engramma - atlante di Aby Warburg

Atlas Genesis
[Genesi dell’Atlante]

by Seminario Mnemosyne

A. Orientation
B. Observatory
B.I_Interpretative Readings of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne
B.II_Exhibitions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and Relevant Documentation
B.III_Experiments with Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as method or heuristics
B.IV_The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art

A. Orientation

The term Nachleben combines the German word leben meaning “to live” or “life” with the prefix nach-. Prefixing leben with nach produces an after-life that is at once both a temporal and spatial position, as well as a form of resemblance. Nachleben as “afterlife” is simultaneously past life and uncanny life-like.

In the interwar period from 1924 to 1929, Aby Warburg, Fritz Saxl and Gertrud Bing intermittently worked together between Hamburg and Rome on a project Warburg titled Mnemosyne. Bilderreihen zu einer kulturwissenschaftlichen Betrachtung antikisierender Ausdrucksprägung (rather awkwardly translatable in English as Mnemosyne: Image [or Picture] series [strings] for a cultural scientific observation of antiquity-like expression-imprinting). It does not appear that the title Bilder-Atlas Mnemosyne was used by Warburg, though he did refer to the the project in notebooks and letters as "Atlas" and "Mnemosyne".

The present section of the Atlas Mnemosyne online edition is an attempt to document the Nachleben or afterlife of the Atlas, since Aby Warburg’s fatal cardiac arrest in 1929.

The being-similar-to-life, or like-life, of Nachleben connotes a perturbing redoubling of life within itself in a form of neoplasm or tumor. Nachleben as mise-en-abyme, or nested repetition of a thing within itself, allows for a subject immersed in life to observe its own embedded state from a distance. Nachleben is thus both negation and metamorphosis. By granting a positive identity to the destructive plasticity that animates form, Nachleben emphasizes life as a phase of intense morphogenesis between two deaths, the beginning of life and life’s end. Nachleben evokes a state of suspension that can only be understood beyond life in that it hovers both in and over it.

Reference to the index of the 1932 Leipzig-Berlin edition of Aby Warburg’s Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Works) confirms that the concept Nachleben der Antike - variously translated as afterlife, posthumous life and survival of antiquity - boasts the longest listing of page entries. However, the pages listed under the indexing Antike, Nachleben do not explicitly name Nachleben rather, they direct the reader to examples of it.

In the instance of the entry Laokoongruppe under Antike, Nachleben and Monumente, one of the pages listed is Warburg’s conclusion to the essay Der Eintritt des antikisierenden Idealstils in die Malerei der Frührenaissance (GS, 176). The passage discusses the Laocoon in relation to the superlativistischen pathetischen Ausdrucksfähigkeit (superlative pathetic expressiveness) and Unruhe (restlessness), properties that have been discussed by scholars as characteristic of Warburg’s particular use of Nachleben; the term Nachleben itself, however, is not mentioned

In order to lay the groundwork for further philological study of Nachleben, a bibliographic guide at the end of this section sites the precise page numbers of the Gesammelte Schriften in which derivations of the term Nachleben appear in the Leipzig-Berlin edition of Warburg’s collected works. Notably, the actual phrase Nachleben der Antike only surfaces in two instances: the first, in Gertrud Bing’s foreword to the volume (GS, XII), and the second, in a back page that advertises the publication of lectures held at the Bibliothek Warburg, including Adolph Goldschmidt’s Das Nachleben der antike Formen im Mittelalter, 1921-1922 (GS, 727).

This introduction to the term Nachleben is only intended as an orientation to contextualize what is proposed in this section as the "Nachleben of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne": a virtual observatory that traces the afterlife of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in exhibitions and experiments. The observatory is articulated in three parts: the first is dedicated to Interpretative Readings of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne; the second records Bilderatlas Mnemosyne exhibitions from 1993 to the present day; the third features a selection of Bilderatlas Mnemosyne experiments by scholars who work with the Atlas as a method or hermeneutic approach; the fourth documents work with the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in contemporary art and art writing.

