Abstract

My study is the first to investigate the relevance of the writings of the French philosopher Henri Bergson for an understanding of the Fauvist and Cubist movements in France before World War I. By interrelating two movements that, on the basis of stylistic analysis, are traditionally opposed, I elucidate their shared aesthetic roots and the profound impact of Bergson on early modernism in Europe, in its philosophical and, more surprisingly, social implications. ;Chapter one illustrates the degree to which Gleizes's and Metzinger's Du Cubisme represented the definitive formulation of a Bergsonian theory of Cubism, grounded in the interpretation of Bergson developed by the Symbolist writer Tancrede de Visan. Chapters two and three bring to light a group of Paris-based British Fauvists who called themselves Rhythmists and founded the magazine Rhythm to promote their Bergsonian interpretation of Fauvism. I chart the Rhythm group's attempts to measure themselves against the Puteaux Cubists, and the shared Bergsonian principles underpinning the aesthetic views of both circles. Chapters four and five discuss the Cubist- and Rhythmist-related criticism found principally in the journals l'Art Libre, Montjoie!, Poeme et Drame, and Cahiers des poetes. Those writings are considered in the context of a widely political debate between Bergson's Symbolist apologists and members of the right-wing Action Francaise. By relating this criticism to the propagation of Gallic nationalism within Cubist and Fauve circles, I am able to show how both groups countered the racial nationalism of the Action Francaise with an equally reactionary racial theory. To a great extent, that criticism is couched in Bergsonian terms, in the guise of an opposition between an organic and geometrical order, with aesthetic as well as political implications