The foregoing makes me glad that I didn't buy the ebook (CDN $ 19 at both amazon and Kobo
). Unfortunately, that leaves me waiting on an overdue book from the library.
I read "Rites of Spring" twenty years ago, and thought it was quite a good book at the time. I'm eagerly anticipating reading it again, particularly for the discussion of the impact on visual art.
The Canadian War Museum is running an exhibition this summer comparing the work of Otto Dix with the Canadian Group of Seven artist A.Y. Jackson. Jackson was wounded at Sanctuary Wood in June 1916 and became a war artist following his recovery in hospital at Etaples. Dix was an active combatant through the war; he fought at the Somme in 1916, on the Eastern Front, and in the 1918 Spring Offensive. He received the Iron Cross 2nd Class and was promoted to vizfeldwebel, which was considerably better than Hitler did. He continued to paint during the war, in what must have been very trying circumstances.
I felt the Dix works on display (which covered his career, not just the WW1 years) to be profoundly moving and disturbing, becoming if anything more disturbing through the Weimar Republic, during the years his art was supressed by the Nazis, and in the Cold War, whereas the war seems to have had a much smaller impact on Jackson's work.