Virtual and physical migrations of the Atlas, in digital and analog variations, as well as in consequent reiterations, purifications and contaminations through re-editions and reproductions, are a fundamental way the Atlas has acquired power as an image. On the other hand, it may also be said that intense reduplication and multiplication of the Atlas has subjected it to what is commonly referred to in art history and art writing as the loss of aura. A debated result of the particularly insistent replication and invocation of the Atlas in contemporary art has been its aestheticization as idiosyncratic free play with the juxtaposition of images. In a 2010 description of his work, a French-American artist used the name of the ancient Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, to make metonymic reference to Warburg’s Atlas as an image type. Like Leporello - the name of Don Giovanni’s servant given to identify the kind of concertina book the servant keeps as a register of his master’s conquests - Mnemosyne, the mother of the muses, is designated to name a myriad of approaches to another recollection device: a practice of collecting, ordering, storing and displaying images that combines tiling, superimposition, scaling and correlation through the processes of découpage, montage, collage and assemblage.

This section titled "Nachleben of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne" does not align itself with moral arguments against superficial references to the Atlas, nor does it assume a priori that superficiality must necessarily be avoided in work with the Atlas. Instead, it sets out to ask what the rise of the Atlas as an Idealstil, or “ideal style” (to use Warburg’s term) can teach students of the Atlas about the power of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as an image, and about its notion of survival by destructive plasticity, Nachleben.

Use of the German word Idealstil in this context is a deliberate reference to the fragmentary notes that accompany the Atlas. In publications of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne these notes are typically attributed to Warburg and cited as transcribed by Bing. The Engramma online edition of the Atlas Mnemosyne republishes the fragments in German, Italian and English, alongside individual Atlas plates.

Notably, the word Nachleben is an absent presence in the fragmentary notes published to accompany the Atlas. Setting out to follow the various migrations and iterations of the Atlas since Warburg’s death thus inevitably leads to the following conclusion: a similar attention to key terms like Nachleben identified by scholars as central to Warburg’s thought through study of his writings, can also be conducted in close study of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. Rather than study the Atlas as an illustration of terms Warburg employs in his essays, the latter approach to research privileges the proximity granted the fragmentary notes written to accompany the Atlas plates. In its commitment to Warburg’s interest in the impresa - the emblem or devise - it insists on close study of the interchange among voice, writing, picture, position, projection and idea, as manifested in Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne presentations and experiments.

To further encourage a similar approach, this introduction to the Nachleben of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne concludes by listing a series of Nachleben-related terms drawn directly from Warburg’s accompanying Atlas notes; it suggests these terms be considered in their relation to material, graphic and compositional qualities emphasized in individual Atlas plates. This list of terms from the Atlas notes focuses on the concept of Nachleben as a specific form of destructive plasticity that the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne traces by engaging with in praxis.

The selected terms are Entwicklung (Evolution; Plate C and Plate 20), Abtragung (Erosion; Plate 1), Vorprägungen (Imprinting; Plates 4, 5, 6 and 8), Träger (Carrier or Bearer; Plate 28 and Plate 29), Vehikel (Vehicle; Plate 32 and Plate 34), Eindringen (Penetration or Irruption; Plates 37) and Domestizierung (Domestication; Plate 46).

Sources from Gesammelte Schriften (1932) for Warburg’s use of the term Nachleben

A. Warburg, Bildniskunst und florentinisches Burgertum (1902) in Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Gertrud Bing. Vol. 1. Leipzig-Berlin: B.G. Teubner. p. 118.

A. Warburg. Francesco Sassettis letztwillige Verfugung (1907) in Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Gertrud Bing. Vol. 1. Leipzig-Berlin: B.G. Teubner. p. 156.

A. Warburg. Mediceische Feste am Hofe der Valois auf Flandr. Teppichen in der Galleria degli Uffizi (1927) in Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Gertrud Bing. Vol. 1. Leipzig-Berlin: B.G. Teubner. p. 258

A. Warburg. Italienisch Kunst und internationale Astrologie im Palazzo Schifanoja zu Ferrara (1912) in Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Gertrud Bing. Vol. 2. Leipzig-Berlin: B.G. Teubner. pp. 461, 463, 479.

A. Warburg. Orientalisierende Astrologie (1926) in Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Gertrud Bing. Vol. 2. Leipzig-Berlin: B.G. Teubner. p. 564.

A. Warburg. Footnotes to Heidnisch-antike Weissang in Wort und Bild zu Luthers Zeiten (1920) in Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Gertrud Bing. Vol. 2. Leipzig-Berlin: B.G. Teubner. p. 649.

