Secularizing the Christian Middle Ages: The 1904 Exposition des Primitifs Français and French Nationalism

• In Event: "Just What Is It That Makes the Medieval So Different, So Appealing?": Modernism and National Emancipation in a Transnational Perspective

Abstract

Just one year before the separation of Church and State, the official French arts establishment mounted the 1904 Exposition des Primitifs Français, whose aim was to reshape cultural memory and the national heritage. The show helped to construct a new narrative about French artwork from the Middle Ages, wresting them from their roots in a pan-European Christian culture. This art would now serve to reveal French Republican values, reflecting the ideals of a secular nation-state and to express French aesthetic characteristics centuries before the existence of France itself.

Authors

• Laura Morowitz, Wagner College

• Marta Filipova, Masaryk U (Czech Republic)