In this book, Gregory Salter traces how artists represented home and masculinities in the period of social and personal reconstruction after the Second World War in Britain. Salter considers home as an unstable entity at this historical moment, imbued with the optimism and hopes of post-war recovery while continuing to resonate with the memories and traumas of wartime. Artists examined in the book include John Bratby, Francis Bacon, Keith Vaughan, Francis Newton Souza and Victor Pasmore. Case studies featured range from the nuclear family and the body, to the nation. Combined, they present an argument that art enables an understanding of post-war reconstruction as a temporally unstable, long-term phenomenon which placed conceptions of home and masculinity at the heart of its aims. Art and Masculinity in Post-War Britain sheds new light on how the fluid concepts of society, nation, masculinity and home interacted and influenced each other at this critical period in history and will be of interest to anyone studying art history, anthropology, sociology, history and cultural and heritage studies.

In this book, Gregory Salter explores how art can lend insight into how masculine identity was shaped and changed during the post-war period in Britain.

About the Author
Gregory Salter is Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Birmingham, UK.

Reviews
Gregory Salter brings together a stimulatingly diverse range of artists and artifacts in his study of British culture just after the Second World War. His surprising and evocative readings of paintings and writings proffer the postwar experience as profoundly visual and full of colour, light and shade. - Alice Ferrebe, Liverpool John Moores University, UK



Book Information
ISBN 9781350052727
Author Gregory Salter
Format Hardback
Page Count 224
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 489g