Truth and representation: Exploring History, Visuality, and Trauma in Blitz Era Britain

This project centers on the traumatic disjuncture of truth and representation in Britain during the Blitz era including this phenomenon's impacts upon media, visual culture, and the arts. It examines the two greatest artists to emerge from Britain in this period, Francis Bacon and Henry Moore, within the geographic and temporally specific conditions of the period. Central to this discussion are ideas of history, myth, monument, and method as well as modernity, sexuality, class, self-representation, and trauma. I employ an anthropological approach to criticism, embracing the era's impacts upon both what these artists produced and how they performed those creations.