» Nonsite Author: Charles W. Haxthausen
June 12th, 2011
Fig. 1. Pablo Picasso, Woman with Pears (Fernande), 1909 (© 2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society, New York)

Carl Einstein, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Cubism, and the Visual Brain

By , Williams College

On this question Einstein and Kahnweiler held diametrically opposed positions. Moreover–and this is my main interest–their respective positions correspond to successive phases in the developing neuroscientific understanding of the visual brain. Kahnweiler’s interpretation of cubism was shaped by the neuroscience of his day while, remarkably, Einstein’s account of seeing, as he believed it to be embodied in cubist paintings, anticipates by half a century a fundamental breakthrough in the neuroscientific understanding of vision.

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