| Unit name | Art and War, ca. 1899 to the present (Level I Special Field) |
|---|---|
| Unit code | HART26000 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Brockington |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
HART 22225 Special Field Project |
| School/department | Department of History of Art (Historical Studies) |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit examines visual responses to war and to peace movements over the past century. Beginning with the foundational wars of the early twentieth century (the Boer War, World War One) and the reactions against them, and ending with conflicts and peace protests in our own time, it explores how art functions in wartime as a tool for communication, propaganda, dissent and commemoration. Drawing on a range of art forms – posters, sculpture, memorials, eye-witness sketches and studio oils – it examines the aesthetic dilemmas which war imposes. Themes to explore include the technical challenges of representing war in life-threatening working conditions; the compulsion to communicate a new extreme of experience through art; the ways in which artists have responded to, or resisted, the pressure to be useful in a time of national crisis; the status of war photography as art or reportage; and the politics of war memorials.
By the end of the unit students should have:
Weekly 2-hour seminar Access to tutorial consultation with unit tutor in office hours
2-hour unseen written examination (summative, 100%)
The examination will assess their understanding of the unit’s key themes in war art over the past century, the related historiography as developed during their reading and participation in / learning from small group seminars, and relevant primary sources. Further assessment of their handling of the relevant primary sources will be provided by the co-requisite Special Field Project (HART 22225)
Bois, Yve-Alain, Guy Brett, Margaret Iversen, Julian Stallabrass, ‘An Interview with Mark Wallinger’, October, no 123 (Winter 2008): 185–204 http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/octo.2008.123.1.185
Brandon, Laura, Art and War (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007)
Brockington, Grace, Above the Battlefield: British Modernism and the Peace Movement, 1900-1918 (New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 2010)
Greeley, Robin Adèle, Surrealism and the Spanish Civil War (New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 2006)
Sivan, Emmanuel and Jay Winter (eds), War and remembrance in the twentieth century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Sontag, Susan, Regarding the pain of others (London: Penguin Books, 2004)
