Academics, Pompiers, Official Artists and the Arriere-garde
Defining Modern and Traditional in France, 1900-1960

A collection of essays that challenges the modernist slant of twentieth-century art history. It focuses on the terms academic, pompier, official, and arriere-garde, originally used to situate the more conservative artists and works as second-rate or as the negative foil to the assumed radicalism of the avant-garde.

Particular attention is paid to the terms academic, pompier, official, and arriere-garde, originally used to situate the more conservative artists and works as second-rate or as the negative foil to the assumed radicalism of the avant-garde. By re-evaluating the work of artists pushed to the historical margins by such polemical descriptors, and by proposing alternative understandings of the aesthetic, economic, institutional and political factors that drive our ideas of avant-gardism and the modernist narrative in France, this collection of essays offers new routes to explore the terrain of twentieth-century art in France.