Contested cubisms: Transformations of the Czech avant-garde, 1910--1914

Through a case-study of the involvement of Czech painters with cubism on the eve of the First World War, my dissertation presents alternative criteria for the emergence of vanguard artists within Central Europe. Formulating a workable definition of the avant-garde for this region is problematic because of the predominance of French models as standards to which Central European developments do not conform. The particular characteristics of Paris as an urban space, which have been understood as paradigmatic for the self-conscious development of avant-garde formations before the First World War, do not manifest themselves with the same force in Central Europe. The original gesture is deemphasized in favor of the deliberate re-use of a foreign style with political and cultural consequences in a new context. While always in dialogue with the West, avant-garde practice in Prague includes a continual re-negotiation of identity that must take questions of national, social and political consciousness into account.; Focusing on four aspects of Czech cubism---theory, criticism, publications and exhibitions---I emphasize the cultural-political forces that led to Czech painters' interest in French art and reveal the impact of the style in Prague. The art historical work of collector Vincenc Kramar provides background to Prague's intellectual interest in cubism. The popular reaction to cubist exhibitions indicates the political associations the style carried. The cubists' journal, Umelecky mesicnik [Art Monthly] confirms the import of journals for the creation of avant-garde identity. Two 1914 Prague exhibitions focus the polemical debate between rival cubist groups over the definition and consequences of the style.; I excavate the particular characteristics of Czech cubism and concretely examine the exchange networks that brought it to Prague. Czech artists' very decision to make use of cubism, one among many avant-garde styles that spread across Europe at this time, provides an opportunity to address this larger, pan-European phenomenon. An understanding of the impulse to internationalism is essential to an understanding of Modernism itself. I access the political and cultural valences of a modern visual vocabulary, and structure my account to enable a comparative discussion of Modernism in Central Europe as a whole.