In the line of fire: Combat art of the Vietnam War

The history of combat art since World War I reveals the genre as an art historical tradition with a preference for realism and a focus on genre scenes that show the commonality of soldiering throughout wars of the twentieth-century. The moral ambiguity of the Vietnam War questions the purpose of combat art, where the idea of using it as propaganda failed because of the growing antiwar movement and the visual sophistication of a public familiar with the propagandistic practices of World Wars I and II. Unlike both World Wars, the unpopularity of the conflict in Vietnam forced the military to turn inwardly, causing combat art of the Vietnam War to function mainly within the military. The history of this genre and the analysis of the work from the Vietnam War distinguish combat art from other war imagery such as history painting and the ubiquitous propaganda of the twentieth-century.