving with the US Army during World War II. Writing a letter from Italy, the young man tells them about his friend, Joe, an orphan from Brooklyn, and he tells his family that, should he not return, they should remember that Joe was his friend. During the Battle of Monte Cassino, Peter is killed, and Joe is wounded.

Back in the Midwest, Peter’s father has gone into town for Christmas supplies and to see if there is a letter from Peter, always dreading that what will be in their mailbox is a yellow envelope, the telegram by which many American families had the confirmation that their loved one had been killed. Peter’s father does see that his mailbox contains a yellow envelope. As he puts it into his pocket without reading, he is told that a soldier is waiting for him at the train station. It is Joe, the boy from Brooklyn. The father takes him home to the farm and, after confirming to his wife that their son is indeed dead, he tells her about Joe. She goes out, embraces him, and welcomes him home.

The date of this drawing, Farmer and his Wife Overlooking Their Land, is unknown, but it seems to embody a situation that might be experienced by a veteran who has returned to his farm. It was unusual for Petersen to take a drawing to this level of completion; it is not just a sketch, suggesting that he was artistically and emotionally invested in it.

The scene is the epitome of Iowa with its heartland stability, productivity, and healthful, enduring relationships; it represents the realization of American dreams for generations. It is home and family and land and the promise of the future: all the things that people fight for. The young woman leans back against the man who reaches around to take her hand in his. Their physical closeness and obvious contentment might represent the sort of relationships to which soldiers longed to return or have the chance to create after the war.

After the end of World War II, Petersen seemed obsessed with the idea of a war memorial, and he made many drawings. He experimented with several ideas, but all of them commemorate the grief that war brings, and none of them refer to victory. He was not a pacifist, but the evidence of his work suggests that, by the time of World War II, he no longer was interested in any aspect other than the grief and loss that is left behind.

Having examined the succession and development of Christian Petersen’s art about war, especially the ideas he proposed for war memorials after World War II, we have one last question. It is clear that he very much wishes to install a memorial of some kind on the Iowa State campus, preferably something on a large scale. He was never commissioned for such a monument.

Explore more of Petersen’s works of art dealing with the theme of war.