The Deployment of Art

The Imperial War Museum's Artistic Records Committee, 1968-1982
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-20938-8
Verlag: Taylor & Francis

Buch, Englisch, 376 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 860 g

Reihe: Routledge Research in Art and Politics

This book explores the Artistic Records Committee (ARC) of the Imperial War Museum (IWM) as a bureaucratic mechanism that enabled the deployment of art as an instrument of war.

The ARC was established in 1972 to commission artistic records of activities involving the British Armed Forces (BAF) deployed in the North of Ireland as part of Operation Banner. Through a close reading of artworks, archival research, and interviews with artists, former IWM staff, and a former British Army psychological operations (PSYOPs) expert, this book shows that the ARC was implicated in the ‘propaganda war’ that the British Government waged to counteract negative public perceptions of British military presence and activity in the North of Ireland after ‘Bloody Sunday,’ and later during Britain’s 1982 campaign to recapture the Falklands/Malvinas from Argentina (Operation Corporate). The two case studies are painter Ken Howard’s ARC commissions to record Operation Banner in 1973 and 1978 and illustrator Linda Kitson’s ARC commission to record the ‘Falklands Campaign’ in 1982. At a time when emergent conceptual and non-object-based art practices were increasingly concerned with exposure, concealment, and photographic evidence, the book demonstrates the potential operational significance of creating pictorial records and utilising art as a tool of warfare.

This volume will be of interest to researchers and scholars of art history, museum studies, art and politics, and military and intelligence studies, as well as those studying the recent history of the North of Ireland and the Falklands/Malvinas war.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Carolin, Clare

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Militärgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte Kunstgeschichte: 20./21. Jahrhundert

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: ‘To Whom It May Concern’  1. 30 January 1972  2. Contexts And Origins Of A Contemporary Official War Art Scheme  3. Operational Uses Of War Art  4. The First Artistic Records Committee  5. Ken Howard: ‘The Imperial War Museum’s Official Recorder In Northern Ireland’ 1973–1978  6. Linda Kitson: ‘Official Artist Of The Falklands War,’ 1982  Final Conclusion:  Future Deployment  Index

Über Autor(innen)

Clare Carolin is a senior lecturer in Art and Public Engagement at King’s College London, UK. She was previously Exhibitions Curator at the Hayward Gallery, Senior Curator at Modern Art Oxford, Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila, and Co-Director of the Curating Contemporary Art Department at the Royal College of Art, London.