B. Observatory

All titles are hyperlinked to either text or video. Each title is followed by bibliographic information and a short explanatory summary with additional hyperlinks. Contact ebovino@ucsd.edu to suggest additional references.

B.I Interpretative Readings of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne

2000

Tavole dell’Atlante della Memoria. Introduzione alle Tavole di Mnemosyne e la Tavola 5. "La Rivista di Engramma". Issue 1. September 2000.
The first issue of Engramma was dedicated to an introduction to the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and a large-scale reproduction of tavola 5 or Plate 5. It also featured a series of accompanying materials including percorsi visivi (visual pathways), didascalie (identifying captions), a saggio interpretativo (interpretative essay), a tavola indice (index plate), and a tavola riassuntiva (recapitulory plate). A series of issues of Engramma following issue 1 continue this focus on single Atlas plates. Each issue reproduces a single plate and provides accompanying materials similar to those provided in issue 1. To view issue 1 and Engramma’s first experiment in study of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, click here. To explore other issues of Engramma, click on the section archivi in the menu bar at the top of the Engramma homepage and select one of the early issue numbers.

2001

Introduzione alla Tavola Fantasma. Tavola Fantasma ex tavola 42 di Mnemosyne: dal Teatro della Morte al Teatro della Pietà. "La Rivista di Engramma". Issue 6. February/March 2001.
Issue 6 of Engramma features an example of a tavola fantasma (ghost plate) entitled Mnemosyne: dal Teatro della Morte al Teatro della Pietà (Mnemosyne: from the Theatre of Death to the Theatre of Devotion and Compassion). A tavola fantasma is a display featuring initial stages of work with images from the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. It is possible that a tavola fantasma may potentially result in the construction of a new Atlas plate. It is important to note that the editorial board of Engramma considers the tavola fantasma to be preparatory work and not an actual Atlas plate. Click here to see the tavola fantasma and to read what Engramma refers to as its saggio interpretativo or interpretative essay. For all of issue 6, click here.

2002

Tavola Tematica ex. 53. Dolore e Malinconia. "La Rivista di Engramma". Issue 14. February 2002.
Issue 53 of Engramma features an example of a tavola tematica (thematic plate) entitled Dolore e Malinconia (Pain and Melancholy). Like the tavola fantasma, a tavola tematica is an approach to working with the Bilderatlas Mnemsoyne: it involves collecting a repertory of images identified with a particular theme identified in the Atlas. It then brings related images together from their various positions in the Atlas onto a single virtual display panel. Also in this case, it is important to note that the editorial board of Engramma considers the tavola tematica to be a way of working with the Atlas, and does not consider it to be a new Atlas plate. Click here to see the tavola tematica and to read what Engramma refers to as its saggio interpretativo (interpretive essay). For all of issue 53, click here.

Dolore e Malinconia. Tavola ex novo con saggio. Ex Mnemosyne Atlas 53. "La Rivista di Engramma". Issue 15. March/April 2002.
Issue 15 of Engramma features further work on the tavola tematica described above in the bibliographic reference to issue 14. Click here to see further development of the tavola tematica entitled Dolore e Malinconia (Pain and Melancholy) in Issue 15 and to read its accompanying saggio interpretativo (interpretive essay). For all of issue 15, click here.

2004

Indice Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. "La Rivista di Engramma". Issue 35. August/September 2004.
Issue 35 of Engramma presents all of the materials displayed at the Venice exhibition of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne titled Iter per Labyrinthum at the Fondazione Ugo and Olga Levi. The exhibition used the photographic reproduction of the Atlas created by the Daedalus Society, Vienna in 1993. For more information on the Deadalus Edition of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, scroll down to the 1993 listings under II Exhibitions. To explore Issue 35 of Engramma and its fourteen percorsi or pathways of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (including percorso alpha and percorso omega), click here.

