FA 385 - Modern Art and the Great War

Lecture Hours: 3
Lab Hours: 0
Credit Hours: 3

It is ironic that World War I, a war of stalemate and attrition that claimed 10,000,000 victims, inspired a rich outpouring of visual art. In this course we will study the paintings, original prints, and works of sculpture that it inspired—documents of the “war fever” of 1911-1914, of the protracted agony of the war itself, and of the bitter disillusionment that followed. Each work of visual art will be examined against its cultural background, the details of which will be provided by slide-illustrated lectures on the history of the period, readings from poems and trench memoirs, recordings of both popular and “serious” music inspired by the war, and films with World War I settings.