BRUSH
WITH DEATH
Artist Howard Cook captured the terror
and tedium of war in the Pacific Theater
I
n 1943, artist Howard Cook traded the desert of
his Taos, New Mexico, home for the jungle when he
accepted a six-month assignment to lead the U.S.
Army’s War Art Unit in the South Pacific. Cook,
then 41, was an acclaimed printmaker, magazine
illustrator, and painter—but at Camp Barnes in
Noumea, New Caledonia, he and his fellow artists were
treated like run-of-the-mill military men: “We got a
good taste of what it feels like to slave and sweat in the
steaming stink of a jungle and can well imagine what it
means to die or lie wounded in the...slimy mud,” the
artist wrote to his wife, Barbara.
Cook accompanied the 43rd Infantry Division on
missions throughout the region, sketching soldiers at
rest and at war. While participating in the assault task
force and landing on Rendova Island and on New Geor-
gia’s Munda Point, both in the Solomons, the artist expe-
rienced his first air raid; huddled in a foxhole
(self-portrait, opposite), Cook could hear “the short rat-
tats of machine-gunning” and “the roar of bombers” as
they “came down over and lay their eggs in our midst.”
Initially fascinated with the South Pacific (“the coun-
try is a painter’s paradise,” he observed), Cook grew
fatigued with combat and left the War Art Unit early on
medical discharge. The artist insisted he wouldn’t trade
his formative experiences for “anything in the world”—
but the comforts of civilian life beckoned. “Don’t worry
about my wanting excitement when I return,” Cook wrote to Barbara.
“I will just want to curl up in a hot dusty corner in the sun and take it easy
for a while.” —Kirstin Fawcett58 WORLD WAR II
A weary Cook digs his
second foxhole of the day
on Rendova Island. The
artist’s fatigue was soon
replaced by terror, as
captured in a haunting air
raid self-portrait (opposite).AL
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