Art as a testimony of history | BENEDICTE MOUBARAK

History leaves written traces, dates, archives. But it also leaves images, shapes, colors. When we talk about art bearing witness to history, we’re talking about this unique ability of artworks to preserve experiences that official documents don’t always convey. War, with its violence and scars visible in landscapes as well as in abandoned houses, is one of those subjects where art becomes living memory.

In the War and Consequences collection, this question is at the heart of our approach. Why continue to paint war, its echoes and its consequences, when news photographs and expert reports are so abundant? What can a drawing of an empty facade, a watercolor of a silent house, do that a written testimony cannot?

Art as a testimony to history: why paint war?

Reading time: ~8 min

• Art as a testimony to history as a tangible trace of the past  
  
• Why artists depict war  
  
• From heroic battles to shattered lives  
  
• When fleeing and exile are the only options 
  
• The uniqueness of artistic testimony  
  
• How to read these works as testimonies  
  
• Frequently asked questions about art as historical testimony  
  
• Art as a testimony to history as a tangible trace of the past

Art as historical testimony as a tangible trace of the past

A tangible trace of the past

Historically, art has accompanied all the major phases of humanity. From prehistoric walls to contemporary installations, each work bears the mark of its time. It provides information about lifestyles, beliefs, techniques, but also about the fears and hopes of a society. In this sense, we can speak of art as a historical testimony, as a trace left in the present for future generations.

Art historians remind us that every image is partly a testimony: a person reports what they have seen, experienced, or understood about the world. A battle painting tells a version of a war, a drawing of an abandoned house tells a version of exile. It is not neutral evidence, but an embodied narrative.

In contemporary art, this dimension is even more explicitly assumed. 

The artwork becomes a space for expression and carries the memory of an event, an intimate or collective experience. It can testify to violence, injustice, grief, but also to rebuilding, solidarity, and the beauty that survives despite everything.

What sets artistic testimony apart from a written archive is its sensitive nature. A work doesn't just convey facts; it also conveys a mood, an emotion, an atmosphere. The way colors are applied, how a cracked wall is depicted, how a sky turns gray, all of this contributes to the historical narrative. We don’t just learn what happened: we feel what it did to bodies, places, and lives.

Why do artists depict war

The main motivations of artists

War has been a major theme in the history of art since its beginnings. For a long time, it was depicted through battles and victories; rulers had their triumphs painted to assert their power and build their legacy. These images served as much to document an event as to glorify a regime.

From the Renaissance onward, and especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, perspectives gradually changed. Artists no longer just show armies in formation; they also focus on destruction, deaths, and the suffering of soldiers and civilians. The representation of war becomes multifaceted and ambivalent.

• Depicting war as a historical event, to keep a visual memory of what happened
  
• Serving those in power (propaganda, glorifying national courage) or, on the contrary, fueling criticism, a rejection of war
  
• Giving a voice to the victims, the anonymous, the destroyed homes, to everything that official narratives leave out
  
• Create a lasting memory for periods of peace, to remind us what armed violence really costs societies 

Function of Representing War	Role of Artistic Testimony
Historical Memory	Representing war as an event to keep a visual record of what happened.
Propaganda or Critique	Serving those in power or, on the contrary, encouraging distance and rejection of war.
Visibility of the Anonymous	Giving a place to victims, destroyed homes, and everything official accounts leave out.
Transmission to Future Generations	Creating a lasting memory for periods of peace and reminding of the real cost of armed violence for societies.

 

Painting war, then, isn’t just about telling the story of battles. It’s about questioning what war does to humans and places; keeping a memory of interrupted lives, abandoned houses, objects left on a table, the crack in a wall that shows the impact of a past blow.  

From heroic battles to broken lives

By following the thread of art history, you can clearly see this evolution. The earliest depictions focus on battles, troop formations, victorious kings: war appears almost as a heroic, abstract theater. Individual suffering is hardly visible. 

With artists like Goya, a turning point occurs. His engravings devoted to the disasters of war no longer show a distant spectacle but the horror experienced at ground level: mutilated bodies, terrified civilians, summary executions. The goal is no longer to glorify but to denounce and bear witness.

In the 20th century, works like Picasso’s Guernica become symbols of the condemnation of mass violence. These images invent a new formal language to express what words struggle to convey: distorted bodies, fragmented space, dramatic black and white.

At the same time, photography, cinema, and video broaden the field. Artists take hold of archives, amateur films, military documents; they repurpose them to question how official history is made. Artistic testimony thus interacts with raw documents, complementing or contradicting them.

