Margy Kinmonth’s latest feature documentary represents the third in a trilogy of films about artists and war, following Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War, which focused on the second world war artist of the title, and the more first world war-skewed War Art with Eddie Redmayne, which showed on ITV. This time the focus is on female artists and war – as the title suggests with its cringe-inducing pun on a slang term for makeup.
It’s a perfectly valid and potentially fruitful subject, but the analysis here is often frustratingly superficial. Kinmonth puts herself front and centre as the onscreen interviewer and narrator, so one has to blame her directly for the daftness of some her questions. For instance, she asks sculptor Rachel Whiteread: “I’m wondering, is there a difference in the perception of female artists to men, and what do women see that men don’t?” Whiteread politely demurs to tackle that one. “I think that’s an incredibly difficult thing to answer,” she replies. “I don’t think you really can make that distinction.”
Fortunately the film itself doesn’t seem to be reaching for a similarly essentialist formula to answer that question. Instead we get a serviceable if somewhat disjointed series of profiles of various female artists addressing war, from state-appointed ones such as Dame Laura Knight, who painted the second world war, Falkland war artist Linda Kitson, and American architect-artist Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. Lin recounts how one official weirdly questioned whether her choice of polished black granite was perhaps “too feminine”.
Art world grande dames such as Maggi Hambling and Marcelle Hanselaar are paid due tribute, alongside celebrations of those whose work nearly slipped into obscurity. That goes for photographer Lee Miller (to a certain extent), as well as avant garde woodcarver and painter Rachel Reckitt, and prisoners of war interred in the Changi prison camp in Singapore by the Japanese, who made quilt squares to express themselves.
Among the most interesting subjects are the artists currently working in active war zones, such as Ukrainian Zhanna Kadyrova whose innovative installations play with surface and found objects, and Sudanese graffiti artist Assil Diab who paints murals of the many dead in the “forgotten” war. Some may feel irked that these up-and-coming artists aren’t given more airtime instead of the established names, but that probably would have lessened the doc’s export value to international broadcasters, alas.
• War Paint – Women at War is in UK and Irish cinemas from 28 March.
