The War Artists' Advisory Committee and the Bombing of Germany

The War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC) was charged with creating an artistic record of the Second World War for the British State, and over the course of the war, they collected nearly 6000 works by more than 400 artists. This essay is primarily concerned with how this rich and varied record is interpreted. Although the committee was charged with compiling an artistic record of the war, they were a part of the Ministry of Information, responsible for the production and dissemination of propaganda. Rebecca Searle considers this relationship between propaganda and record in post-war contexts by exploring the representation of the bombing of Germany. Searle lectures at the University of Brighton and is a Research Fellow at the University of Sussex. This research was conducted in collaboration with the Imperial War Museum and the University of Sussex and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.