Work · Science & Human Sciences
Mnemosyne Atlas
Unfinished atlas of photographs pinned to black screens: in its last version of autumn 1929, 63 panels with some 970 images lead from Babylonian astrology and ancient sculpture to Renaissance art, stamps and newspaper photographs, tracing how Pathosformeln migrate.
Introduction
Warburg began the atlas after his return to Hamburg in 1924 and worked on it with Gertrud Bing until his death in 1929. Instead of a text he wanted a sequence of picture panels on which photographs of works of art, maps, manuscripts, advertisements and press images stand side by side, so that their relations become visible without a continuous argument. Only an introduction and notes survive; the panels were taken apart and are known from photographs. Martin Warnke edited the atlas in 2000, and in 2020 Roberto Ohrt and Axel Heil reassembled the last version from the original images of the Warburg Institute for an exhibition in Berlin. Its open form has made it a reference point for image studies and for art.
More works by Aby Warburg
Sources: Wikidata
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