united to demonstrate their disapproval of the US involvement in Vietnam. In 1965, the first
advertisements such as “End Your Silence" and the flyer “Stop Escalation” were published and
spread. The chapter “Creating Antiwar Art” demonstrates a radical change in the artists’
protest as they began to turn away from “extra-aesthetic" actions and “incorporate antiwar
sentiment into works of art” (37). It resulted in the creation of such significant work as the
Artists’ Tower o f Protest (or the Peace Tower) in 1966. The author also provides a vivid
discussion of the key art movements in the USA at the time, namely formalism, pop art, and
minimalism. To point out only some of the works that Israel examines here, it is worth
mentioning Dan Flavin’s monument 4 those who have been killed in ambush (to P.K. who
reminded me about death) (1966), Wally Hedrick’s Vietnam (1968), and Jeff Kramm’s May Lai
(1970).
The author broadens the scope of his analysis discussing “the most significant antiwar
effort from the arts community” in 1967, i.e., Angry Arts Week (70). During that time, the artists
were incorporating “direct evidence of casualties" (72) in their works and, as the book
pinpoints, made napalm and rape the key themes. To illustrate his speculation Israel discusses
Violet Ray’s Revlon Oh-Baby Face (1967), Jeff Schlanger and Artists’ Poster Committee
Would you Bum A Child? (around 1968), a series of paintings by Leon Golub Napalm (1969),
Peter Saul’s Saigon (1967) and Typical Saigon (1968). As a critique of the policy the US
government adhered to in the years from 1968 to 1970, such works as James Rosenquist’s
Daley Portrait (1968), Edward Kienholz’s The Portable War Memorial (1968), Duane Hanson’s
War (Vietnam Scene) (1969), Artists’ Poster Committee of AWC: Frazier Dougherty, Jon
Hendricks, and Irving Petlin’s Q. And babies? A. And babies (1970) were created as a
desperate artistic scream to end the war in Vietnam. Israel also provides a brief overview of
the artists’ reaction to Nixon’s decision to invade Cambodia followed by a very comprehensive
analysis where he demonstrates the influence of the Vietnam era’s art on the modern war art,
drawing parallels between the artworks created during the Vietnam conflict and the recent
artworks that protest against the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. As examples the author
discusses a new version of the Peace Tower (2006), iRaq (Abu Ghraib Prisoner) created by
Forkscrew Graphics in 2004 and Mark Wallinger’s installation State Britain.
Matthew Israel’s Kill For Peace: American Artists Against the Vietnam War is a very
ambitious project that in the length of a book manages to discuss the actions of artists who
126