Scholars interested in visual culture generally and modernism, colonial resistance, and subaltern art production in particular will benefit greatly from a close reading of From a Nation Torn: Decolonizing Art and Representation in France, 1945–1962. As scholars take note of the stakes masterfully outlined by Hannah Feldman and bring them out of France and into former colonies, including Algeria, hopefully the nuance and theoretical rigor applied in this book will also find application in future acts of decolonial looking. It is worth taking stock of the ways we continue to see and not see in the age of neocolonization and the “War on Terror.”
In the years after World War II, France engaged in wars of independence, first in Indochina (1946–1954) and then in Algeria (1954–1962). Feldman focuses upon the wartime context of art production in France from the 1940s through the 1960s, powerfully recasting French modernism. To open her...