The Rise of the Avant-Gardes 1848-1918

A Transnational History

Series: 

Why did modern painting flourish in Paris, Vienna, or Brussels but stall in London or Madrid? What propelled some avant-gardes to global fame while others vanished? This book takes you inside modern art’s explosive rise between 1848 and 1918, revealing how artists navigated nationalism, markets, elite networks, and public demands to invent new ways of making—and living—art. Forget the myth of isolated geniuses. Here, avant-gardes cross borders via dealers, journals, exhibitions, and exiles. Follow their journey from Paris to Moscow, Barcelona, and New York through alliances, rivalries, and migrations. Richly illustrated with artworks, maps, and charts, this is art history reimagined—transnational, social, and vividly alive.
Copyright Year:
2026
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978-90-04-72095-4
Publication:
19 Jan 2026
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978-90-04-72094-7
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19 Feb 2026
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Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel (Ph.D. 2025, Habilitation 2015) is Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. From 2007 to 2019 she was Associate Professor in Modern and Contemporary Art History at École normale supérieure, Paris. Her work bridges modern and contemporary art history, global history and social history, and computational methods, offering new perspectives on visual culture and artistic globalization.
“A prodigious piece of work.”
- Johan Popelard, ArtPress, January 2016

“A very comprehensive and innovative work.”

[…]

"A monumental historical study of artistic movements between 1850 and the Great War."
- Jean-Marc Bastière, Le Figaro littéraire, 21 January 2016

“A new history — that of the avant-garde system.”

[…]

“A conceptual momentum that above all reflects the openness of the avant-garde system.”
- Pamela Bianchi, « Le système des avant-gardes », La Vie des idées, 19 May 2016. ISSN : 2105-3030.

"Reading this book is essential."

[…]

"It deserves a place in every library."
- Jacques Ruby, « Retour aux avant-gardes », Nonfiction.fr

"Joyeux-Prunel demonstrates the power and rigor of her historical analysis, never giving in to clichés, preconceived notions, or—worse still—the myths, gilded or otherwise, that often fill the heads of poorly informed painting enthusiasts, ultimately shaped by one or two art history courses more or less followed years ago."

[…]

"A fascinating essay."

[…]

"This essay is of exemplary clarity."
- Didier Small, « Retour aux avant-gardes », La cause littéraire.fr, February 2016

"A history that runs counter to the romantic and monographic vision of art."

[…]

"The project is not lacking in flair."

[…]

"A hefty tome—one of those deliberately thrown to shake up the system."

[…]

"A transnational history (…) that, in fact, makes the history of art appealingly human."
- Fabien Simode, « L’art des stratégies », L’Œil, April 2016.

"A must-read reference for any serious study in this field."

[…]

"Thus are mythologies deconstructed, while history is built through scholarship and intellectual clarity."
- Nathalie Heinich, Lectures – Les comptes rendus, 2016 : Nathalie Heinich, « Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, Les avant-gardes artistiques, 1848-1918. Une histoire transnationale », Lectures [online], Les comptes rendus, 24 March 2016
Contents
Preface
List of Figures and Tables
Introduction: What Is the Avant-Garde?
 1 A Sociological Definition
 2 An Anachronism?
 3 The Avant-Garde: More Modern than the Moderns?
 4 A Difficult Autonomy
 5 On the Ideology of Avant-Gardism
 6 What about Paris? The Geopolitics of the Avant-Garde

Part 1 Moderns versus Ancients? From Opposition to Recognition, 1848–1889

1 The Crisis in the French Art System
 1 When Was the Avant-Garde Born?
 2 An Unpopular Academic System
 3 The Realist Avant-Garde Takes on the National
 4 How to Survive and Stay Independent? The Solutions of the 1863 Generation

2 Impressionism between Intransigence and Adaptation
 1 A Loose Grouping (1874–1879)
 2 Was There an Impressionist “Style”?
 3 “Impressionism? It’s Putting on Gloves …”

3 Towards an International Market (1885–1889)
 1 The Art Dealers’ Takeover of Impressionism
 2 Independent Art and Its New Status
 3 New Collectors for Impressionist Painting
 4 Conclusion: Achievement or Disappointment? Cézanne and the Contradictions of Impressionism

Part 2 The Era of “Secessions”

4 ONE Europe, ONE Modern Art? The Artistic Elite, 1885–1905
 1 The Avant-Garde as Success: Brussels-Paris-London
 2 The Europe of the Secessions: Internationalism and Nationalism
 3 Secessionism, a System Closed to Innovation

5 Outdoing Each Other (1885–1895)
 1 Parisian Impressionism’s Difficult Succession
 2 New Alliances
 3 The Artist as Scapegoat

6 The Modernist Consolidation of the Fin de Siècle
 1 Symbolism: Questioning or Renewing the Avant-Garde?
 2 European Recognition of Symbolism and Its Effect on the Avant-Garde
 3 The Hope of the Applied Arts
 4 1900: Modernism in National Rivalries

Part 3 The Crisis of European Modernism, 1903–1909

7 From Bottleneck to Explosion
 1 The New Generation’s Malaise
 2 Forms of the Crisis in Paris: Fauvism
 3 The Secession Crisis in Germany and the Birth of Expressionism

8 The Renewal of the Parisian Avant-Garde Scene
 1 A New Logic of Innovation
 2 The Parisian Avant-Garde, an Ebullient Micro-Society

Part 4 The International Art War, 1905–1914

Introduction to Part 4

9 The Nationalist Danger
 1 Double-Edged Media Coverage
 2 The Parisian Avant-Garde’s Nationalist Slide

10 A New Geopolitics of the Avant-Garde
 1 With or without Paris? Challenging Modern Internationalism in Europe
 2 The View from Central Europe: a Disconnected Periphery?
 3 Germany, a New Home for the International Avant-Gardists?

11 Double-Edged Internationalization
 1 Parisian Merchants Choose the International
 2 Those Promoting This Internationalization
 3 The War of the New European Avant-Gardes

Part 5 Between Fire and Order: the Trial of the Great War

Introduction to Part 5

12 The Parisian Avant-Garde War
 1 Contrition
 2 The Sacred Union of the Modern
 3 Artistic Recovery and Its Limits

13 The German Avant-Garde in Revolt
 1 At the Heart of the War
 2 Youth in Crisis
 3 Art in Revolution
 4 A Reconciliation of Avant-Garde Visual Art and Politics?

14 Diasporas of Despair
 1 Acedia
 2 New York: Recess or Refoundation?
 3 The Big Shift: Dada, Zurich, 1916–1918

Epilogue: on the Threshold of a New History?
Bibliography
Index
A must-read for educators, researchers, students, and anyone seeking a global, social take on modern art and the avant-garde. Artists will find lasting inspiration in these bold international breakthroughs.
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