Beclouded Visions: Hiroshima-Nagasaki And The Art Of Witness

Synopsis

Anchoring her narrative in the atomic explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the author explores how art confronts and explains the trauma and tragedies of modern industrial warfare. She explores the effects of confronting the viewer with a witness to events that fall outside the conceptual worldview of the common individual. She places the views of philosophers Theodore Adorno, Jacques Derrida, and Walter Benjamin about the relationship between history and memory into an examination of the role of images in either continuing ways of looking at the world that lead to tragedy or attempting to address those views by the art of witness. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR