Memory, Art and the World Wars: Official War Art and Contemporary Memorials in New Zealand

Abstract

As the centenary of the First World War passes, amidst the countless commemorative ceremonies and projects, there has been no better time to examine how we remember war. A nation's art provides a door way into understanding patterns of remembrance. In New Zealand there has been little art historical examination of the key sites of memory, where our culture of war is expressed and formed. This thesis seeks to examine the nature of New Zealand's war culture through a comparative analysis of the official war art produced during the First and Second World Wars and contemporary memorials dating from the 1990s until present. This study, combing methods of social history, post-colonial studies and gender studies with visual analysis, will reveal that at the conceptual level there is strong continuity in the responses to the wars. It will show that forming a national sense of identity, rather than remembering the horrors of war is the core purpose of these sites of memory.