Martha Rosler. House Beautiful: Giacometti from the series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home. c. 1967-72

Martha Rosler House Beautiful: Giacometti from the series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home c. 1967-72

  • Not on view

Rosler conceived House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home as a protest against the Vietnam War. The artist seamlessly combined news photographs of violent battlefields in Vietnam with glossy advertisements for American luxury homes; layered images of soldiers with empty silhouettes of bodies; and spliced pictures of burials with those of military marches. By creating shocking contrasts between the destruction abroad and affluence at home, Rosler made visible the horrors of the “living-room war,” so called because the news of carnage in Southeast Asia only reached Americans via heavily filtered television reports. Rosler originally distributed her photomontages as flyers at anti-war demonstrations. “I saw House Beautiful not as art,” she later reflected. “I want it to be agitational.”

Gallery label from 2021
Medium
Inkjet print (photomontage), printed 2011
Dimensions
23 3/4 × 17 9/16" (60.3 × 44.6 cm)
Credit
Committee on Photography and The Modern Women's Fund
Object number
941.2011.x1-x2
Copyright
© c. 1967-72 Martha Rosler
Department
Photography

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