Cubism in the shadow of war

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.