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New book on the impact of war on art edited by Ann Murray

5 Jan 2018
Kārlis Padegs, Vivat Europa! (detail), 1931. Image courtesy of Tukums Museum, Latvia.

Dr Ann Murray, a graduate of our doctoral programme, published a collection of essays entitled Constructing the Memory of War in Visual Culture since 1914: The Eye on War (Routledge, 2018).

This collection provides a transnational, interdisciplinary perspective on artistic responses to war from 1914 to the present, analysing the rich, complex body of work which emerged in response to conflicts from the Great War to the present. Many of the creators examined here embody the human experience of war: first-hand witnesses who developed a unique visual language in direct response to their role as victim, soldier, refugee, resister, prisoner, embedded or official artist. Contributors address specific issues relating to propaganda, wartime femininity and masculinity, women as war artists, trauma, the role of art in soldiery, memory, art as resistance, identity and the memorialisation of war. 

The collection is drawn from papers presented at the 2013 Conference War in the Visual Arts, and closely relates to Murray's doctoral research, which explored the memorialisation of World War I in the work of German artist Otto Dix.

The book was funded by both History of Art, UCC and by a publication grant from the National University of Ireland.

For more information, please click here.

History of Art

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