The Pentagon has 17.5 miles of corridors and 6.5 million square feet of office space. Those many walls feature tons of photographs and artworks of military subjects produced by military personnel. A painting that can be found on the fifth floor, 10th corridor, D ring, went viral on X a few weeks ago. The chosen subject of this painting brought up profound memories shared by veterans.
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The discarded magazine represents the alluring but ultimately shallow representations of the recruiter who convinces the individual to participate in collective debasement.
— B. A. Friedman (@BA_Friedman) June 22, 2023
The painting is titled “Hide Your Head in the Sand.” The artist is Harley Copic, an aviation artist with more than 50 paintings hanging in the Pentagon, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, and the Air Force Museum. The Porta-John depicted stood at Tallil Air Base in Iraq in April 2003.
Every enlistee in all branches of the US military is very aware of the vast gap between everyday warriors and the officer class, but all who have been deployed over the last 30-something years have used such facilities. Copic’s iconic rendition is the symbol that brings service members and officers together.
Within a forward-deployed Porta-John’s steamy confines, the scalding stillness of which can make an exterior 125-degree Iraq afternoon feel, at least momentarily upon exiting, like a fall evening in Montana, rank counts for nothing.
The irony is that this painting is in the Pentagon, among the hallowed halls that most enlisted members rarely penetrate. If prints were available, they would sell better than Copic’s other artworks, and then be respectfully framed and displayed in veterans’ bathrooms across the nation. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: B. A. Friedman)
Source: neatorama