Beclouded Visions
Hiroshima-Nagasaki and the Art of Witness
- Publisher
- State University of New York Press
- Initial publish date
- Oct 1998
- Category
- Cultural
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780791440063
- Publish Date
- Oct 1998
- List Price
- $45.95
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780791440056
- Publish Date
- Oct 1998
- List Price
- $128.95
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Description
The trauma of Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrates the limits of dominant visual models, such as photography, for providing adequate historical memory. The author argues that collective traumas suggest the need for a prolonged gaze, such as can be provided by expressive art.
Beclouded Visions is an exploration of the many and varied ways in which atrocity has shaped the requirements of art, vision, and collective memory in the twentieth century. The atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki serve as a starting point, but what begins as a study of visual culture related to the atomic bombings soon generates questions that can be applied to multiple sites and practices of communal remembrance.
Drawing on a diverse array of images-ranging from military photographs to survivor paintings-Maclear asks what it means to see such representations. What does it mean to put a face to horror? Does "seeing everything" make us more humane? Is it possible to become inured to images of violence? She probes the nature of our fascination with images of horror, and she questions our attachment to pictorial realism and graphic memory. Placing philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Walter Benjamin, and Theodore Adorno in the context of ongoing debates about history and memory, Beclouded Visions provides a refreshing perspective on art, remembrance, and mourning.
About the author
KYO MACLEAR was born in London and grew up in Toronto as the only child of a foreign correspondent. Her father reported on some significant world events, including recording the first interviews with American POWs in North Vietnam. While Stray Love is entirely a work of fiction, it is informed by her experiences living with her father. Her first novel, The Letter Opener (2007), was awarded the K.M. Hunter Artists Award and shortlisted for the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Maclear is also an award-winning visual arts writer and the author of two children’s books: Spork (2010) and Virginia Wolf (2012). Visit her online at www.kyomaclear.ca.
Editorial Reviews
"This is an exceptional and compelling piece of scholarship. The book works its themes across a number of disciplinary concerns, touching on what is both the common experience in attending to commemorative and witness art, and the most profound philosophical issue of the limits and functions of horror's representation." — John Willinsky, University of British Columbia
