Cubism, often considered to be the seminal art movement of the twentieth century, initiated a pictorial revolution through its radical approach to imagemaking, invention of the new media of collage and sculptural assemblage, and evolution towards pure abstraction.

Scholarly yet accessible, Cubism and Culture reveals these profound formal innovations as integrally related to rapid changes in French society. Examining the movement’s origins in primitivism and engagement with issues of race and colonialism, the authors then consider the Cubists’ responses to current anti-Enlightenment philosophies; the relation of Cubist art to the ‘classical’; the role played by gender conceptually and within particular careers and practice; collage and its fascinating interplay with cultural themes; and the impact of anarchism, nationalism and pacifism on Cubism’s cultural politics.

This comprehensive and fresh critical re-examination of Cubism in its wider context, social, cultural, political, scientific and philosophical, introduces and re-frames the movement, covering the full range of art and artists from the movement’s advent in 1908 through the First World War.