Modernism's edge: Nationalism and cultural politics in fin-de-siecle Europe. Norwegian painters, 1880-1905 (Edvard Munch)

In a study of the critical reception of Norwegian painters from 1880--1905, I propose a re-reading of the intersections between early artistic modernism and nationalism. Histories of modernism have traditionally asserted a French (Parisian) modernist model as a universal. A more complex picture of modernism's structures is revealed through this investigation of Norwegian art and cultural politics.; The Norwegian artists and critics' attempts to construct their own modernism from 1880--1905 coincided with their national independence. Norwegian politics and culture were mobilized against Swedish (and before them, Danish) colonizers, with independence achieved in 1905. The Norwegian example proposes a "post-colonial" modernism in contrast to the "imperialism" of French-informed modernism. The Norwegians' importation of French painting techniques and theories (soon to be proposed as universal by Meier-Graefe and Mauclair) indicated the cultural politics inherent to modernist art practices; the Norwegians were eager to exploit this politics for their national project. They reconfigured France's Impressionism as a radical politics for Norwegian culture via an artists' strike in 1881--2, establishing a Norwegian avant-garde. By 1886, Norwegian critics and art historians began to produce critical re-presentations of past Norwegian art traditions to serve their current formulations for a Norwegian modernism, and to reconfigure their status as Europe's "primitives." By 1896, a theory of decorative color was proposed as a Norwegian "instinct," essentializing modernism as Norwegian. By mid-1890s a nationalist politics aimed at independence, and a symbolist aesthetic of individual creativity converged to form an internationally recognizable Norwegian modernism in the work and identity of Edvard Munch.; Contrasting the familiar modernist trajectory of a genealogy of great (French) painters, Norway's modernism was based in the collective idea of nationalism, reflecting its "post colonial" status. It asserted Norway as culturally independent, and through its style, reflected this new nation back to itself as recognizable yet distinctive within the arena of European nations. Tracing the negotiations between early international modernism and nationalism brings the remains of hidden "national modernisms" to light, providing an opportunity to re-examine the legacy of "imperialist" modernism.