Miami Beach, FL – November 11, 2014 – The Wolfsonian–Florida International University proudly marked the centenary of the First World War last week with the exhibition Myth and Machine: The First World War in Visual Culture, which conveniently opened on Veteran’s Day. By presenting a wide range of media, from fine art to propaganda posters, Myth and Machine explores how artists, designers, and filmmakers confronted the birth of industrialized mass warfare. The exhibition focuses, in particular, on the magnetic visual appeal of new technologies of war, such as aviation, and on artists’ use of myth to give comprehensible form to otherwise unimaginable carnage and chaos. Myth and Machine is organized into three sections – War Machines, Unknown Soldiers, and Loss and Redemption. War Machines addresses how artworks and propaganda turned armaments such as aircraft, submarines, tanks, battleships, and machine guns into visual icons of a new kind of war. Unknown Soldiers examines representations of fighting men under conditions that, many argued, rendered them mere cogs in the machine of industrial warfare. Loss and Redemption, the final section of the exhibition, examines works produced in the decade after the war that sought to find an overarching meaning in in the experience of four years of death and destruction. The exhibit will be running through April 5, 2015.

Micky Wolfson

Jon Mogul

Micky Wolfson

Ken Furton, Micky Wolfson, Rosalie & Mark Rosenberg, & Jon Mogul 

Casey Steadman, Micky Wolfson, & Sharon Aponte Misdea

Jon Moguel, Silvia Barisione, & Richard Miller

David Castillo, Juan Carlos Diaz, & Pepe Mar

Alicia Zaitsu & Ron Andruff

Sean Donaldson, Wendy Moth, & Mark Steinhardt

Richard Miller, Silvia Barisione, & Jon Moguel

Philippe & Valerie Letrilliart