warburg

Warburg an his Atlas

  • Aby Warburg,
    On Method (seminar 1928)
    translation ed. by Engramma editorial staff)
    A draft by Aby Warburg – prepared for the winter seminar organized in 1927/28 by the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg – is presented here in a new Italian translation. The text, devoted to research method for cultural studies, is an unfinished outline, used for the conclusive meeting of the seminar, that was commented with slides and photographic plates.
  • The seminars at the KBW
    Katia Mazzucco
    Between 1925 and 1928 the Warburg Library collaborated with Hamburg University, organizing seminars devoted to art history. The themes discussed focused on core issues of Warburg’s work: artistic culture in early Florentine Renaissance; the method of Kulturwissenschaft; historical value of books; the method in Renaissance studies, with special reference to Jacob Burckhardt; the value of cultural exchanges for artistic creativity in European Renaissance. Through seminary practice, Warburg could offer an actual application of his interdisciplinary method, and point to his Institute as a place where young scholars could find new technical and bibliographical aids for their research. During seminars, the method of pictures assembled on plates – a mark of Warburg’s work in these years – was tested: it was particularly by means of these seminars that Warburg could put to trial, from a practical and theoretical point of view, his own methodology.
  • Kienerk, Darwin, Warburg: ‘smiling formulae’ around 1900
    Antonella Sbrilli
    The series of “Smiles” (“Sorrisi”, drawings and lithographies), realized by Florentine artist Giorgio Kienerk in the years around 1900, can be regarded as a formal research on a typically fin de siècle subject. The series can be placed in a wider context of experiences that, at the beginning of C20th, in some ways can all be connected to the analysis of ‘smile’ in its various meanings. In these very years Henri Bergson publishes Le rire. Essai sur la signification du comique: in its bibliography, a text by Charles Darwin is quoted, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). This book is essential to the forming of Warburg’s thought: from this text, Warburg derived important considerations on the transmission of expressive forms and formulae of pathos; one of the plates in Darwin’s book is devoted to the evolution of the expression of smile (pl. III, chap. VIII). In the second half of C19th, Italian doctor Paolo Mantegazza published the work Fisiologia del piacere (Phisiology of Pleasure), a wide part of which was devoted to the morphology of laughing and smiling: this text, as Darwin’s one, could be found in Florence National Library, where Warburg was carrying out his studies. Indeed, interest in ‘laugh’ and ‘smile’ was diffused from the end of C19th: in these years artists like Filipp Maljavin, Medardo Rosso, and later Boccioni entitled some their works to smiling. In this context, the connection between Kienerk’s “Sorrisi” and Warburg’s studies on formulae of pathos becomes relevant, especially considering that Warburg knew and highly regarded Kienerk’s work.
  • "Progress is brevity". A ‘stain’ portrait of Aby Warburg
    Eugenia Querci
    In march 1901 Aby and Mary Warburg visited the Florentine atelier of the artist Giorgio Kienerk (1869-1948). In his diary, Warburg mentions a portrait of himself realized by Kienerk, in form of “mask”. In the corpus of Kienerk’s works Eugenia Querci identifies Warburg’s portrait, a black and white head painted with a ‘stain’ technique. Kienerk’s portrait seems to be the only non-photographic image of Warburg’s face. In more than one occasion Warburg had been critical towards the art of portrait, considered as expression of flattering: how can one explain, then, Warburg’s request to Kienerk for a portrait? Art and social life are in Warbug’s thought strictly connected: art, as well as society, has to get rid of superfluous. Kienerk’s “mask” is indeed a face where all unnecessary details are eliminated: the picture focuses on feelings and emotions, the same subjects to which in these years Warburg devotes his studies.
  • MNHMOSYNH in Venice. English version of the "alpha" path: plates A, B, C from Warburg’s Bilderatlas
    (ed. by Elizabeth Thomson)
    “Engramma” publishes the English version of materials from the exhibition MNEMOSYNE. L’Atlante di Aby Warburg (Ugo e Olga Levi Foundation, Venice 20 march-2 april 2004, catalogue ed. by Engramma Seminary Group, “Quaderni Iuav” 2004, Iuav University, Venice 2004). The work is based on the exhibition structure and its on-line catalogue (“La Rivista di Engramma” 35, august-september 2004, www.engramma.it link). The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne is divided into 12 sections marked by colours, and each plate is commented with notes by Gertrud Bing (based on original notes by Aby Warburg) and a brief account of contents edited by Engramma Seminary Group.
    First section: alpha path
  • Updating of the bibliographical survey on Aby Warburg and his works
    (ed. by Katia Mazzucco)
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