A bitter truth : avant-garde art and the Great War
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
A bitter truth : avant-garde art and the Great War
Yale University Press in association with Barbican Art Gallery, 1994
Available at 17 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [315]-330) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
"It is unspeakable, godless, hopeless. I am no longer an artist interested and curious. I am a messenger who will bring back word from the men who are fighting to those who want the war to go on forever. Feeble, inarticulate, will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth." - Paul Nash, 1918, at Passchendaele. The trauma of the First World War had an immensely powerful effect on the painters, sculptors, and printmakers who participated in it. They produced an extraordinary range of striking images that conveyed the immediacy and horror of their experiences and feelings. This arresting book is the first to bring together and examine the full international array of images spawned by the Great War. Richard Cork shows how avant-garde artists from Europe, Russia, and the United States challenged the recruiting posters and other propagandist views of the struggle by producing art that reflected the degradation of the trenches. The conflict was anticipated before hostilities began by the visionary and apocalyptic work of painters such as Meidner and Kandinsky.
Chagall, Nevinson, Hartley, Beckmann, Kirchner, and other artists were quick to define war's essential tragedy with objective, expressionist, or allegorical art that alluded to their own wartime experiences. The harshest images of war were made in the latter stages or after the Armistice, when artists such as Dix had time to consider their participation in the war. Ironically, the post-war years also witnessed the redemptive work of Spencer and Brancusi, who after the Armistice produced monumental affirmations of brotherhood, fortitude, and love. This lavishly illustrated book will accompany a major exhibition of art from World War I, to be held at the Altes Museum in Berlin from June 4 to August 28 and at the Barbican Art Gallery in London from September 29 to December 11, 1994.
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