CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/20/2019

Pop complexity in 'Matthew Brannon: Concerning Vietnam'

Matthew Brannon's complex, deceptively pop and eerily retro-timely Concerning Vietnam is "a puzzle about a puzzle," Blanton Museum curator Veronica Roberts writes of this new book on the artist's iconic print series. "To tackle the Vietnam War in a nonpolemical way—to present documents instead of moral denouncements—disrupts our natural desire to quickly assign blame. While the presence of these documents forms its own kind of critique—repudiating the misperception that officials didn't have enough information and intelligence to avert the war—Concerning Vietnam prompts us to be more concerned about the present and future wars than about judging the past." Featured image is Concerning Vietnam: Oval Office, November 1961 (2017).