Behind the Mask: WWI, Plastic Surgery, and the Modern Beauty Revolution

David M. Lubin, the Charlotte C. Weber Professor of Art, Wake Forest University

During the Great War, trenches exposed combatants’ faces to sniper fire and flying shrapnel. In previous wars such wounds would have proven fatal. Now, with improved medical and transport services, the wounded could be saved--but not always their faces as well. Crudely patched-together and sent back to the front or to their families, men with “broken faces” were routinely ostracized. This lecture examines the humanitarian efforts of plastic surgeons to restore obliterated faces and sculptors to fashion prosthetic masks, while also considering postwar avant-garde modernism and the modern beauty culture, both of which evidence a visceral reaction to wartime unsightliness.

During the Great War, trenches exposed combatants’ faces to sniper fire and flying shrapnel. In previous wars such wounds would have proven fatal. Now, with improved medical and transport services, the wounded could be saved--but not always their faces as well. Crudely patched-together and sent back to the front or to their families, men with “broken faces” were routinely ostracized. This lecture examines the humanitarian efforts of plastic surgeons to restore obliterated faces and sculptors to fashion prosthetic masks, while also considering postwar avant-garde modernism and the modern beauty culture, both of which evidence a visceral reaction to wartime unsightliness.