En Guerre: French Illustrators and World War I by Neil Harris, Teri J. Edelstein (review)

Reviews 243 often running hundreds of pages, validated what Grout terms throughout her book “the work of beauty”). Also noteworthy is the section devoted to Colette, first as a writer and then as the proprietor of a beauty institute and creator of a cosmetics line. Grout’s perceptive analyses of Chéri, La vagabonde, and L’entrave examine the relationship between power and beauty to make the case that contemporary notions of aging “paradoxically enabled and impeded woman’s self-production”(74). Grout then delves into the role of makeup in Colette’s music-hall essays, journalistic writings, and business ventures. For Colette, makeup was woman’s“most private secret, her lifelong profession, and her most trusted partner in the business of becoming nothing but a woman” (128). Grout’s book is a veritable treasure-trove of fascinating facts and figures: Colette underwent a facelift, cosmetic dental work, and experimental hair surgeries (123);Vivaudou creams relied on scare tactics, such as the caption, in a 1924 ad,“Wilted at thirty” (164); Madeleine Ray insisted, in her 1932 guide, Notre santé et notre charme, that a woman’s face form a perfect V shape and“connote a scientifically organized, harmonious assembly of color and contrast” (184); the first global beauty contest was called the International Pageant of Pulchritude (145); Americans preferred “plastic perfection” in their pageant contestants, and the French, “chic and charm” (149); in the 1920s, the Dorin company created a product line for men, which included both loose and pressed powders (162). Given the thoroughness of Grout’s research and the carefulness of her writing, it is disappointing that there are so many mistakes in the French.In addition to missing accents,there are errors in agreement (“grand bourgeoisie” [59],“grandes boulevards”[131],“la couronnement”[142],“bon commerçants”[172], “La massage”[180]), misspellings (“Fosette”[96],“la Crème nutrive”[164],“Françose Arnoux [186, 217], “billon” [for bilan, 200],“intellegente” [213]), and a confusion between coiffure and coiffeur that has unintended comical results (“A respected and well-known Parisian coiffure, Arvet-Thouvet” [180]; “[t]he coiffure was the client’s friend”[181];“coiffures needed to know their products”[181]). Though undoubtedly cost-prohibitive,additional illustrations—there are but nine—would have strengthened the book’s aesthetic appeal. Those quibbles aside, it is difficult to imagine a more engaging study. That Grout was able to weave such a seamless narrative out of such diverse threads is impressive indeed. University of Arkansas Hope Christiansen Harris, Neil, and Teri J. Edelstein. En Guerre: French Illustrators and World War I. Chicago: U. of Chicago Library, 2014. ISBN 978-0-943056-42-5. Pp. 140. $20. This extraordinary body of work has not attracted the attention it deserves because it was published in books or issued in portfolios that have rarely been exhibited. Its relative lack of exposure notwithstanding, this material has significant import for the study of the cultural imperatives that provided the underpinnings of early war propaganda.And after 1916, many illustrations would hint at the disenchantment that Wilfred Owen famously called the “pity of war”. The relationship of popular imagery to the psychological impact of a murderous,seemingly endless conflict had an especially brilliant iteration in France, where a century-long tradition of illustrated books and periodicals that commented, often acerbically, on public affairs was a deeply ingrained feature of the culture. In their catalogue to the exhibit, Harris and Edelstein refer to art historian Clément-Janin’s pioneering 1917 study of an extensive private collection of such images as a significant starting point of interest in war illustrators. Their essay provides context for numerous illustrated journals of the times, whose artists turned enthusiastically to the subject of war as soon as the conflict broke out. They emphasize central artistic figures whose styles indelibly mark this material: the truculent Lucien Laforge and René Georges Hermann-Paul; former fashion artists turned war illustrators like Barbier and Lepape, Iribe and Eduardo Benito, Brissaud and Robert Bonfils, whose stylized, pochoir-colored war prints asserted the critical importance of panache for French morale; the great children’s illustrator André Hellé, and the unique stylist Charles Martin, each of whom produced masterpieces handsomely reproduced...