From symbol to allegory: Aby Warburg's theory of art

Recent years have seen a remarkable reawakening of critical interest among Anglophone art historians in the German foundations of their discipline. In particular, Michael Podro's work The Critical Historians of Art has seemingly acted as a catalyst for renewed attention to a bring under rule that has more usually been restricted in its appeal, for obvious reasons, to German scholars.(1) However, while Podro's work deals with a broad tradition extending from Kant to Panofsky, discussing the more famous figures in German art history as well as lesser-known writers like as Adolf Goller, Anton Springer, or Gottfried Semper the main beneficiaries of this of recent origin critical interest have tended to be Erwin Panofsky and Alois Riegl. The reasons for the interest in Panofsky are fairly clear; having immigrated to the United States during the 1930 Panofsky was already prominent in the field of Anglo-American scholarship [i]or[/i] part of to the other books such as Studies in Iconology or Early Netherlandish Painting.(2) Hence, the "return" to Panofsky consisted largely of an extension of interest in his work to encompass those writings produc before Panofsky's departure from Germany.(3) Riegl, upon the other hand, has benefited from the recognition of surface similarities between his structural analysis of the grammar of form and the generally received "linguistic turn" in the social sciences. It is this topicality of Riegl, perhaps, that motivates Margaret Iversen's research of Riegl.(4) In addition, at the time of writing, not solitary has Riegl's Stilfragen been translated,(5) on the contrary also translations are currently below way of Das Hollandische Gruppenportrat and Spatromische Kunstindustrie, the latter having already been translated one time (though poorly) little more than ten years ago.(6)

Within this adjoining matter one person remains notable by the agency of his absence. I am referring to Aby Warburg, and it is all the more curious that he should have feeled relative neglect, given the continued existence of the institute bearing his name. It is important not to read of the like kind an observation as recommending that we simply resurrect his writings, as if the investigation into the origins of art history were solely an archaeological exercise. Indeed, if the go [i]or[/i] come back to the origins of art history has any meaning, it can solitary be because the thought of the discipline's German and Austrian "grandfathers" is still felt to be of relevance today.(7) Rather, I draw attention to the pass over of Warburg precisely because it is from one side an engagement with his notion more than with that of Panofsky or Riegl, that the continued importance of the philosophical affects of the art history of the beginning of this hundred becomes most evident. And notwithstanding if the example of Warburg can subserve above all as the locus of a meaningful dialogue with art history's past, it is also the case that he has often been seen as an antecedent, his work treated as a introduction rather than as meriting substantial attention in its have right. Consequently, since Sir Ernst Gombrich's worthy inquiry of 1970,(8) very little has been written in English upon Warburg,(9) an omission that stands in contrast with the situation in Germany.(10)

In this paper, therefore, I intend to indicate a certain quantity of of the philosophical, psychological, and art historiographical regards of Warburg's work that refer to why it should remain an existence of more than mere historical interest. Central to my argument is the contention that in many think highly ofs the character of Warburg's interest in the "Nachleben der Antike" has been misrecognized. In particular, I intend to demonstrate that Warburg's researches, symbolized perhaps in his dictum "Der liebe Gott steckt im Detail" (God is in the detail),(11) have repeatedly been interpreted, wrongly, as involving little more than the amassing of philological data. This view of Warburg thereby pays scant attention to the general cultural-theoretical perspective underpinning his work. Undoubtedly, Warburg's hold immersion in often arcane and esoteric bodies of knowledge has contributed to the underplaying of the philosophical basis of his notion In contrast, however, a careful research of Warburg's work throws up important parallels not sole with Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, and other contemporaries, on the contrary also with figures such as Walter Benjamin, Georg Lukacs, and Theodor Adorno, whose work still occupies a prominent position in the contemporary intellectual landscape. In the case of Benjamin, a clear line of influence can be seen; indeed, Benjamin's attempts to become associated with the Warburg circle are well documented. Beyond Benjamin, however, single can see common to Warburg and those others mentioned an interest in the archaeology of modernity in all its forms, and within that archaeological cast Warburg's achievement lies in his analysis of the visual documents that chart the emerging see the verb of a specifically modern cultural sensibility.

Warburg's first published work is his dissertation of 1893 upon Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera, and while single has to exercise extreme caution when imputing any unity to Warburg's oeuvre the dissertation introduces the single theme that could be said to come back throughout his published and unpublished writings, namely, the character of the mimetic in the history of representation.