The Liberation of Painting : The University of Chicago Press : 9780226471389 : 0226471381 : 26 Nov 2013 : The years before World War I were a time of social and political ferment in Europe, which profoundly affected the art world. A major center of this creative tumult was Paris, where many avant-garde artists sought to transform modern art through their engagement with radical politics. In this provocative study of art and anarchism in prewar France, Patricia Leighten argues that anarchist aesthetics and a related politics of form played crucial roles in the development of modern art, only to be suppressed by war fever and then forgotten.              Leighten examines the circle of artists?Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Franti?ek Kupka, Maurice de Vlaminck, Kees Van Dongen, and others?for whom anarchist politics drove the idea of avant-garde art, exploring how their aesthetic choices negotiated the myriad artistic languages operating in the decade before World War I. Whether they worked o