Review by Booklist Review
This account of a patriotic painting with an unusual provenance proves interesting indeed. Visitors to Kansas City's World War I memorial often depart their encounter with Panthéon de la Guerre pondering its triumphal composition of Allied soldiers treading German ensigns underfoot, and its focus on President Woodrow Wilson. Its inference of American centrality to World War I is, of course, historically simplistic, and the way the painting (initially the size of a football field) has been reconfigured and reshaped is a tale Levitch rescues in all its oddness. The original Panthéon, he relates, was a circular panorama conceived by two French academic painters at the outset of World War I and displayed in Paris until 1927. It extolled French heroism and sacrifice, values damaged by the war and consequently detrimental to the panorama's popularity. Exiled to American exhibitions, the Panthéon eventually deteriorated in an outdoor crate until brought to Kansas City in 1957. Bountifully illustrated, Levitch's book is informative beyond this specific painting, raising the general paradox of preservation versus restoration.--"Taylor, Gilbert" Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
