num_pages: 304
description: A vivid, engaging account of the famous and forgotten artists and artworks that sought to make sense of America's first total war.Despite the prevailing view of World War I's general lack of impact on American Art, David Lubin takes readers on a journey through the major historical events during and immediately after the war to discover the often missed vast and pervasive influence of the Great War on American visual culture. Grand Illusions presents a highly original examination of the era's artworks that range from patriotic idealism to profound disillusionment. In several stylishly written chapters, Lubin assesses the war's impact on two dozen painters, designers, photographers, and film makers from 1914 to 1933. In addition to profiles of famous and forgotten artists from D.W. Griffith and John Singer Sargent to neglected soldier-painter Claggett Wilson and the African American outsider artist Horace Pippin, the book features illustrations from epoch-defining films, sculptures, photographs and paintings. Armed with rich cultural-historical details and an interdisciplinary narrative approach, David Lubin creatively upends traditional understandings of the Great War's effects on the visual arts in America.
language: English
title: Grand Illusions: American Art and the First World War
publisher: Oxford University Press