2009

Transdisciplinarity Workshop. Organized by lecturer M. Punt, University of Plymouth, as part of the project OP IPA Slovenia-Croatia 2007 - 2013. Transdisciplinary and new media culture developing cross-border areas. New Media Cross-Border (NMCB). ACT (Autonomous Center), Čakovec, Croatia. 23 September - 25 September 2011.
This workshop on “transdisciplinarity” and its attempt to create a “dynamic cross-border area” in frontier regions between Slovenia and Croatia, used the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as a method for studying what workshop descriptions refer to as “the semi-material object”. For the occasion of the Čakovec workshop, participants were asked to “familiarize” themselves with the Mnemosyne Atlas by reading the Medien Kunst Netz (Media Art Net) entry for Mnemosyne by R. Frieling, and a Frieze Magazine article on the Atlas written by curator B. Dillon (click here for the entry of Medien Kunst Netz authored by R. Frieling; scroll down to the listings in the Exhibitions section for a description of the article and a link). For more information on the workshop, click here.

2012

Aby Warburg – Mnemosyne der Bilderatlas Teil I – VI, VIII, IX – XI. Presentations and interpretations of individual Atlas plates from the Bilderatlas Mnemsoyne. 8.Salon, Hamburg. 2012 and ongoing.
8.Salon in Hamburg has been working on a series of large-scale reconstructions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne since 2012. It displayed these reconstructions of the Atlas alongside works by artists Andy Hope 30, O. Metzel and B. Reiß at the Kunstraum Muenchen in 2014. As indicated by the links provided in the “Warburg” section on the 8.Salon website, the 8.Salon work with Mnemosyne appears to have been inspired by the Engramma online edition of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. For more information on 8. Salon and its workshops dedicated to individual Atlas plates, click here.

Engramma da 0 a 100. Mnemosyne Atlas Online new edition. "La Rivista di Engramma". Issue 100. September/October 2012.
Issue 100 of Engramma inaugurated a new design and layout for the journal, including a menu bar with a section titled temi di ricercam (research themes): the first research theme 'Mnemosyne Atlas' features an updated online re-edition of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne online. For Engramma’s revised edition of the Mnemosyne Atlas online, regularly updated, click here. To read Issue 100, which includes contributions by G. Didi-Huberman, K. Forster and S. Settis, click here (or click the Archivio section of the Engramma homepage and select Issue 100).

2013

Mnemosyne. Meanderings through Aby Warburg’s Atlas. Curated by C. Johnson, C. Wedepohl, P. Hohendahl, P. Potter and K. Walker. New York: Cornell University, 2013.
This website is a project of Cornell University created to accompany the book Memory, Metaphor and Aby Warburg’s Atlas of Images, 2012, by literary scholar C. Johnson. It reproduces ten of the photographed panels from the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne using new scans of the surviving photographs provided by the Warburg Institute. The site allows users to zoom in on individual images for closer inspection and provides relevant identifying information for individual images. It also provides a section entitled “guided panels” in which individual panels are interpreted by Johnson and other scholars. To visit the website, click here.

Exhibitions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and Relevant Documentation
(cross-referenced in the Bibliography)

This section builds on the work of K. Mazzucco and her Scheda Editoriale dell’Atlante Mnemosyne di Aby Warburg (Editorial Record of Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas) in "La Rivista di Engramma". Issue 29. December 2012.

1992

Die Beredsamkeit des Leibes (The Eloquence of the Body). Albertina, Vienna. Specific Dates Unknown.
According to descriptions of the exhibition, some of the “subjects” Warburg presented in his Atlas were shown at the Albertina in 1992 as part of the exhibition Die Beredsamkeit des Leibes (The Eloquence of the Body). For an article on this exhibition (“Geschichten für zwei Hände” by P. Kopphoff) in the German weekly Die Zeit (Nr. 24, 5 June 1992), click here.

1993

Mnemosyne. Aby Warburg. Curated by the Daedalus society, Vienna. Organized by W. Rappl and G. Fischer. Designed by A. and P. Poirier and T. Kierlinger. Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. 25 January - 13 March 1993.
This version of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne is commonly referred to as the Daedalus-edition and featured a reconstruction of the Atlas using photographic reproductions created in 1929 before Warburg’s death. The original panels of the Atlas were lost in the transfer of the KBW (Kulturwissenchaft Bibliothek Warburg) from Hamburg to London in 1933.
The individual images, either decontextualized or photographed by Warburg and arranged on the plates of the Atlas, were identified in the 1929 photographic reproductions of the Atlas by G. Swoboda, W. Pichler, W. Rappl, A. Sinnl, M. Heintz, C. Dorner, M. Deike and M. Koos; each plate was then reconstructed and provided with captions. In this process, scholars used preparatory work by Warburg's Bilderatlas Mnemosyne collaborators G. Bing and F. Saxl, as well as research conducted by E. Gombrich, D. Bauerle-Willert, P. Huisstede, M. Warnke and C. Brink. G. Fischer donated the complete ensemble of the reconstructed plates to the Albertina, Vienna, in 2000.
Scholars studying the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne now use the Akademie Verlag-edition of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne edited by M. Warnke and C. Brink in 2000, with re-editions in 2003 and 2008; The Akademie Verlag-edition includes the notes co-authored by Warburg and Bing for each plate and features full and partial identifications for all of the images. For more information on the Daedalus society and a timeline of its various activities, click here.

