Modern art, Britain, and the Great War : witnessing, testimony, and remembrance / Sue Malvern.
By: Malvern, Sue
.
Contributor(s): Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
Material type: 
BookPublisher: New Haven ; London : Published for The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 2004Description: vii, 233 p. : ill., photos ; 28 cm. + hbk.ISBN: 0300105762 .Subject(s): Art, British -- 20th century | World War, 1914-1918 -- Art and the war | Art and war | Propaganda in artDDC classification: 709.4109041 | Item type | Current library | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| General Lending | MTU Crawford College of Art and Design Library Lending | 709.4109041 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 00193176 |
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Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
The First World War had a great impact on British modernism and twentieth-century art. This book examines how the British state recruited some of its most controversial artists to produce official art as part of propaganda and how their work gave witnessed testimony to the trauma of a war that later generations would redeem in acts of remembrance.
The principal means by which artists visually recorded their war experiences, says Sue Malvern, were the official employment schemes set up by the government in 1916. Challenging prevailing opinion, she argues that these schemes were surprisingly liberal, giving modern artists unprecedented scope to create new audiences for their art. Official art was not just visual propaganda, but work of compelling quality and value, and the issues it raised extended into the post-war period and beyond.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Art, propaganda, and persuasion at Wellington House -- Realism, representation, and censorship -- Making history : the British War Memorials Committee -- Modern art, modern war, and the impossible project of history painting -- Post-War modernisms : William Roberts, David Bomberg, Wyndham Lewis, and C.R.W. Nevinson -- Redeeming the War : Englishness and remembrance.
Reviews provided by Syndetics
CHOICE Review
Art in the service of the British cause in WW I went beyond propaganda to reflect the country's official commitment to ideals of "freedom of thought and expression." At the same time, artist-soldiers associated with the avant-garde and "notions of fractured subjectivities" came to be viewed as authentic witnesses to the experience of the trenches. In this important addition to the literature on the war, Malvern tackles key questions about the role of the artist in wartime, the expectations of the public, and modernism's contentious argument for a detached aesthetic. The emphasis predictably falls on several well-known painters--Paul Nash, Wyndham Lewis, C. R. W. Nevinson, and Stanley Spencer--but others also receive attention, and the book's detailed appendixes exhaustively list those associated with various official, war-related art projects. Following the armistice, the focus shifted to honoring the memory of those who sacrificed for the cause, and Malvern (Univ. of Reading, UK) appropriately concludes this fine book with a valuable discussion of Spencer's elegiac oils for the Sandham Memorial Chapel at Burghclere. The illustrations, most in color, are excellent and the text is fully documented. There is an index but, sadly, no bibliography. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. General readers; lower-division undergraduates through faculty. W. S. Rodner Tidewater Community CollegeAuthor notes provided by Syndetics
Sue Malvern lectures in history of art at the University of Reading.