Shared Experience: Art and War

Crowds dancing, Kings Cross, Sydney

Donald Friend
Crowds dancing, Kings Cross, Sydney
pen and coloured ink, brush and wash, crayon with scratching back, pencil on paper
51.1 x 68cm
ART23203

On VE Day Friend went in search of revelry, only to be disappointed. However, the following evening he found “an amazing scene”.

When I got home I made drawings of it … I’m afraid the war art people will loathe them. I guess they’ll dislike all my stuff: it’s probably destined to moulder for a century or so in the cellars until some subsequent war unearths it as antique bellicose curiosa or “a superb national heritage” or something.