Aesthetics of Loss
Subtitle: German Women's Art of the First World War
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 304
ISBN-13: 9780199656684
Subjects: World war, 1914-1918, germany; World war, 1914-1918, art and the war; Women artists; Germany, history, 20th century
Description: The Aesthetics of Loss' is a cultural history of German women's art of the First World War that locates the artists' rich visual testimony in the context of the civilian experience of war and wartime loss. Drawing on a fascinating body of visual sources produced throughout the war years, Claudia Siebrecht examines the thematic evolution of women's art from expressions of support for the war effort to more nuanced and ambivalent testimonies of loss and grief. Many of the images are stark woodcuts, linocuts, and lithographs of great iconographical power that acted as narrative tools to deal with the novel, unsettling, and often traumatic experience of war. German female artists developed a unique aesthetic response to the conflict that both expressed emotional distress and allowed them to re-imagine the place of mourning women in wartime society.