Cubism, Celtism, and the Body Politic

Abstract

This essay considers the ideological allegiances declared by Albert Gleizes in his essay of 1913, “Le Cubisme et la tradition,” and finds that his relation of the artistic genealogy of Cubism to the Gothic era and his identification of French plebeian culture as “Celtic” signal his adherence to the leftist cultural politics of the Ligue Celtique Française. Gleizes and his allies at Poème et drame and Montjoie! formulated their Celtic nationalism as an alternative definition of national identity in direct opposition to the right-wing Action Française and its declaration of the “Latin” and “classical” roots of the French race.

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Notes on contributors

Mark Antliff

Mark Antliff received his Ph.D. from Yale, and was Postdoctoral Fellow of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in 1990–92. His “Bergson and Cubism: A Reassessment” appeared in the Art Journal, Winter 1988, and his Inventing Bergson: Cultural Politics and the Parisian Avant-Garde is forthcoming from Princeton University Press in spring 1993. He is currently working on a book on the theory of Georges Sorel and its influence [The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. 21218].