The Art of War
The Art of War focuses on the wars that have been an unrelenting feature of the past hundred years, showing how war changed art in the twentieth century and how art has changed attitudes to war.
Awards
Script for the SBS series (which the book is based on) won the NSW Premier's Literary Award for best screenplay 2005
Opinion
'An impressive book. Churcher has done a marvellous job in highlighting the importance of remembering the sacrifices of so many Australian men and women.'
(Good Reading magazine, Dec/Jan 2004)
'A personal and passionate account, Churcher writes as a person who understands the language of painting and in her descriptions makes the artwork live for the reader.'
(Sasha Grishin, The Canberra Times, 30/10/04)
About this Title
'The twentieth century had started with confidence in the machine, which was expected to usher in a new age of ease and prosperity, and with a promise of the benefits of modernity. The First World War changed all this, dramatically and forever. The human trauma that followed in the immediate wake of the conflicts radically changed art itself.'
Betty Churcher
The wars that have been an unrelenting feature of the past hundred years have left an enduring legacy in the art they have provoked. Here Betty Churcher, one of our leading art historians, explores the range and diversity of art inspired by war. She explores the work of official war artists in the First and Second World Wars, Korea, Vietnam and the war against terror in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf. She looks, too, at lesser-known artists, ordinary soldiers, who were drawing and painting in the trenches during the First World War, the concentration camps of Europe, the prisoner-of-war camps of South-East Asia, and at artists who have been inspired by peace-keeping missions in Timor, Somalia and Eritrea.
The Art of War is stunningly illustrated throughout, featuring images as diverse as George Lambert's dramatic battlefield panoramas, Will Dyson's political cartoons, Ray Parkin's prisoner-of-war camp sketches and Gordon Bennett's graffiti-influenced works produced in the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York. Using works created to inspire patriotic sentiment, to record personal insights or to protest the senseless loss of human life, Churcher shows that where war has influenced movements in art, art has also changed attitudes to war.
The Art of War is published to accompany the television series of the same name, produced by Film Australia and to be screened on SBS.
About the Author
Betty Churcher's contribution to the Australian art world in the varied roles of critic, historian, television presenter and gallery director has been outstanding. She was the art critic for the Australian between 1972 and 1975 and her publications include Understanding Art and Molvig: The Lost Antipodean. She was Director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia from 1987 to 1990 and Director of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, from 1990 to 1997.
Throughout the 1990s Betty Churcher's art programs, Take Five, Eye to Eye and The Proud Possessors, which she wrote and presented, were shown with great success on the ABC. She was awarded Member of the Order of Australia in 1990 and made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1996. In 1997 she was the Australian newspaper's Australian of the Year. Betty Churcher is currently Adjunct Professor for the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, Australian National University, Canberra.
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