Gradually, it's no longer just battlefields that are depicted, but also the places left behind after the armies depart: emptied villages, abandoned houses, facades marked by impacts. War is then told through what it leaves behind.

When fleeing and exile are the only options

The inevitable consequences of war

It’s precisely within this space of consequences that my work fits in the War and Consequences collection. I choose not to paint the battles themselves, but what happens afterward, what the media stops paying attention to, what we sometimes end up forgetting.

I paint current issues that touch me and fill me with emotion. I try to tackle the themes of chaos, flight, and exile that follow war. What happens when I have to make the decision to leave my home without knowing if I’ll see it again? What do I take with me? Is there a trace of myself that I want to leave behind?

Watercolor, with its transparency, allows you to suggest layers of time. A first light layer can convey the memory of a happy past; darker layers recall shocks, forced departures, absences. Sometimes I also add collages, dried flowers, pieces of fabric that bring the body into the image and evoke interrupted daily lives.

By painting these silent houses, these departures, I want to tell the story of those who had to leave everything behind. The walls become pages on which time has written: a crack suggests a bombing, closed shutters speak of a hurried departure, a façade still beautiful but empty questions the fragility of existence.

These works are not strict reports: they don’t provide exact dates, names, or precise locations. But they do reflect a tangible historical reality and fit into a long tradition where art keeps a record of the effects of conflicts on civilian populations and inhabited landscapes.

To learn more about this approach, explore our collection on war and its consequences.

The uniqueness of artistic testimony

Compared to an archival document or a journalistic report, artistic testimony has both limits and unique strengths.

On one hand, it is deeply subjective: the artist chooses what to show, what to leave in the shadows, how to compose, and which colors to use. A watercolor of an abandoned house doesn’t tell the whole story; it offers a perspective, a feeling, a partial narrative.

On the other hand, this embraced subjectivity allows us to touch aspects of history that escape the numbers. The feeling of loss, nostalgia, the melancholic beauty of an abandoned facade, the silent violence of a bricked-up window are conveyed more directly through artistic form.

For war and its consequences, this dual nature is valuable: the work is both a document and an aesthetic gesture. It informs and moves, shows and questions the way we look at images of violence.

The inclusion of dried flowers or textiles strengthens this link to memory: a flower, witness to a vanished garden, a curtain flying from the balcony of a destroyed building, a child's garment on an untouched clothesline, or simply a gesture of hope, a form of beauty that survives despite everything. These details shift the testimony from grand History to the personal.

How to Read These Works as Testimonies

A Few Reading Tips

Look at the subject depicted: battle, destroyed landscape, abandoned house, bodies or objects; ask yourself what aspect of the war it bears witness to. Pay attention to the formal treatment: colors, texture, composition shape how you feel—denunciation, nostalgia, anger, or reflection.

In the particular case of deserted houses, the key question is: who lived here, what forced these people to leave, what does this place still tell us about their past presence? A facade is no longer just stone; it becomes an open-air memory.

Art doesn’t replace history books; it complements them. It gives a human dimension to events and lets us hear voices that archives haven’t recorded. Looking at a work is about allowing yourself to be touched by a story that goes beyond dates and facts.

Frequently Asked Questions About Art as a Historical Testimony

Can a work of art be considered a source for history?

Yes. Many works are used by historians as sources: they provide insight into mentalities, representations of war, the role given to different actors, and how a society sees itself. However, they should be cross-checked with other documents because they involve aesthetic, political, and symbolic choices.

Why keep painting war when photos and videos already exist?

Documentary images capture the moment. Art works over the long term, on memory: it shows how a conflict continues to inhabit places and bodies. Painting an abandoned house years after the fighting testifies to what remains when the cameras have gone.

How does painting abandoned houses also speak about war?  

An empty house tells a story of displacement, forced migration, a violence that has broken the continuity of life. By choosing these places, we draw attention to the real-life consequences of conflicts on families, neighborhoods, and everyday landscapes. It's a way of speaking about war through what it tears away and what it leaves silent.

In summary: art as a testimony to the history of war

History isn't only found in archives, but also in leaks and abandonments, open windows to emptiness, and colors laid down on paper. Painting war and its consequences, whether it's a battle scene or an abandoned house in Lebanon, is a way to refuse forgetting and to give a voice to silent stories. To explore these visual narratives and their contemporary forms, check out our collections.

To go deeper into memory and transmission, also take a look at our blog dedicated to art and culture, which continues these reflections on art as a testimony to history and how images keep a trace of lives disrupted by conflicts.