The Rhythmists

Abstract

Abstract This essay discusses a group of anglophone artists of the pre-First World War period who not only assimilated Parisian avant-garde practices but took the plunge of attempting to make their careers in Paris itself in the decade before 1915. The constellation of questions, both historical and theoretical, that this initiative raises provides the framework for an analysis that offers both a detailed materialist history of the emergence, consolidation and diversification of the formation of the avant-garde in these respective fields and a theoretical understanding of their dynamics—and, through this, of the character of the then emergent European artistic avant-garde.