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Kant famously defined war as the natural consequence of any attempt to render politics as an aesthetic. Throughout history, war has attracted unending fascination as the stuff of conscientious or illicit representations of strife in situations that are often isolationist, coloured by the tainted hopelessness of ravaged landscapes, and destructive political purposes. However, the insanity of war is also the object of propagandistic romanticism and ethical idealism and its representations of extreme human desolation. It leads to the arousal of patriotic righteousness in art. The art media are often balanced by a rendered attitude towards the figure of the human body, both in its mangled or ghastly wounded form, and that of the dashing and elevated soldier or the proud baby-bearing working woman. War has assumed a romantic role in the modern imagination. It has been redefined by flashy Hollywood productions and flash-news inflamed rhetoric. These politically minded attempts at establishing war as a playground of principles and ideals and of human emotion, frame war as a purveyor of passions and eroticism. From neophyte homosexuality practices during the American Civil War to the burgeoning wave of prostitution in Central Europe during World War II, art catered to both sides of the conflict and saw the emergence of the pin-up as a cultural icon during important historical periods. The deconstruction of the poetics of the individual and its representation in the midst of these conflicts are a direct reminder of the vulnerability and carnal setting of the human body and emotion. Using art representations from various armed conflicts throughout history, this wide-spectrum discussion will focus on representations of beauty and the erotic in war paintings. As well, it will consider implications of such representations given the time periods and historical settings they depicted.