Carl Einstein

Bebuquin is an experimental novel by Carl Einstein. It is his only novel, but Carl Einstein is better known as an art theorist and critic. His book, Negerplastic, was a ground-breaking appraisal of the value of African art, influencing many contemporary artists, particularly Picasso. Einstein died in 1940, committing suicide in France, after leaving Germany after the rise of the Nazis. Bebuquin is a frequently baffling novel about a man's search for the miraculous.

"This book collects fourteen essays by the woefully understudied Carl Einstein, translated here from the German. Einstein was a major critic in the early twentieth century. He was a large presence in Paris when it was the crucible of the modernist avant-garde. He was one of the earliest thinkers to take Cubism seriously. He was an architect of formalism and perhaps the first critic to produce a substantial text on African art and its relationship to modernism that rejected Sub-Saharan African cultures as "primitive." And, his views on repetition and mechanical reproduction are in direct opposition to those of Walter Benjamin. Charles Haxthausen identified and translated these fourteen essential texts and has provided critical introductions to each one as well as a longer introduction to Einstein's life, work, and contribution to the intellectual culture of the 20th century"--Provided by publisher.