Flags and Faces: The Visual Culture of America's First World War

by David M. Lubin

Flags and Faces , based on David Lubin’s 2008 Franklin D. Murphy Lectures at the University of Kansas, shows how American artists, photographers, and graphic designers helped shape public perceptions about World War I. In the book’s first section, “Art for War’s Sake,” Lubin considers how flag-based patriotic imagery prompted Americans to intervene in Europe in 1917. Trading on current anxieties about class, gender, and nationhood, American visual culture made war with Germany seem inevitable. The second section, “Fixing Faces,” contemplates the corrosive effects of the war on soldiers who literally lost their faces on the battlefield, and on their families back home. Unable to endure distasteful reminders of war’s brutality, postwar Americans grew obsessed with physical beauty, as seen in the simultaneous rise of cosmetic surgery, the makeup industry, beauty pageants, and the cult of screen goddesses such as Greta Garbo, who was worshipped for the masklike perfection of her face. Engaging, provocative, and filled with arresting and at times disturbing illustrations, Flags and Faces offers striking new insights into American art and visual culture from 1915 to 1930.

Genres: History, War, Art, Nonfiction, American

124 pages, Hardcover

First published February 25, 2015

Reviews

[Anna Domestico · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone looking to enter into a conversation about the discourses surround ab/normalcy and post-war/post-violence trauma to the physical body, this is a great place to start. The first chapter, admittedly, focuses more on the place of the flag's iconography in war. It's the second chapter that is most gripping. Modern popular culture is brought into the fold. Readers are shown images that, still, remain censored.

A recommended read for scholars and laymen alike. Do it up!

[Jeffrey Fossi · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting, and sometimes tragic view of art and marketing during the War. Beautiful illustrations, and pictures make this tiny gem.