Crafting Interiority, or the Evolutionary Objectivity of Vibrating Worlds: An Introduction to Adolf Behne’s “Biology and Cubism” (1915)

Sublimating the transgressive atrocities of modern warfare in an enigmatic text written within a year outbreak WWI, art historian and architectural theorist Adolf Behne (1885-1948) takes recourse with humanity by tracing uncanny thresholds between human non-human as proliferated contemporary theories biology. Disguised manifesto-like book review biologist Jakob Johann von Uexküll’s Building Blocks Biological Worldview (1913), Behne’s “Biologie und Kubismus” (1915) engages pluriversal worldview to complicate straightforward dualisms artifice nature, subtly imbricating geopolitical biopolitical spheres expressions art. Dismantling impressionist lacking external-natural parallelism, champions expressionist art, whose forms shapes evolve organically from biologically-encoded creative interiority, “true” A critical introduction author, text, context prefaces first English translation “Biology Cubism” more than century after publication editorial outlet artist-gallerist Herwarth Walden’s influential syndicate Der Sturm.