TEACHING AID: Compare and Contrast Comparing and contrasting different works of art is often the most effective way of looking at art and deriving meaning and content from it. Here you will see images of two paintings accompanied by analyses that you can use as a guide for how to teach the methodology to your students. Falling Airman by Leo McStravick, Jr. Oil on canvas. The painting depicts the moment of death for one soldier. The repetition of arching and sharply-angled lines pulls the eye downward, as do the colors, which intensify and build the lower the eye travels in the painting, culminating with the airman’s body and the water into which he is falling. His body, painted mostly with browns, oranges, grays and reds—earthy tones—is accentuated with blue lines along the man’s limbs, indicating the man’s body becoming part of the sea. Smokey grays in the middle of the painting are dryly blended into the airman’s lower limbs and the parachute, which seems to depict the transition of the insubstantial flaming red of the parachute’s outline into the solidity of the man’s body. The parachute, rising above the airman, appears to be growing out of his back like wings, and yet the parachute’s frothy texture and the rising arch of its shape and movement causes it to look like a wave, suggesting that like the dying airman, the parachute is becoming a part of the sea as well. Short scratches texturize the airman’s body, reiterating the violence of his fall and death, while longer, swirling scratches swirl and flow into him and the water, as though he, the sea and the fall are one, as indeed, everything in the painting is blending to become one entity. It suggests an illustration of death returning the body to the natural elements of which it is made. So This Is How You Died (The End) by Richard Yohnka. Pastel on paper. Here we also see a depiction of one man’s death, but what immediately separates this piece from McStravick's Airman is that death is not a solitary event. The standing figure appears to be half-solid and half- insubstantial—he seems to be the violent movement that characterizes the background becoming corporeal. Perhaps he is half-human and half-supernatural, standing at the threshold of the human world and the unknown, nonphysical world of death, half in and out of each. Notice, too, that the closer in proximity to the corpse the standing man is, the more solid and real he becomes. The dead man and his military fatigues are green, which strongly contrasts with the bright, pastel colors of the background. In fact, both artworks share a use of bright colors, although Yohnka's use of them is far more prevalent. And while Falling Airman and this piece share the idea of transformation, the changes taking place are different. In McStravick's painting, one could say that it is man's return to the natural elements through death that is depicted. In this piece, however, while the presence of a transformation is unquestionable, what particular change is taking place is not as readily or seemingly apparent. Although the viewer cannot really doubt that the limp figure on the bottom is lifeless, it is the standing man, not the dead one, who is undergoing a transformation. Perhaps, though, it is better to say it is a transition or crossing between the spiritual and physical worlds. The standing figure's face and back, which are farthest from the man's body, appear to remain partly in the nonphysical world—notice how his back especially is still the same color as the background, as though he is a part of it, a suggestion which is reiterated by the continuation of the red lines darting from his body into the background. But the lower the eye travels in the painting, the more "finished" he appears: he is becoming a corporeal man from the inside out, so his face and back are only bone and musculature, but stripped of skin and incomplete, while his legs, straddling the man, are clothed in pants. His posture, the way he strains toward the dead man, is expressive of remorse and regret—is it possible he is actually a fellow soldier? Or are humanity and compassion as fundamental to being human and as essential to this transformation as the sinews and structure? One wonders: is the standing man actually straining toward humanity (and away from his previous insubstantial state) and what being human means, or is he fighting to remain mortal with his fallen comrade?		TEACHER PACKET CONTENTS Chronology of the Vietnam War Roll Call: Important Names and Events in the Vietnam War Teaching Aid: Compare and Contrast Lesson Plans and Activities Recommended Reading and Media Lessons Learned: The Impact of the Vietnam War Today and the War on Terrorism Map of Southeast Asia in the 1960s Bibliography