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Provincializing Paris. The Center-Periphery Narrative Of Modern Art In Light Of Quantitative And Transnational Approaches, Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel

Artl@s Bulletin

The alternative “centre‐periphery” is essential to the myth of modern art and its historiography. Even though Postcolonial studies have denounced the implications of such geopolitical hierarchies, as long as our objects remain centred on one capital city and within national boundaries, it will be difficult to escape the hierarchical paradigm that makes Paris and New York the successive capital cities of Modernism. This paper highlights how approaches focusing on different scales of analysis—from the quantitative and geographic to the monographic—challenge the supposed centrality of Paris through 1945.