Modernity, History, and Politics in Czech Art takes as its goal the tracing of how the shifting political environment between 1895 and 1939 influenced the development of Czech art, art criticism, art history, and theory. The book looks not only at the increasingly well-known avant-garde art of the period but also beyond, “to the peripheries of modern art,” to study how “narratives of modern art were formed in constant negotiation and dialogue” with efforts to be international and desires to remain “authentically local” (n.p.).

This is an important topic for understanding the Czech art world—and indeed the Czech cultural world more broadly—of the first half of the twentieth century. This was the period during which Austria-Hungary collapsed and Czechoslovakia was founded, when empire gave way to democracy, ethnic and linguistic identities were encouraged (not remarkably successfully) to join in Czechoslovakism, and when artistic modernism was developing rapidly in Central Europe. And while interest in the Czech avant-garde has grown in the English-speaking world post–Velvet Revolution, little scholarship has been available in English that really situates the Czech avant-garde within its larger Czech/Czechoslovak context. In particular, we need to remember that the Czech avant-garde (like any avant-garde) was by definition a small part of a much larger local artistic world.

Asking, “How can art help a nation negotiate its identity as a modern entity?” Filipová argues that the Czech lands provide an instructive case study: first, because the region's high degree of industrialization within the monarchy resulted in an experience and expression of modernity that was somewhat unusual; and second, because the role of Czech nationalism and nation building, in which “the adoption of modernity combined with a successful national movement,” created “an original culture of modernism” and played “a crucial role in constructing, formulating, and understanding local visual arts” (1, 3). She argues that Czech creators “actively nationalised modernism” while nationalistic agendas were often incorporated as “modernised nationalism” (3, 5). Rejecting the idea that the modern in Czech art can only be identified with the avant-garde and rejection of tradition, she seeks instead to emphasize the complexity of Czech modernism. To do this, she uses the thematic chapters of “Modernism,” “The People, Society, Identity,” and “Traditions” to explore topics such as Rodin, Munch, and Czech art; the vernacular in architecture; proletarian art and the Čapek brothers; Czechoslovakism; and censorship and reactionism.

Filipová approaches her subject with considerable methodological rigor and attention to linguistic and artistic subtleties, as can be seen in her discussion of the term lidové umění and its possible translations as people's art, folk art, and vernacular art and why the last of these options allows a broad and unromanticizing understanding of this art-and-craft production (57–58). Nor are issues of politics and gender ignored, particularly in the latter part of the book. Filipová's command of analytical nuance and her broad and deep reading in primarily Czech and English—but also German, French, Slovak, Polish, and Italian—enables a firmly grounded investigation of her topic.

This book will be of interest to historians of art, design, architecture, and visual culture; to historians of Central Europe; to scholars of Slavic studies, nationality studies, and cultural studies; and to museum professionals. Interest in Czech art is growing, but the subject not yet widely taught in the English-speaking world. Nationality studies, however, continues to be a significant area of research and teaching. The book addresses both areas. Because it deals with construction and ideas of nation, it should also be of interest to nationality studies specialists in other parts of Europe, and to art/architectural historians with interests either in Central Europe or in nationalism. Two bilingual (Czech/English) texts on the general topic do exist—Vendula Hnídková's Národní styl: Kultura a politika/ Nation, Identity, and Style (Prague, 2013) and Milena Bartlová and Jindřich Vybíral's Budování státu: Reprezentace Československa v umění, architektuře a designu/Building a State: The Representation of Czechoslovakia in Art, Architecture and Design (Prague, 2015), both published by Vysoká škola uměleckoprůmyslová—but these are not readily available outside the Czech Republic, and, frankly, their design format does not encourage one to sit down and read them (small print, narrow margins, etc.). English-language readers need a book accessible to the nonspecialist that examines Czech art, architecture, and design from the perspective of nationalism and nation building. By focusing on Czech/Czechoslovak art and nation with a focus broader than the avant-garde, the book fills an important gap.