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Memory, Metaphor, and Aby Warburg's Atlas of Images

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Memory, Metaphor, and Aby Warburg's Atlas of Images

Author:   Christopher D. Johnson
Publisher:   Cornell University Press
Edition:   BC
ISBN:  

9780801477423


Pages:   288
Publication Date:   June 2012
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Available   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you.


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Overview

The work of German cultural theorist and art historian Aby Warburg (1866 1929) has had a lasting effect on how we think about images. This book is the first in English to focus on his last project, the encyclopedic Atlas of Images: Mnemosyne. Begun in earnest in 1927, and left unfinished at the time of Warburg's death in 1929, the Mnemosyne-Atlas consisted of sixty-three large wooden panels covered with black cloth. On these panels Warburg carefully, intuitively arranged some thousand black-and-white photographs of classical and Renaissance art objects, as well as of astrological and astronomical images ranging from ancient Babylon to Weimar Germany. Here and there, he also included maps, manuscript pages, and contemporary images taken from newspapers. Trying through these constellations of images to make visible the many polarities that fueled antiquity's afterlife, Warburg envisioned the Mnemosyne-Atlas as a vital form of metaphoric thought.

While the nondiscursive, frequently digressive character of the Mnemosyne-Atlas complicates any linear narrative of its themes and contents, Christopher D. Johnson traces several thematic sequences in the panels. By drawing on Warburg's published and unpublished writings and by attending to Warburg's cardinal idea that pathos formulas structure the West's cultural memory, Johnson maps numerous tensions between word and image in the Mnemosyne-Atlas. In addition to examining the work itself, he considers the literary, philosophical, and intellectual-historical implications of the Mnemosyne-Atlas. As Johnson demonstrates, the Mnemosyne-Atlas is not simply the culmination of Warburg s lifelong study of Renaissance culture but the ultimate expression of his now literal, now metaphoric search for syncretic solutions to the urgent problems posed by the history of art and culture.

Full Product Details

Author:   Christopher D. Johnson
Publisher:   Cornell University Press
Imprint:   Cornell University Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Edition:   BC
Dimensions:   Width: 15.50cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.431kg
ISBN:  

9780801477423


ISBN 10:   0801477425
Pages:   288
Publication Date:   June 2012
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Further / Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you.

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Reviews

<p> This is a rich and learned book, and also an extremely humane and attractive one. The final chapter, on Warburg and Bruno, has the status of revelation. It is absolutely fascinating, not only as a dialogue in intellectual history but also as a political allegory. Christopher D. Johnson pays close attention to Warburg's ethical and epistemological aspirations when he focuses on Warburg's final and uncompleted project: the Atlas of Images. Assembled during the years prior to his death in 1929, these collages strove to mount a history of cultural memory via a dense series of images from antiquity to the present. -Michael P. Steinberg, Director of the Cogut Humanities Center and Barnaby Conrad and Mary Critchfield Keeney Professor of History and Professor of Music, Brown University


<p> This is a rich and learned book, and also an extremely humane and attractive one. The final chapter, on Warburg and Bruno, has the status of revelation. It is absolutely fascinating, not only as a dialogue in intellectual history but also as a political allegory. Christopher D. Johnson pays close attention to Warburg's ethical and epistemological aspirations when he focuses on Warburg s final and uncompleted project: the Atlas of Images. Assembled during the years prior to his death in 1929, these collages strove to mount a history of cultural memory via a dense series of images from antiquity to the present. Michael P. Steinberg, Director of the Cogut Humanities Center and Barnaby Conrad and Mary Critchfield Keeney Professor of History and Professor of Music, Brown University


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