New means of transport and communication allowed unprecedented mobility
of people, goods and ideas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century, which contributed to far-reaching economic, social and
political changes in a first wave of globalisation. In its genuine
transnationality, the European historical avant-garde can be seen as a
product of this development. Cosmpolitanism, internationality and
internationalism became emblems of the avant-garde in its pursuit of a
‘new’, modern international culture trangressing ‘old’ borders and
limitations dictated by conceptions of nationhood, linguistic
restrictions, and state boundaries. Simultaneously, national and
nationalist reflexes can be traced in the avant-garde as well – in a
European context marked by a plethora of competing nationalisms.









This collection of essays focuses on the transnationality and
inter-nationalisms in the European avant-garde as well as on conflicts,
paradoxes and debates in the avant-garde as genuinely transnational
configuration of artistic movements, which possessed nevertheless many
nationalist edges. The book presents a panorama of the historical
avant-garde oscillating and operating between transnationality,
internationalism and nationalisms of different kinds, both in national
cultural fields and a transnational European arena – from Iceland to
Greece and from the Pale of Settlement to the Atlantic.