Writing/Visualising World War I as A Complex Act of Representation

This article is focused on the representation of World War I in European avant-garde painting and fiction. WWI marked the beginning of modernity, thus prompting specific ways and modes of rendering the new machinery of war. The idea that modernity is the outcome of world conflict and destruction, sustained by cultural historians, calls for further enquiry. If many artists, such as the Expressionists, started exalting war and ended up denouncing it through anti-rhetoric writings and paintings, others, such as the Futurists, went on celebrating it and representing the sensory and visual effects produced by its destructive technology. All carried on experimentation within their own media and achieved striking innovations.