With cars and kaiju, artists Umar Rashid and Frieda Toranzo Jaeger subvert American myth in MoMA exhibits

NEW YORK — In 1816, Kentucky-born portraitist William Edward West created a print depicting the battlefield death of British Maj. Gen. Edward Michael Pakenham at the Battle of New Orleans. At the time, the wounds of the 1815 conflict, the last of the War of 1812, were still fresh, and West did his best to convey the drama. In the background, U.S. soldiers in blue fight off invading British redcoats. In the foreground, a British officer holds the dying Pakenham in his arms. Gen. John Lambert, who assumed command after Pakenham died, is shown burying his face in a white handkerchief as he weeps.

But "Battle of New Orleans and Death of Major General Packenham" — West misspelled the general's surname — is more bizarre than it is cinematic. Horses and men are out of scale, and Pakenham's body is awkwardly situated, because when West reissued the print in 1817, the handkerchief was gone. Instead, the general is shown , as if announcing a new pimple.