Cubism in the Shadow of War: The Avant‑Garde and Politics in Paris, 1905–1914

This groundbreaking book provides a major reassessment of the history and significance of cubism. David Cottington examines the cubist movement and sets it within the complex political, economic, and cultural forces of pre‑World War I France. Cubism, as a part of the Parisian artistic avant‑garde, played an integral role in the turbulent Belle Epoque. The author focuses on cubism's relation to the particular discourses — of nationalism, aestheticism, gender, the social purpose of art — that gave meaning to the experience of modernity in Paris in the decade before the war.