Panthon De La Guerre: Reconfiguring a Panorama of the Great War (Volume 1)

About this book

In its day it was quite simply the worlds largest painting. The Panthon de la Guerre was a cyclorama the size of a football field featuring 5 000 full-length portraits of prominent figures from World War Ia painting that blatantly sought to arouse patriotic fervor in its viewers. This book traces that works shifting fortunes during its unlikely journey from Great War Paris to cold war Kansas City and examines the continuing journeys of its fragments in the worlds art markets. Mark Levitch has written the first history and analysis of the Panthon capturing its social life in a story full of surprising twists and turns and as epic as the painting itself. Created in Paris as an artist-generated propaganda project while the war raged the Panthonwas celebrated there as a solemn and nostalgic work after the war then was promoted as a circuslike spectacle on a postwar tour of the United States when it was updated to appeal to Americans more celebratory view of the conflict. Consigned to storage and all but forgotten after World War II the Panthon was eventually procured for Kansas Citys Liberty Memorial in 1956 where less than 7 percent of the work was reconfigured into a smaller U.S.-centric muralsome of the unused fragments eventually surfacing in Paris flea markets and on eBay. Levitch looks at the Panthon as both painting and artifact combining cultural history art history and material culture studies to trace the changing reception of traditional art in the new age of mechanical media. He assesses the changing values attached to the Panthon and argues that the panoramas status and frequent reshaping have both informed and been informed by the experience and memory of the First World War in France and the United Statesand also reflects on how it has promoted a politically and culturally conservative agenda. Brimming with facts and insights that will amaze anyone who has known the painting in any of its incarnations Levitchs handsomely illustrated book provides a unique lens through which to view a conflict and its commemoration. And as people continue to place importance on commemorative projects it is a powerful reminder of how ephemeral such grand undertakings can be.