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Pantheon De La Guerre: Reconfiguring a Panorama of the Great War

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Art historian Mark Levitch has unearthed the fascinating back story to a revered painting that hangs in the nation's only World War I museum, The Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri. Turns out that this depiction of America's rescue of Europe originated as a relatively minor panel in a vast mural the length of a football field. Created during the Great War by select French academic artists, Pantheon De La Guerre was intended as a celebration of France and its allies, replete with the iconography of the period (not to mention the topography of France!). In Levitch's telling, the mural fell out of fashion in post-war France; only an idioscyncratic Baltimore collector saved it from the dust heap. The colossus was shipped to America, where in the 1930s it was thoroughly sheared and reconfigured as a paean to American heroism in the war. Components of the mural are dispersed worldwide and still show up at auctions and on eBay. In crystal clear and elegant prose Levitch portrays the strange devolution of the painting as an index to shifting tastes in modern art and culture between the wars. If you have any interest in the Great War and the art and culture of the period, you will find Levitch's account compelling reading. This handsomely printed and illustrated volume is fit for the coffee table or the study. Highly recommended.

As a student of history it was exciting to come across Mark Levitch's recent book, Pantheon de La Guerre: Reconfiguring a Panorama of the Great War. Readers interested in art, political science, marketing or just wanting to expand their horizons will find this to be a brilliantly written work. With its many elegant illustrations you may find yourself doing as I did. Upon reading of an illustration I literally took a magnifying glass to better view it and was amazed how Mr. Levitch was able to minutely go over the painting to discover its varied stories. Mr. Levitch succeeds in presenting as grand a vista into the First World War from the perspective of the French nation by its artists as the artists themselves did with their colossal work. Intriguing indeed is the writing manner by which Mr. Levitch takes a one dimensional propaganda piece and literally makes it appear as a living, breathing and altering life form. His style draws one easily into understanding how the French and their allies came to revere this distorted air brushed view of the war as the Pantheon unfortunately presented. Mr. Levitch points out the numerous changes made to the Pantheon during the war, changes made to reflect the most current politically correct points of view as the war progressed. An example of this is Tsar Nicholas and his court which suffered the air bushing of history upon imperial Russia's abandonment of their French allies. Even the rampant bile of French anti Semitism found its way into the painting which, because of Mr. Levitch's research, is noted and the portion of the Pantheon containing its depiction is illustrated. I must wonder if the time spent by the author researching each figure, trying to identify every face and noting each modification to this enormous colossus is any less an endeavor than the actual painting itself. The book later follows the Pantheon's history through out the roaring twenties and its eventual arrival to its new home, the United States. Because of the vivid detailed documentation, various sections of the pantheon stand out and become a vision in the mind's eye. It was amusing to read of the inclusion of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S Truman into the Pantheon as the French viewpoint of the war became second fiddle at the hands of American artists revising the pantheon to reflect their tastes and to make its exhibition more palatable to Americans. To the owners belong the spoils and with the great art piece firmly in the ownership of Americans it was repainted, torn apart, and pieced back together to represent a significantly greater American involvement in the Great War than the French ever intended and perhaps more so than history can sustain. Today, as its 100 birthday nears, portions of the Pantheon de La Guerre are on display in Kansas City's Liberty War Memorial. Without Mr. Levitch's eye opening book, a museum visitor may easily assume these portions are the Pantheon as it was originally presented and in its entirety. It is no such thing. In reality, it is as much a distortion in its present state as the original was of the Great War. If for no other reason this would mark Pantheon de La Guerre: Reconfiguring a Panorama of the Great War an outstanding researched and must read book. When you parallel this with the author's writing style, the descriptive interesting tidbits and major informative facts presented I am in awe this is only the author's first book.