Carl Einstein (1885-1940), active primarily as an art critic in
Germany and later in France, left a rich corpus of writings
encompassing literary criticism, drama, poetry, fiction, and
politics.
Charles W. Haxthausen is the Robert Sterling Clark Professor,
Emeritus of Art History at Williams College. He is co-editor of
Berlin: Culture and Metropolis and editor of The Two Art Histories:
The Museum and the University and Sol LeWitt: The Well-Tempered
Grid. He has been named Distinguished Scholar at the Leonard A.
Lauder Research Center for Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum
for 2019-20.
"A brilliant and brave art critic on behalf of the Modernism that
we take for granted, Carl Einstein (1855-1940) has remained largely
undiscovered until now--that is, until Charles Haxthausen
translated his writings into English. A Mythology of Forms,
Selected Writings on Art--Carl Einstein allows us to see a great
mind at work."-- "Art Monthly"
"A Mythology of Forms is certain to become an important reference
in studies of modernism, critical theory, and the historiography of
art history in the years to come. The book provides an excellent
sample of Einstein's larger corpus of writing on art, as well as a
detailed road map to the literature of Einstein studies in English,
French, and German."-- "CAA.reviews"
"Einstein was an extraordinary figure--groundbreaking author on
African art, abstraction, Picasso, Braque, and Klee; close
collaborator of Georges Bataille on the transformative journal
Documents; brilliant exegete of prehistory; and bold practitioner
of experimental literature that anticipates contemporary
autofiction. Einstein lived modernism so fully that its double
demand for aesthetic freedom and political commitment effectively
tore him apart. Expertly introduced by Charles Haxthausen, this
volume presents, for the first time for an Anglophone readership,
an extensive selection of writings by one of the greatest thinkers
of twentieth-century art and culture."--Hal Foster, Townsend Martin
1917 Professor of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University
"This essential collection of Einstein's writing gives a lucid
account of his life and evolving thought, with many texts being
made available in English for the first time. Haxthausen clearly
explains the idiosyncratic terminology and language that Einstein
uses in a variety of texts that range from his critical analysis of
cubism to the colonialist foundations of ethnographic collecting.
He also validates Einstein's role in the foundation of Documents
(1929-30), the French journal that countered the prevailing
arguments of surrealism in art and literature of the
time."--Marilyn McCully, cocurator of Tableaux magiques, Musée
national Picasso-Paris, 2019
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