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I call it ‘individuality’. . It is like a great wave which grows everlastingly, a germ which 1 11 11 1912: RED FLAGS AND REVOLUTIONARY ANTHEMS 27 perpetuates itself to infinity in constantly changing metamorphoses . . a pangenesis in the sense understood by Darwin: every original cell carries the whole of human kind and all its characteristics within itself. 22 Strindberg was in Berlin at the time, and Munch joined the circle around him and Przybyszewski (whose wife was the object of Munch’s and Strindberg’s desires).

See de Forges, 1978: 45. 12 Leslie cites three estimates: Maxime du Camp’s 6,000; Lissagaray’s 17,000; and Louise Michel’s 30,000 (Leslie, 2000: 180). See Toussaint, 1978: 232–3 for Courbet’s sketchbook drawings during the last days and defeat of the Commune, possibly made after the events. 13 ‘The initiative did not come directly from me . . The column seemed to me badly placed; there ere even some who found it hazardous; however, I only considered the thing from an artistic point of view’ and ‘This column as a feeble replica of the Column of Trajan, badly put together in its proportions.

The concept of an avant-garde within Modernism is then re-examined. The second part of the chapter reconsiders aspects of Cubism in Paris and Expressionism in Munich, drawing attention to ambivalent political and social attitudes, and to overlooked continuities with the avant-garde of Realism, which is discussed in Chapter 1. A clear political alignment is seen in Italian Futurism, which is discussed in Chapter 3 together with Le Corbusier and the Modernist architectural avant-garde. I STOCKHOLM: STRINDBERG’S BIRTHDAY In January 1912 a torchlight procession, headed by members of the Stockholm Workers’ Commune, celebrated the sixty-third birthday of August Strindberg.