The devastation of 1945 marked not only the end of a war but the collapse of entire ways of seeing, thinking, and creating. From the ruins emerged a generation of artists, writers, and thinkers who wrestled with a world that had been fundamentally altered. How could one depict reality after the World Wars? How could painting move forward after the obliteration of tradition? What forms could literature take when language itself had been shaken? This course explores how photography, painting, and literature responded to the rupture of war and genocide, forging new artistic and intellectual languages in the face of crisis. We will study the stark, haunting images of postwar photography that capture both destruction and resilience; the radical experiments of painters who abandoned inherited forms to create new modes of expression; and the philosophical and literary works that questioned the very foundations of meaning, while also gesturing toward new beginnings. Through these encounters, we will consider how art and thought in the postwar era navigated between despair and renewal, bearing witness to catastrophe while insisting on the necessity of creation.
5 units · Letter (ABCD/NP)
The devastation of 1945 marked not only the end of a war but the collapse of entire ways of seeing, thinking, and creating. From the ruins emerged a generation of artists, writers, and thinkers who wrestled with a world that had been fundamentally altered. How could one depict reality after the World Wars? How could painting move forward after the obliteration of tradition? What forms could literature take when language itself had been shaken? This course explores how photography, painting, and literature responded to the rupture of war and genocide, forging new artistic and intellectual languages in the face of crisis. We will study the stark, haunting images of postwar photography that capture both destruction and resilience; the radical experiments of painters who abandoned inherited forms to create new modes of expression; and the philosophical and literary works that questioned the very foundations of meaning, while also gesturing toward new beginnings. Through these encounters, we will consider how art and thought in the postwar era navigated between despair and renewal, bearing witness to catastrophe while insisting on the necessity of creation.
Offered in Winter 2026 at Stanford University.