{"product_id":"beautiful-war-1","title":"Beautiful War","description":"A probing and holistic meditation on the key question: Why do we continue to make art, and thus beauty, out of war?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eBeautiful War: Studies in a Dreadful Fascination\u003c\/i\u003e is a wide-ranging exploration of armed conflict as depicted in art that illustrates the constant presence of war in our everyday lives. Philip D. Beidler investigates the unending assimilation and pervasive presence of the idea of war in popular culture, the impulses behind the making of art out of war, and the unending and debatably aimless trajectories of war itself.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Beidler's critical scope spans from Shakespeare's plays, through the Victorian battle paintings of Lady Butler, into the post–World War I writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Virginia Woolf, and up to twenty-first-century films such as \u003ci\u003eThe Hurt Locker\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eExtremely Loud and Incredibly Close\u003c\/i\u003e. As these works of art have become ubiquitous in contemporary culture, the many faces of war clearly spill over into our art and media, and Beidler argues that these portrayals in turn shift the perception of war from a savage truth to a concept.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBeautiful War\u003c\/i\u003e argues that the representation of war in the arts has always been, and continues to be, an incredibly powerful force. Incorporating painting, music, photography, literature, and film, Beidler traces a disturbing but fundamental truth: that war has always provided an aesthetic inspiration while serving ends as various and complex as ideological or geopolitical history, public memory, and mass entertainment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBeautiful War\u003c\/i\u003e is a bold and vivid account of the role of war and military conflict as a subject of art that offers much of value to literary and cultural critics, historians, veterans, students of art history and communication studies, and those interested in expanding their understanding of art and media's influence on contemporary values and memories of the past.","brand":"The University of Alabama Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54250426007896,"sku":"9780817359614","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9780817359614.jpg?v=1778655670","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/beautiful-war-1","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}