Broadway, New York 

David Burliuk made this oil painting, Broadway, New York, sometime in the first half of the twentieth century. Burliuk creates a futuristic city through the fractured lens of Cubo-Futurism. Born in Ukraine, Burliuk spent time in both Munich and Paris before arriving in New York in 1922. Cubo-Futurism combined the fragmentation of Cubism with an Italian Futurism's interest in speed and dynamism. Here, the artist captures the frenetic pace of New York city through a jumble of geometric forms. A woman sits semi-nude on the left, while on the right a man with a top hat and cane stands in front of the abstract buildings of the city. The cultural references are diverse, encompassing European avant-garde art as well as American popular culture. Historians of art and culture can use many resources to reconstruct the social and institutional context that shaped Burliuk's painting. In this case, one might want to investigate the role of European artists in shaping American modernism.