1994

Aby M. Warburg. Mnemosyne. Daedalus-edition exhibition. Kunsthaus Hamburg, Hamburg. 1 June - 15 July 1994.
For more information on the Daedalus-edition, see the 1993 listing above for the exhibition organized at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. For the Dölling und Galitz Verlag catalogue of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne plates in format Leporello, published on the occasion of the Hamburg Kunsthaus exhibition, click here.

1996

Mnemosyne. Aby Warburg. Daedalus-edition exhibition. Wiener Messepalast, Vienna. Exact dates unknown.
For more information on the Daedalus-edition, see the 1993 listing above for the exhibition organized at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. The only documentation found on the Messepalast exhibition (currently the site of the Vienna Museumsquartier) is the article Einst neue Methode: Erinnerungkunst in the daily Austrian newspaper Der Standard (30 November 2007). For the full article, click here.

1998

Mnemosyne. L'Atlante della Memoria di Aby Warburg. Daedalus-edition exhibition. Organized by I. Spinelli and R. Venuti. Santa Maria della Scala, Siena. 29 April - 13 July 1998.
For more information on the Daedalus-edition, see the 1993 listing above for the exhibition organized at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. For the Artemide Edizioni catalogue (1998) produced for the Siena Daedalus-edition exhibition, click here.

Mnemosyne. L’Atlante della Memoria di Aby Warburg. Daedalus-edition exhibition. Organized by I. Spinelli and R. Venuti. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. 19 December 1998 - 16 January 1999.
For more information on the Daedalus-edition, see the 1993 listing above for the exhibition organized at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. For the Artemide Edizioni catalogue (1998) produced for the Florence-Rome Daedalus-edition exhibitions, click here.

1999

Mnemosyne. L’Atlante della Memoria di Aby Warburg. Daedalus Edition Exhibition. Organized by I. Spinelli and R. Venuti. Biblioteca Hertziana, Rome. 19 January - 6 February 1999
For more information on the Daedalus-edition, see the 1993 listing above for the exhibition organized at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. For the Artemide Edizioni catalogue (1998) produced for the Florence-Rome Daedalus-edition exhibitions, click here.

Mnemosyne. L’Atlante della Memoria di Aby Warburg. Daedalus Edition Exhibition. Organized by I. Spinelli and R. Venuti. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples. 10 - 27 February 1999.
For more information on the Daedalus-edition, see the 1993 listing above for the exhibition organized at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. For the Artemide Edizioni catalogues (1998) of the Italian Daedalus Edition exhibitions, click here.

Mnemosyne. Aby Warburg's Atlas of Memory. Daedalus-edition exhibition. Organized by I. Spinelli and R. Venuti. Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery, Tel Aviv University. 18 November 1999 - 12 January 2000.
For more information on the Daedalus-edition, see the 1993 listing above for the exhibition organized at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. A catalogue in Hebrew was published by the Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery to accompany the Tel Aviv exhibition. For the website of the Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery, click here.

2001

Mnemosyne. Image World of Aby Warburg. Sources of the Images and Bibliography. Curated by Department of Image-Cultures, Wako University. Exact dates unknown.
An exhibition catalogue was published by the university to accompany the exhibition. For a short description of the catalogue, see K. Mazzucco’s Della Recente Fortuna Editoriale di Aby Warburg in issue 56 of Engramma.

2004

MNHMOΣYNE. L'Atlante di Aby Warburg. Daedalus-edition exhibition. Organized by Seminario di Engramma, Università Iuav of Venice. Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi. 20 March - 2 April 2004.
For more information on the Daedalus-edition, see the 1993 listing above for the exhibition organized at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. For the catalogue published by Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi, click here. For full documentation of the exhibition in "La Rivista di Engramma", click here.

