Aby Warburg: Bilderatlas Mnemosyne: The Original

by Aby Warburg

A legendary modernist epic of visual thinking from the founder of iconology, tracing the migration of symbols through art, history and cosmology―reconstructed and accessible for the first time From 1925 until his death in 1929, the great German art theorist and cultural scholar Aby Warburg worked on an ambitious, unprecedented project he called the Mnemosyne Atlas : a series of 63 large themed panels, each featuring a constellation of images―postcards, maps, adverts, reproductions of artworks―that trace the migration of symbols from antiquity to the present. His goal was to show how certain gestures and icons repeated themselves across history, constituting what he called a “pathos formula”―that is, an enduring emotional metaphor. Warburg had the panels photographed, conceiving of their ultimate incarnation as being in book form―but never completed the atlas.

Warburg has become famed for many things―founding the discipline of iconology (what would now be called visual studies); his incredible library (and its idiosyncratic organization); his photographs of Hopi Indians; and the august institute in London that bears his name. But the greatest, most mythical aspect of his legacy is the Mnemosyne Atlas , which is to art history what Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project is to cultural history―an incomplete, collaged modernist epic attempting to comprehend the patterns of history and human emotion through flashes of insight that circumvent discursive thought.

Artists, theorists, writers and curators as various as Gerhard Richter, R.B. Kitaj, Joan Jonas, Charlene von Heyl, Giorgio Agamben, Marina Warner, Ernst Gombrich and Hans Ulrich Obrist have all paid homage to this mythic entity in different ways; many books have been written about it, and many exhibitions themed around it. Since Gombrich was tasked with its recreation in 1937, several scholars have attempted editions of the Atlas , all using Warburg’s indistinct, nearly illegible photographs. Now, for this major publishing event, Roberto Ohrt and Axel Heil have done what long seemed impossible, searching the 400,000 images in the archives of the Warburg Institute, identifying those from the Atlas and reconstructing Warburg’s panels, rendering the Atlas visually accessible to the world for the first time.

Genres: Art, Art History, History, Nonfiction, Design, Philosophy, Photography

182 pages, Hardcover

Published May 26, 2020

About the author

Aby Moritz Warburg, better known as Aby Warburg, was a German art historian and cultural theorist who founded the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (Library for Cultural Studies), a private library, which was later moved to the Warburg Institute, London. At the heart of his research was the legacy of the classical world, and the transmission of classical representation, in the most varied areas of Western culture through to the Renaissance.
Warburg described himself as: "Amburghese di cuore, ebreo di sangue, d'anima Fiorentino" ('Hamburger at heart, Jew by blood, Florentine in spirit').

Reviews

[Lovely Fortune]

For German class on Aby Warburg.

The Atlas is very impressive based on the interactive links our professor provided us with, but I can't say I remember too much of what was discussed during this session. I think one thing that stood out was how "trends" in art are always a constant and highlight the cultural staples, shifts, and beliefs of a time period and location. Otherwise, I don't remember too much.

[Juan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este es un libro casi imposible de encontrar en librerías, ni siquiera de segunda mano. Akal ha hecho una labor increíble traduciendo y poniendo a disposición de la gente libros clásicos de la historia del arte, pero me temo que muchos de ellos estarán sobre todo en bibliotecas y para coleccionistas; como este, en realidad una serie de imágenes de Aby Warburg que transmiten, o proyectan, su idea de la historia psicológica y antropológica del arte a través de una serie de paneles, verdaderos jeroglíficos que necesitan una verdadera hermenéutica, en forma de conferencias suyas (algunas de las cuales están traducidas al final del libro), para ser entendidas.
El libro es trabajoso de esa forma. Para empezar, por mucho que sea un libro de formato grande, las imágenes son prácticamente imposibles de dilucidar para alguien como yo; hay que ir a los originales o a la web para poder ver realmente qué significan. Pero el valor que tienen para entender una metodología de estudio del arte lo compensa... más o menos. El ponerlos todos juntos, más la explicación al final, tiene su valor y definitivamente es útil para estudiantes de historia del arte, aunque a estas alturas y en este siglo quizás no es la mejor manera de transmitir el ideario de Aby Warburg.

[heyyonicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ce projet d'Aby Warburg est fascinant et reste assez mystérieux. L'essai introductif nous éclaire sur certains aspects mais complique aussi l'affaire par son style universitaire complexe qui a rendu ma lecture laborieuse, dommage. Super bibliographie et beaucoup de citations. L'objet en lui même est très fragile (couverture peu rigide qui ne recouvre même pas l'entièreté du livre !), ce qui laisse de nombreuses marques, comme en témoignait l'exemplaire de bibliothèque qui a servi à ma lecture.

[altagracia]

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