Art of Living in Avant-Garde Paris

How artists of interwar Paris created an "e;art of living,"e; treating their daily lives as an aesthetic, ethical, and creative practice. With The Art of Living in Avant-Garde Paris, Rachel Silveri takes a fresh look at the desire to unify art and life, an ambition long regarded as foundational to the European historical avant-gardes. She reveals how many early twentieth-century artists saw their own everyday lives-their bodies, identities, and relationships-as a type of creative material and a central component to their avant-garde practice. These artists abandoned traditional forms of artmaking and venues of art viewing, instead aspiring to integrate art with everyday life, creating an "e;art of living."e; Considering Tristan Tzara's performances of Dadaist identity, Sonia Delaunay's simultaneous fashions and self-branding, and the collective endeavor to open and operate the Surrealist Research Bureau, Silveri offers a new narrative about how the artists of interwar Paris developed experiential life practices that resisted dominant forms of "e;lifestyle"e; and normative discourses surrounding gender, ethnicity, and office work. This book argues that ethical questions of "e;How should I live?"e; and "e;How should I relate to others?"e; were as important to the avant-garde as politics, and that aspirations to change the world played out in daily practices of self-making.