Grand Illusions: American Art and the First World War by David M. Lubin

Abstract

Reviewed by: Grand Illusions: American Art and the First World War by David M. Lubin Leann Davis Alspaugh (bio) David M. Lubin, Grand Illusions: American Art and the First World War (Oxford University Press, 2016), 384 pp. One of the most compelling onscreen characters in recent memory is Richard Harrow of the HBO series Boardwalk Empire (2010–2014). Jack Huston’s portrayal of a World War I sharpshooter and gun-for-hire working for bootlegging gangs in Atlantic City is unforgettable. Huston’s husky voice [End Page 456] and haunted eyes would be memorable enough, but the mask he wears across the lower half of his face to conceal a horrific war injury adds a disturbing and unnatural element to his character. Every character in that series grappled with some form of corruption and alienation, but Harrow and his grim visage were more than simply a grotesquerie mined for theatrical effect. As David Lubin points out in Grand Illusions, among the many after-effects of the Great War, soldiers who came home grievously disfigured found they were distinguished not for their bravery but for their wounds, an ever-present reminder of trauma and survivor guilt. Richard Harrow (the last name is no accident) could easily have been one of the patrons of Anna Coleman Ladd’s Paris studio for “portrait masks” where injured soldiers were fitted for facial prostheses that enabled them to appear in public with some semblance of normalcy. But a mask, as Lubin reminds us, is never simply a mask. Masks conceal, protect, or alter the appearance. They can be used for ritualistic, illusionistic, cosmetic, or pragmatic purposes. They might comfort the wearer or make him appear ridiculous, they might engender power or signify powerlessness, they might fascinate or terrify. According to the psychoanalysts, we all wear masks at times. But the mask that troubles Lubin the most is the one constructed by a “dominant culture [to teach] America to avert its gaze.” This perfidious mask enabled citizens to escape the horrors of war while cultivating a complacency that pushed the conflict into the realm of something happening somewhere else to someone else. After America entered the war in 1917, the mask became one of patriotism and duty. In this deeply cynical book, Lubin ranges across media and art of all sorts—silent film, propaganda posters, photography, painting, printmaking, and sculpture—to strip away the mask and reveal not so much how art changed but how inadequate it was to the task of representing a war experience. With traditional aesthetic orientations blasted, artists often grappled with modernism whether they wanted to or not. Lubin captures the deep ambivalence, even remorse, of artists such as Edward Steichen who came to feel guilty about his wartime aerial reconnaissance photographs, or Claggett Wilson whose theatrical and bizarre paintings uneasily depicted the “battlefield sublime.” (Lubin reveals his own ambivalence in the section on John Singer Sargent’s Gassed from 1919, finding it difficult to accept that an artist who was such a favorite among high society also possessed enough moral and artistic integrity to depict mustard gas victims with courage and compassion.) Still, the sympathy that Lubin demonstrates in these instances is lacking when it comes to understanding the preparedness movement or nationwide volunteerism for the cause. “Never before,” Lubin writes, “had a democratic government launched such a massive campaign to mold the minds of its citizens by means of the visual arts.” The first few chapters of Grand Illusions focus on aspects of sexuality and gender, including fetishism, homoeroticism, virility, “battle lust,” and the enigmatic works of gay artists such as Marsden Hartley, Gertrude [End Page 457] Stein, and Romaine Brooks, as well as the repressive sexuality and violence in the films of D. W. Griffith (whose values Lubin finds particularly problematic). The author is adept at verbal description of images and, although the book is profusely illustrated, it is still helpful to be directed to salient details or to aspects of color and composition. At times, however, he becomes obsessed with trivialities such as Lord Kitchener’s luxurious mustache or the accoutrements of cavalry officers—even with names. More than once, he draws attention to the surname of James...