Art & War

This is a truly encyclopedic survey of artists’ responses – both ‘official’ and personal – to ‘the horrors of war’. Art and War reveals the sheer diversity of artists’ portrayals of this most devastating aspect of the human condition – from the ‘heroic’ paintings of Benjamin West and John Singer Sargent to brutal and iconic works by artists from Goya to Picasso, and the equally oppositional work of Leon Golub, Nancy Spero and others who reacted with fury to the Vietnam War. Laura Brandon pays particular attention to work produced in response to World War I and World War II, as well as to more recent art and memorial work by artists as diverse as Barbara Kruger, Alfredo Jarr and Maya Lin. She looks finally to the reactions of contemporary artists such as Langlands and Bell to the US invasion in 2001 of Afghanistan and the ‘War on Terror’.