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While the role of art as an agent of revolutionary disruption has attracted sustained attention among scholars, this session instead examines the ways in which artistic movements and individual artists have contributed to the establishment of new political, aesthetic, and social orders in the wake of mass upheaval. Based on the premises that art can itself be revolutionary and that revolution entails not only deconstructive moments but also an ongoing process of rebuilding, we explore how art has shaped post-revolutionary polities around the world between 1910 and 1930.

Individual papers address contemporaneous constellations between the aesthetic and the political from the perspective of specific sites of revolutionary transformation: China, Germany, Mexico, and Russia. Taken as a whole, the panel analyzes parallels as well as divergences in artistic strategies and practices that attempt to displace pre-revolutionary worldviews, institutions, and forms of (co-)existence. Conceived as a contribution to the study of global modernisms, it brings into dialogue pertinent approaches in art history, philosophy of art, and political philosophy. With attention to the constructive, emancipatory potential many artists believed to be inherent to revolutionary movements, we examine the kinds of worldbuilding that occurred in different regions around the globe. Ultimately, from the vantage point of 2020, this panel challenges the once widespread perception of the “failure” of the revolutions of the early twentieth century.