Carl Einstein took part in numerous important moments of the first half of the twentieth century. He was the author of influential texts on African sculpture, wrote the first-ever history of twentieth century art (Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, 1926), co-edited the journal Documents with George Bataille and was a close friend of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. He was also active in the 1918-19 Revolution in Germany and after World War I allied with the 'political wing' of the Berlin Dadaists, and he later fought with the anarcho-syndicalists in the Spanish Civil War. And yet, Carl Einstein is anything but a household name.¹ Arguably, it is this position of centrality and marginality, Einstein's 'half-forgottenness' that draws artists and researchers to his work - perhaps in the hope of uncovering a level of reality beyond the accepted historical models that define our way of thinking about this formative period.²

In historiographical terms, Einstein's career spans the period that, following Peter Bürger, has been referred to as the 'historical avantgarde'. 3 And in many ways, Einstein's insistence on the autonomy of the artwork vis-à-vis mass culture, coupled with his call to political engagement, could be seen as emblematic of the combative political self-consciousness of art stressed in Bürger's periodisation. While Bürger's model has already undergone extensive criticism, the distinction between a 'historical' and 'neo' avant-garde might still be saved, in my opinion, if the 'avant-garde' and the 'neo-avant-garde' are not considered as terms describing an epochal shift, but rather as a challenge faced by art in general: how can art be something more than just 'neo'? Which is to say: how is it