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‘Re-membering’ the Past: Eyewitness and Post-battle Artistic Accounts of the Falklands War

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The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War since 1914

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Abstract

The Falklands War in 1982 has been described as the last eruption of colonial warfare to be fought by the British Empire. It was conducted under draconian restrictions that controlled the transmission of images, texts, and first-hand front-line narratives. With an imaginative record of commissioning war art in the twentieth century, the Imperial War Museum sent a single artist to accompany troops in the latter part of the war. Linda Kitson’s portfolio of line drawings reinforced positive notions of the authority of the eyewitness. First-hand visual testimony effectively trumped all. This chapter explores the work produced at the time and the body of creative material that later emerged (in Britain and in Argentina), as artists, art therapists, and other visual commentators started to reflect, critique, and celebrate the British Empire’s ‘last colonial war.’

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Jane Carmichael, First World War Photographers (London: Routledge, 1989).

  2. 2.

    Maira Mackay, “Great war photographer ‘contaminated by darkness,’” accessed 16 December 2017. http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/01/world/cnnphotos-don-mccullin-conflict-war/index.html.

  3. 3.

    Patrick Garrity, “The Falklands Factor”, The Claremont Institute, 24 April 2013, accessed 16 December 2017. http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-falklands-factor/.

  4. 4.

    Harold D. Clarke, Marianne C. Stewarr and Gary Zuk, “Politics, Economics and Party Popularity in Britain, 1979–83,” Electoral Studies 5, no. 2 (1986).

  5. 5.

    John Taylor, Tim Wilcox, et al., ‘The Falklands Factor’ Representations of a Conflict. Manchester: Manchester City Art Galleries, 1989.

  6. 6.

    John Taylor, Tim Wilcox, et al., ‘The Falklands Factor’ Representations of a Conflict (Manchester: Manchester City Art Galleries, 1989).

  7. 7.

    Claude Levi-Strauss, La Pensée Savage (London: George Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1962).

  8. 8.

    http://www.leedspostcards.co.uk/aboutus.aspx.

  9. 9.

    Linda Kitson, The Falklands War: A Visual Diary (London: Mitchell and Beazley, 1982).

  10. 10.

    Meirion Harries and Susie Harries, The War Artists (London: Michael Joseph, in association with the Imperial War Museum and the Tate Gallery, 1983). Linda Kitson, Oral history, catalogue number 13727, London, Imperial War Museum, 1994.

  11. 11.

    Kitson, The Falklands War, 65.

  12. 12.

    Paul Gough, “A War of the Imagination: the Experience of British Artists in Two World Wars,” in The Great War, 1914–1945: Lightning Strikes Twice, ed. Peter Liddle, John Bourne and Ian Whitehead (London: Leo Cooper, 2001).

  13. 13.

    Alasdair McGregor, Frank Hurley: A Photographer’s Life (London: Viking, 2004).

  14. 14.

    Lennard Bickel, In Search of Frank Hurley (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1990).

  15. 15.

    Robert Heller, Peter Howson (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1993).

  16. 16.

    Paul Gough, ‘A Terrible Beauty’: War, British Artists and the First World War (Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2014).

  17. 17.

    Kitson, The Falklands War, 65.

  18. 18.

    Kitson, The Falklands War, 65.

  19. 19.

    Julian Thompson and Linda Kitson, “Drawing the Falklands,” The RUSI Journal 162, no. 2 (2017).

  20. 20.

    Linda Kitson, Oral history, catalogue number 13727, London, Imperial War Museum, 1994.

  21. 21.

    “The Falklands War 1982,” The British Empire Where the Sun Never Sets, accessed 16 December 2017. http://www.britishempire.co.uk/forces/armycampaigns/southamerica/falklands/greenbeach.htm.

  22. 22.

    Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 144.

  23. 23.

    Paul Usherwood and Jenny Spencer-Smith, Lady Butler – Battle artist, 1846–1933 (Sutton: Stroud, 1989).

  24. 24.

    Angela Weight, “The Kensingtons at Laventie: A Twentieth Century Icon,” Imperial War Museum Review 1 (1986): 14–18.

  25. 25.

    Suzanne Bardgett, “Henry Lamb and the First World War,” Imperial War Museum Review 5 (1990): 54.

  26. 26.

    Paul Gough, ‘Exactitude is truth’: representing the British military through commissioned artworks’, Journal of War and Culture Studies 1, no. 3 (2008): 341–356.

  27. 27.

    “David Rowlands Military Artist”, accessed 16 December 2017. http://www.davidrowlands.co.uk/index.asp.

  28. 28.

    David Rowlands, Email correspondence with author, June 2008.

  29. 29.

    “David Rowlands Military Artist.”

  30. 30.

    “The Art of Peter Archer,” accessed 16 December 2017. http://www.peterarcherofficialwebsite.co.uk/.

  31. 31.

    “Cecilia Mandrile gallery”, accessed on 16 December 2017. http://www.ceciliamandrile.com/.

  32. 32.

    http://www.ceciliamandrile.com/the-translation-of-fragments.html.

  33. 33.

    Lisa Herndorn, “Seeking the threads that tie us together in a world of separation,” The Riverdale Press (Bronx: New York City, 23 March 2017).

  34. 34.

    “The Harts Gallery,” accessed 16 December 2017. http://www.thehartsgallery.com/cecilia-mandrile/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Paul Gough

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  1. Paul Gough
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Correspondence to Paul Gough .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia

    Martin Kerby , Margaret Baguley  & Janet McDonald ,  & 

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Gough, P. (2019). ‘Re-membering’ the Past: Eyewitness and Post-battle Artistic Accounts of the Falklands War. In: Kerby, M., Baguley, M., McDonald, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War since 1914. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96986-2_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96986-2_21

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