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Description: | Here Larry Rivers refers to an historical event to make a point about what he saw as aggressive American tactics in Vietnam. The Boston Massacre of 1770 was one of the key events leading to the American War of Independence (1775-1783). The British garrison was deeply resented by the citizens of Boston in America. During a disturbance in 1770 the British grenadiers fired on innocent citizens. The many different images of the English soldiers in uniform remind the viewer of eighteenth and nineteenth century history paintings, where battles are generally depicted as scenes of heroism. After images of the eighteenth century soldiers, the focus then shifts to the actual firing squad and close-ups looking down the barrel of the gun. Contemporary imagery is fused with this, showing images of a Native American juxtaposed with black Americans. Through these prints Rivers wanted to highlight the fact that, by the 1960s, the United States seemed to have forgotten what it felt like to be an occupied country. She became an aggressor, occupying countries such as Vietnam. At home, her own police and militia responded with violence to peaceful civil rights protests.
In the American war of Independence from Great Britain, in 1770, many people were killed by British troops firing on them. An onlooker wrote: 'The soldiers pushed several persons with their bayonets. This occasioned some snowballs to be thrown at them. The officer on guard was Captain Preston, who with seven or eight soldiers, formed into a half-circle; and within a short time after they had been posted at the Custom House, began to fire upon the people.' Larry Rivers saw a similarity between these events and the Vietnam War and Civil Rights movements in America at the time he painted this picture.
One of 11 screenprints from the 'Boston Massacre' series by LARRY RIVERS, title Redcoats (Fold Out) | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/uk/ | Publisher: | Wolverhampton Arts and Museums Service | Subjects: | Pop art War Fine arts Works on paper Pop Collection | Temporal: | 1970
20th century (1900-1999) | Source: | Black Country History | Creator: | RIVERS; Larry (1923 - 2002) | Identifier: | http://www.blackcountryhistory.org/colle... | Go to resource |
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