Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in the Avant-Garde and Modernism.

The book presents the results of broadly conceived scientific research, which was carried out in connection with the anniversary of the beginning of the First World War not only in Central Europe, but also in Georgia, Scandinavia or the Baltic countries. It shows the transformations of nationalist rhetoric in political and aesthetic discourses in the context of the change of the map of Europe in 1918 and the emergence of new states. From different perspectives, the book traces the ways in which the post-war modern visual language was disseminated outside the traditional centers and what role the international avant-garde network, the circulation of modern magazines and other aspects played in this process. A fundamental scientific contribution is the disruption of the traditional image, created in the Western discourse of art history and based on the black-and-white division into national, official ideology of young states and international utopian programs of a world "without borders". The authors of the book convincingly show through various examples that artists, driven by a patriotic ethos, often followed both ideas in parallel or at different stages of their lives. The returns to nationally conceived programs in the countries that arose on the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy are innovatively interpreted as an effective strategy preferring ambiguous artistic expressions, striving to be applied in everyday life and corresponding to the specific socio-economic needs of the states in question. By presenting "unknown" art and artistic manifestos from neighboring countries, the publication opens up new horizons and encourages other researchers to reconstruct their own and global cultural history in a horizontal perspective, without nationalistic approaches.