Introduction
Art, War, and Truth – Images of Conflict
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12914575 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Margaret Hutchison (0000-0002-0211-834X, Australian National University, corresponding author), Emily Robertson (0000-0001-7643-8242, University of Canberra) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 103-108 |
| Publication date | 2015-04-29 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of War and Culture Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1752-6272 • E-ISSN: 1752-6280 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1179/1752627215z.00000000065 |
| OpenAlex | W2078738548 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 4 |
While destructive, war is a generative force like no other. (Barkawi & Brighton, 2011: 126) War is both ‘a destroyer and maker of truths’, and it is not just through history and politics that these certainties are generated and extinguished, but also in art (Barkawi & Brighton, 2011: 127). Visual art has a longstanding relationship with war and continues to play a fundamental role in both condemning and promoting conflict. Wars have provoked numerous and diverse representations from which have arisen competing notions of the ‘truth’; these conflicting ideas of truth have often bled into the political sphere, impacting on how conflicts are remembered. This special issue of the Journal of War and Culture Studies explores the various ways in which art has been used to convey a variety of ‘truths’ about conflict – not just political truths in which art is utilized to position a conflict within national narratives, but also more complex truths: the ethical responsibilities of being an observer and image-maker, the impact of war upon one’s homeland, and the cultural symbols which have been used to interpret a conflict. The four contributors to the special feature examine the manner in which war has been depicted across time and place, from the Black War of the early nineteenth century in Tasmania, to the consequences of the First World War in 1920s Italy, to the Battle of Nomonhan in Mongolia in 1939, and finally the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan in the twentyfirst century. These articles show that art has been an important cultural constant in how war has been understood. Further, art has had a fundamental role in privileging some ideals of ‘truth’ over others, thus drawing attention to the difficulty of ascribing one ‘truth’ of war over another. In order to encompass the complexity of war and its relationship with ‘truth’, theorists Brighton and Barkawi propose that it be studied as ‘a complex of relations between war, knowledge and power’, which they have called ‘War/Truth’. As they argue, this term ‘enables the tracing of the intimacy between the battlefield and the wider social, political, and cultural field war helps constitute’ (Brighton and Barkawi, 127). The influence of the war zone on culture is particularly apparent
Aesthetics · Art · Battle · Homeland · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · History · Law · Military History and Strategy · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2025 (4) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |