When Paris Met Bohemia: Discovering the Czech Nation Through its Art, 1900-1938

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Miller, Meredith G.
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History

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This thesis explores how a small group of French artists and intellectuals based in Paris ‘discovered’ the Czech nation through its modern art and history in the years leading to World War I through the interwar period. I will argue that these Frenchmen at first praised the ‘Frenchness’ of Czech modernism and history to celebrate their own liberal values and employed art in their justifications for the establishment of a sovereign Czechoslovak state. Soon after World War I had begun, these and other Frenchmen advocated for an independent Czechoslovak state not only because the Czechs’ refined art and history demonstrated its own European value, but also to ensure that a representative of Western European values was firmly situated in the heart of East-Central Europe. In their writings, these Frenchmen intertwined Czech and French modern art and history to pull Czech culture into the ‘Western European fold’ and defined Czech culture in opposition to that of Germany and Austria-Hungary. World War I also created the context for these Frenchmen to begin to understand Czech art as ‘Czech’ after independence from Austria-Hungry in 1918. These historic, artistic, and political connections solidified a lively dialogue, albeit an unequal one, between French artists and intellectuals and their Czech counterparts. This dialogue would flourish through the interwar years.

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