Carl Einstein's Radical Art History Revisited in New Translation and Biography

A new French translation of Carl Einstein's 1934 monograph "Georges Braque" has been published by Éditions la Part de l'Œil, alongside a biography by Liliane Meffre titled "Carl Einstein (1885-1940). Itinéraires d'une pensée moderne" from Presses de l'université Paris Sorbonne. Einstein, a German art historian, novelist, and playwright, is known for his aphorism: "The history of art is the struggle of all optical experiences, invented spaces, and figurations." His approach rejected aestheticism and treated artworks as energies and facts with practical efficacy, not fictions. In the Braque book, written 1931-1932 and first published in French in 1934, Einstein avoids describing specific works, instead offering a vision of art history as a field of biological and vital forces. He argues that cubism, particularly Braque's, transforms the act of seeing and redefines reality. Meffre's biography traces Einstein's life between Germany and France, his role in the journals Documents (1929-1930) and Transition, his collaboration with Jean Renoir on the film Toni, and his death by suicide in 1940 while fleeing Nazi persecution. The review by Thierry Davila in artpress highlights Einstein's enduring relevance.