ABSTRACT
This chapter challenges aspects of the “center/periphery” narrative, which has dominated Cubism studies since the 1920s. This discourse has acted to differentiate artists deemed central to Cubism from those regarded as marginal, while simultaneously identifying Paris as the movement’s sole generative epicenter. The diffusion of Cubist idioms beyond Paris and the geo-political borders of France have been dismissed in the language of imitation. This chapter contests this narrative by examining the many metropolitan hubs in Europe and North America that were in symbiotic and creative dialogue with cultural developments in Paris, revealing that Cubism was an international movement from its very beginnings, with no single center. The chapter further critiques the center/periphery narrative by addressing those aspects of Parisian Cubism grounded in cultural politics internal to France itself. Factoring in those culture wars, it highlights the ways key Paris-based Cubists embraced various folk cultures, asserting local identities from Gascony and Normandy to Spain, Portugal and Mexico. All these features attest to the peripheral and provincial—rather than exclusively cosmopolitan—dimensions of the movement from its generative beginnings.
