Mark Antliff

Patricia Dee Leighten

"This definitive anthology covers the historical genesis of cubism from 1906 to 1914, with documents that range from manifestos and poetry to exhibition prefaces and reviews to articles that address the cultural, political, and philosophical issues related to the movement. Most of the texts Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten have selected are from French sources, but their inclusion of carefully culled German, English, Czech, Italian, and Spanish documents speaks to the international reach of cubist art and ideas. Equally wide-ranging are the writers represented--a group that includes Guillaume Apollinaire, Gertrude Stein, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, André Salmon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Henri Le Fauconnier, and many others."--Publisher description.

Documents and Criticism, 1906-1914

A Cubism Reader

At the turn of the century the philosophy of Henri Bergson captivated France, and Bergson's theories of intuition and elan vital influenced artistic and political notions of the supreme individual, the collective consciousness of a class or race, and the esprit of the nation itself. Here Mark Antliff demonstrates how various artists in prewar France positioned themselves and their art in this plurality of political discourse. By interrelating such movements as Futurism, Cubism, and Fauvism, he elucidates the pervasive impact of Bergson on Modernism in Europe, especially in terms of theories of organic form. Antliff defines the anarcho-individualism of Gino Severini as it relates to the anarcho-syndicalism of other Futurists, and contrasts both to the Puteaux Cubists, who embraced a leftist discourse of Celtic nationalism. All these groups, including the Rhythmists, an international group of Fauve painters, defined their Bergsonism in reaction to the campaign against Bergson launched by the royalist organization L'Action Francaise. Antliff shows that the organicism central to the Bergsonism of these leftist groups had a postwar legacy in fascist ideologies in France and Italy, and charts the transformation of an anticapitalist critique into the politics of reaction. Thus Antliff relates the Bergsonism of these movements to the larger political culture confronted by the Parisian avant-garde, exposing the volatile relation of art and culture to ideology in prewar France.

Cultural Politics and the Parisian Avant-garde

Inventing Bergson

"This is a book whose great achievement is to bring out the importance of the Cubists in a history far bigger than the history of art." Christopher Green, Courtauld Institute of Art"

Cubism and Culture

Scott W. Klein

Vorticism addresses the seminal innovations in theatre, literature and poetry as well as Vorticist painting, sculpture, print making, and photography that encompassed the Vorticism art movement.

New Perspectives

Vorticism

Matthew Affron

Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art Matthew Affron

Bringing together studies by art historians, historians, and political scientists, FASCIST VISIONS explores the themes and paradigms that pervaded protofascist and fascist aesthetic discourse, cultural policy, and artistic production in France and Italy. The eight essays in this book investigate the intersection of fascist ideology and aesthetics through a wide range of historical examples. 44 photos.

Art and Ideology in France and Italy

Fascist Visions

Investigating the central role that theories of the visual arts and creativity played in the development of fascism in France, Mark Antliff examines the aesthetic dimension of fascist myth-making within the history of the avant-garde. Between 1909 and 1939, a surprising array of modernists were implicated in this project, including such well-known figures as the symbolist painter Maurice Denis, the architects Le Corbusier and Auguste Perret, the sculptors Charles Despiau and Aristide Maillol, the “New Vision” photographer Germaine Krull, and the fauve Maurice Vlaminck. Antliff considers three French fascists: Georges Valois, Philippe Lamour, and Thierry Maulnier, demonstrating how they appropriated the avant-garde aesthetics of cubism, futurism, surrealism, and the so-called Retour à l’Ordre (“Return to Order”), and, in one instance, even defined the “dynamism” of fascist ideology in terms of Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of montage. For these fascists, modern art was the mythic harbinger of a regenerative revolution that would overthrow existing governmental institutions, inaugurate an anticapitalist new order, and awaken the creative and artistic potential of the fascist “new man.” In formulating the nexus of fascist ideology, aesthetics, and violence, Valois, Lamour, and Maulnier drew primarily on the writings of the French political theorist Georges Sorel, whose concept of revolutionary myth proved central to fascist theories of cultural and national regeneration in France. Antliff analyzes the impact of Sorel’s theory of myth on Valois, Lamour, and Maulnier. Valois created the first fascist movement in France; Lamour, a follower of Valois, established the short-lived Parti Fasciste Révolutionnaire in 1928 before founding two fascist-oriented journals; Maulnier forged a theory of fascism under the auspices of the journals Combat and Insurgé.

Mark Antliff

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