"In the 1920s, the historian of art and culture Aby Warburg (1866-1929) created his so-called 'Bilderatlas Mnemosyne' tracing recurring visual themes and patterns across time, from antiquity to the Renaissance and beyond to contemporary culture. His approach provides inspiration for today’s visually and digitally dominated world.
Aby Warburg studied the interplay of images from different periods and cultural contexts. He designed the 'Mnemosyne Atlas' to provide a pictorial representation of the influences of the ancient world in the Renaissance and beyond. The 'Mnemosyne Atlas' consisted of large black panels on which he placed photographic reproductions of artworks from the Middle East, European antiquity and the Renaissance, alongside contemporary newspaper clippings and advertisements.
In the years leading to his death in 1929, Warburg and his closest colleagues Gertrud Bing and Fritz Saxl experimented with the form and function of the Bilderatlas. Their goal was to present a publication designed for discussion among experts as well as the broader public. During the course of its creation, the 'Mnemosyne Atlas' developed into an instrument of cognition.
Warburg’s methodology set new standards: it consisted in rearranging canonized images and looking at them across epochs. His project traversed the boundaries between art history, philosophy and anthropology and was fundamental for the modern disciplines of visual and media studies. Today, his use of visual memory provides inspiration and alternative routes through a reality dominated by visual media.
In collaboration with the Warburg Institute in London, the curators Roberto Ohrt and Axel Heil have located most of the 971 illustrations from the 450,000 individual images in the Institute’s Photo Collection and Library to show Warburg’s unfinished magnum opus in its entirety for the first time since his death.
A folio volume gathers the 63 plates of Aby Warburg’s 'Mnemosyne Atlas' – newly photographed from the original, multi-colored images, along with essays by Axel Heil, Roberto Ohrt, Bernd Scherer, Bill Sherman and Claudia Wedepohl. (...) Another volume with extensive commentaries by the curators will be published in Fall 2020." (publisher's note, © Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2020)
- Ed(s)/Author(s)
- Roberto Ohrt, Axel Heil, Bernd M.Scherer, Bill Sherman, Claudia Wedepohl
- Book design
- Axel Heil, Christian Ertel, fluid editions
- Format
- HC, 44 x 60 cm., 184 pp., 83 full paged 170 text ills., text language: English
- Year of Release
- Hatte Cantz 2020