Description
Book SynopsisIn American visual culture, the 1930s and 1940s were a key transitional period shaped by the era of modernism and the global confrontation of World War II. Christof Decker demonstrates that the war and its iconography of destruction challenged visual artists to find new ways of representing its consequences. Dealing with trauma and war crimes led to the emergence of complex aesthetic forms and media crossovers. Decker shows that the 1940s were a pivotal period for the creation of horrific yet also innovative representations that boosted American visual modernism and set the stage for debates about the ethics of visual culture in the post-9/11 era.
Table of ContentsIntroduction; Trauma Narratives, Mixed Media, and the Meditation on the Invisible; Imaging Axis Terror: War Propaganda and the 1943 The Nature of the Enemy Exhibition at Rockefeller Center; In Search of a Common Vision: Ben Shahn, Photography, and The Family of Man Exhibition in 1955; Transnational Romance: Love and Politics in the Cinema of the 1930s and 1940s; Poetry and Film, Film as Poetry: Notes on a History of Creative Interactions; Screening Holocaust: American Television and the Discourse on 'Victim Cultures' in West Germany; Index.
