This is a truly encyclopaedic survey of artists' responses - both "official" and personal - to "the horrors of war." Art and War reveals the sheer diversity of artists' portrayals of this most devastating aspect of the human condition - from the "heroic" paintings of Benjamin West and of John Singer Sargent to brutal and iconic works by artists from Goya to Picasso, and the equally oppositional work of Leon Golub, Nancy Spero and others who reacted with fury to the Vietnam War. Particular attention is paid to work produced in response to the First and Second World Wars and to more recent art and memorial work by artists as diverse as Barbara Kruger, Alfredo Jarr and Maya Lin. The book looks finally to the reactions of contemporary artists such as Langlands and Bell to the US invasion in 2001 of Afghanistan and the War in Iraq.

Laura Brandon is the Curator of War Art at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. She has written extensively on war art and Canadian art history. Peg by Herself, her groundbreaking biography of war artist Pegi Nicol MacLeod, was published in 2005 and her award-winning exhibition, Canvas of War, toured Canada from 2000-2004.

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