'Art in the Wake of World War One' - exhibition at Tate Britain

[Uncle George]

In case anyone missed this, in 'The Guardian':

 

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jun/04/brush-with-death-first-world-war-art-tate-britain

 

 

 

 

[Alan24]

Also featured in tonight's Front Row on Radio4 at 7.15pm. Available on the BBC radio player.

 

Alan

[Liz in Eastbourne]

I went to this exhibition - the main title is 'Aftermath' - yesterday and was very impressed by it (but it's quite expensive).

 

I might have got the wrong impression on this but the commentary seemed to imply that the wounded and disabled after the war were more hidden in Britain than in France and Germany, since 'in Britain soldiers' war wounds were rarely depicted outside a medical context'. This was contrasted with the French giving them greater prominence in victory parades etc and the campaign 'Les gueules cassees', and also with German depictions by Otto Dix and George Grosz.  But this could be because the disabled and severely wounded and disfigured were in fact getting better medical treatment here. 

 

Has anyone else been?

 

Liz

[Uncle George]

On 19 July 2018 at 23:07, Liz in Eastbourne said:

I went to this exhibition - the main title is 'Aftermath' - yesterday and was very impressed by it (but it's quite expensive).

 

I might have got the wrong impression on this but the commentary seemed to imply that the wounded and disabled after the war were more hidden in Britain than in France and Germany, since 'in Britain soldiers' war wounds were rarely depicted outside a medical context'. This was contrasted with the French giving them greater prominence in victory parades etc and the campaign 'Les gueules cassees', and also with German depictions by Otto Dix and George Grosz.  But this could be because the disabled and severely wounded and disfigured were in fact getting better medical treatment here. 

 

 

Alistair Horne paints a poignant picture when he describes the Bastille Day parade of 1919, in his 'To Lose a Battle' (1969). He tells that leading the parade were not Joffre of Foch: "They were three young men, or what remained of them, unspeakably crippled by war, still in uniform, but trundled by their nurses in primitive chariots like the prams of deprived children. Immediately behind them came a large contingent of more grands mutiles. Officers and men of all ranks mixed together, many already in mufti, they marched - or hobbled- without precedence or any semblance of military order, twelve abreast ... "