WW II

Not just another coffee-table picture book on World War II, but a collection of graphic art accompanied by James Jones' whittlings at his Schtick. As a whole, the paintings and drawings—accompanied by only a modicum of Sad Sack cartoons and period pinups—are remarkably mediocre and inexpressive. Howard Brodie's famous sketches of combat seem staged; the frankly propagandistic works like "Rosie the Riveter" bear an unsettling resemblance to socialist realism or Nazi graphics. Watercolors and charcoal serve the war reportage best—a sketch of shell shock at least evokes Goya, the watercolors capture some of the flux of battle. A pencil drawing of hiroshima flatness says more than a photo. Yet one concludes that photography serves as a far more powerful art form in the war theater. Jones, for his part, provides canny reassessments of battles and pseudo-ironic: macho anecdotes. He also suggests that American soldiers had no motivation but primordial love of war, and maunders about how history ignores the hairy lower-class soldier. Critics will have something to say about artists and works left out (perhaps the omission of Aaron Bohrod is no loss); the book poses absorbing problems as to why 20th century wars in general have produced no great art, and why these particular achievements are so impacted as reportage or creation. A certain seller nevertheless.