Children's Culture and the Avant-Garde : Painting in Paris, 1890-1915

This volume explores the mutual influences between children’s literature and the avant-garde. Olson looks at children’s culture in relation to such painters as Rousseau, Chagall, Picasso, Modersohn-Becker and Nicholson, noting the qualities of the era that were defined as uniquely childlike, the relation of childhood to high and low art, and the intersection of children’s literature with fin-de-siècle artistic trends.

This book visits the qualities of the era that were defined as uniquely childlike, the relation of childhood to high and low art, and the relation of children’s literature to fin-de-siècle artistic trends. Topics of interest include the use of non-European figures (the Golliwogg), approaches to religion and pedagogy, to oppression and motherhood, to Nature in a post-Darwinian world, and to vision in art and life. Olson’s unique focus covers new ground by concentrating not simply on children''s literature, but on how childhood experiences and culture figure in art.