The politics of nationalism and modernist groups in wartime France: 1914--1918

The breadth of the First World War's impact on the course of artistic modernism is complex and varied. The war years were fraught with ardent nationalist sentiments that had a direct impact on the public and critical perception of the arts. The prewar modernist groups formed a cohesive international community of artists that operated outside the bounds of this nationalist ardor. Their primary connection was print media---manifestos, journals, books, etc. In France, academic naturalism was aligned with the conservative order, while modernist tendencies were associated with leftwing, progressive politics. During the war years, the perceived duty of non-combatant artists became to preserve and uphold national artistic traditions, which in France meant a turn towards academic artistic tendencies. Many artists who went to war, however, inevitably embraced modernist techniques, particularly the fragmentary language of Cubism, in order to properly express their experiences in the unprecedented new age of mechanized warfare.