Nothing but the Clouds Unchanged: Artists in World War I

Ah well for the most part I was ever so.disappointed with the book. I am fimilar with the great war and the art thereof.however there where many illustrations, of fine works in it most notable plate 25 by thomas TheodoreHeine the,way home his work unknowingly bot revisionist the impressive artworks that whatever seen

Great book; very interesting!

I consider allowing the Secret Service to get a copy of my psychiatric file an administrative routine established by the first world war, in which 25 percent of discharges were categorized as psychiatric casualties. Exposure to trauma far from home under military culture, anything I might feel became so eldritch, it seemed to be dissociation.

This companion book to the excellent Getty Center exhibition of WWI art gathers 14 essays about 14 artists by 14 art historians. Their commentaries are uniformly excellent in their balancing biography, culture, and brief analyses of or observations about individual works. The book demonstrates the many ways that artists respond to catastrophe, especially one they personally experience, so it serves to counter simplistic notions of the war and art. And it acknowledges that not all artists experienced a lasting, transformative trauma during WW. I especially appreciate the sub-current theme of how the past (conventions, styles, and aesthetic ideas) is not abandoned when artists under psychic duress explore new forms and styles, that in fact the exuberant, anti-tradition chaos of pre-war European artists was not accelerated, but paused and reworked because of the war. There are gems in the footnotes.

"A generation that still drove to school in horse-drawn carriages suddenly stood under the open sky in a landscape with nothing but the clouds unchanged, & in the center, in a force field of destructive currents & explosions, was the tiny, fragile human body."--Walter BenjaminGetty Research Institute published this book focused on the experiences of 14 indvidual artists in World War I: Andre Masson, Fernand Leger, Georges Braque, Wyndham Lewis, Paul Nash, Carlo Carra, Otto Dix, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Ernst, George Grosz, Kaethe Kollwitz, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Kokoschka, & Oskar Schlemmer. (Click to Look Inside > Table of Contents for the 14 authors of the chapters.) This select group of artists--who experienced the full arc of the lead-up, combat, & aftermath of the war--exemplify "the fundamental disruption & inner conflict of an entire generation." (p. 1) I especially recommend Thomas W. Gaehtgens's & Phillip Blom's introductions. A handy feature of the book is "Selected Cultural Figures Who Served in WWI," pp. 180-185, a chart compiled by Hannah Fullgraf & Betsy Stepina Zinn. Brief bios of the authors are on pp. 186-187. There is an Index.Getty Research Institute has mounted a related exhibition, with a different focus, to mark the centennial of the beginning of the War in 1914. The exhibition has been drawn from the Institute's large collection of artists' letters, journals, photos from the trenches, posters, & other ephemera related to WWI. The show, "World War I: War of Images, Images of War," was on view at Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Nov. 18, 2014 - Apr. 18, 2015, and Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington Univ., St. Louis, MO, Sept. 11, 2015 - Jan. 4, 2016.