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Interdisciplinary collection of essays on fine art painting as it
relates to the First World War and commemoration of the conflict.
Although photography and moving pictures achieved ubiquity during
the First World War as technological means of recording history,
the far more traditional medium of painting played a vital role in
the visual culture of combatant nations. The public's appetite for
the kind of up-close frontline action that snapshots and film
footage could not yet provide resulted in a robust market for drawn
or painted battle scenes. Painting also figured significantly in
the formation of collective war memory after the armistice.
Paintings became sites of memory in two ways: first, many
governments and communities invested in freestanding panoramas or
cycloramas that depicted the war or featured murals as components
of even larger commemorative projects, and second, certain
paintings, whether created by official artists or simply by those
moved to do so, emerged over time as visual touchstones in the
public's understanding of the war. Portraits of Remembrance:
Painting, Memory, and the First World War examines the relationship
between war painting and collective memory in Australia, Austria,
Belgium, Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Great Britain, New
Zealand, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, and the United States. The
paintings discussed vary tremendously, ranging from public murals
and panoramas to works on a far more intimate scale, including
modernist masterpieces and crowd-pleasing expressions of
sentimentality or spiritualism. Contributors raise a host of topics
in connection with the volume's overarching focus on memory,
including national identity, constructions of gender, historical
accuracy, issues of aesthetic taste, and connections between
painting and literature, as well as other cultural forms.
This is a truly encyclopedic survey of artists' responses - both
'official' and personal - to 'the horrors of war'. "Art and War"
reveals the sheer diversity of artists' portrayals of this most
devastating aspect of the human condition - from the 'heroic'
paintings of Benjamin West and John Singer Sargent to brutal and
iconic works by artists from Goya to Picasso, and the equally
oppositional work of Leon Golub, Nancy Spero and others who reacted
with fury to the Vietnam War. Laura Brandon pays particular
attention to work produced in response to World War I and World War
II, as well as to more recent art and memorial work by artists as
diverse as Barbara Kruger, Alfredo Jarr and Maya Lin. She looks
finally to the reactions of contemporary artists such as Langlands
and Bell to the US invasion in 2001 of Afghanistan and the 'War on
Terror'.
The Canadian War Museum possesses one of the finest
twentieth-century official war art collections in the world. Until
relatively recently, however, the collection has received limited
public attention. In Art or Memorial?, author Laura Brandon
explores some of the reasons why this may have been the case. At
various times throughout its history, the war art collection has
receded from and re-emerged in the nation's collective
consciousness. Nevertheless, as an invaluable part of the official
record of war in Canada, it is profoundly significant. Brandon
argues that the value of the collection lies less in its artistic
merit and more in its role as a site of memory. Art or Memorial?
seeks to illuminate Canadian war art's sometimes-hidden presence in
the nation's memory and to show, through both its presence and its
absence, how it helped to shape, and will continue to influence,
how we remember as a nation.
This is a truly encyclopedic survey of artists' responses - both
'official' and personal - to 'the horrors of war'. "Art and War"
reveals the sheer diversity of artists' portrayals of this most
devastating aspect of the human condition - from the 'heroic'
paintings of Benjamin West and John Singer Sargent to brutal and
iconic works by artists from Goya to Picasso, and the equally
oppositional work of Leon Golub, Nancy Spero and others who reacted
with fury to the Vietnam War. Laura Brandon pays particular
attention to work produced in response to World War I and World War
II, as well as to more recent art and memorial work by artists as
diverse as Barbara Kruger, Alfredo Jarr and Maya Lin. She looks
finally to the reactions of contemporary artists such as Langlands
and Bell to the US invasion in 2001 of Afghanistan and the 'War on
Terror'.
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