2007

Aby Warburg. The Mnemosyne Atlas. Daedalus-edition exhibition. Albertina, Vienna. 23 November 2007 - 13 January 2008.
For more information on the Albertina exhibition, click here. For more information on the Daedalus-edition, see the 1993 listing above for the exhibition organized at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. For a description of the Daedalus Edition, refer to the 1993 listing above of Mnemosyne. Aby Warburg at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

2008

Mnemosyne. Aby Warburg. Daedalus-edition exhibition. OSA Archivum, Budapest. 4 April - 4 May 2008.
For more information on the Daedalus-edition, see the 1993 listing above for the exhibition organized at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. To read about the Budapest exhibition and the Open Society Archives, click here.

2011

ATLAS. How to carry the world on one's back? Curated by Georges Didi-Huberman. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 26 Nov 2010 - 28 March 2011, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 7 May - 7 August 2011 and Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, 1 October - 27 November 2011.
This experimental exhibition is included in this section (B.II. Exhibitions) because it featured printed reproductions of individual plates from Warburg’s Atlas. The printed reproductions of the Atlas were surrounded by the works of artists and scholars whose respective practices art historian G. Didi-Huberman identified as sharing affinities with processes at work in Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. It is important to note that the objective of the Didi-Huberman’s exhibition was not to explore instances of direct influence.
The exhibition catalogue published by TF Editores, Madrid 2010 is out of print. For a descriptions of the exhibition as it took form in various cities, click the cities in the bibliographic reference above. For an interview with Didi-Huberman and video documentation of the exhibition at the Museo Reina Sofia, click here.

2012

Die entfesselte Antike. Aby Warburg und die Geburt der Pathosformel in Hamburg (Antiquity Unleashed. Aby Warburg and the Origins of the Pathos-formula in Hamburg). Curated by M. A.Hurttig und T. Ketelsen. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg. 27 March - 26 June 2012.
This exhibition presented between forty to fifty drawings and prints used by Warburg from the collections of the Hamburger Kunsthalle to present the 1905 lecture on Dürer in which he is said to have introduced the concept of Pathosformel (Pathos-formula). Works by M. Klinger, A. Böcklin, A. Mantegna and A. Dürer, among others, were displayed for the occasion. For the Walther König catalogue with texts by C. Wedepohl und U. Rehm, click here.

Die entfesselte Antike. Aby Warburg und die Geburt der Pathosformel in Hamburg (Antiquity Unleashed. Aby Warburg and the Origins of the Pathos-formula in Hamburg). Curated by M. A.Hurttig und T. Ketelsen. Hamburger Kunstalle, Hamburg and Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Köln. 2 March - 28 May 2012.
For a description of this exhibition, which traveled to Cologne from Hamburg, see the listing directly above. For a more information and video documentation of the Cologne exhibition, click here.

Histoire de fantômes pour grandes personnes (Ghost Stories for Adults). Curated by G. Didi-Huberman, with installation design by A. Gisinger. Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing. 5 October - 5 December 2012.
This exhibition is also listed under the 2012 listings in B.III. Experiments and B.IV. Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art (scroll down) because it features an experimental expansion on Plate 42, which it surrounds with new images, many of which are considered examples of contemporary art. It is included here because it appears to be the first documented exhibition in which an enlarged projection of a plate from the original Bilderatlas Mnemosyne was displayed. The installation design for the exhibition was developed in collaboration with A. Gisinger. For the Le Fresnoy archived description of the exhibition, click here. For a France Culture radio special on the exhibition edited with images from the exhibition, click here.

Mnemosyne 42. Essay by G. Didi-Huberman on the Le Fresnoy exhibition (French). "La Rivista di Engramma". Issue 100. September/October 2012.
For Engramma’s republication of the original French version of G. Didi-Huberman’s essay on the Le Fresnoy exhibition (described above), click here.

Mnemosyne 42. English translation of essay by G. Didi-Huberman on the Le Fresnoy exhibition. Manifesta Journal. 16 July 2012.
The Manifesta Journal is an international project dedicated to the study of curating practices started by the Manifesta Foundation, Amsterdam. For the Manifesta Journal’s English translation of G. Didi-Huberman’s essay on the Le Fresnoy exhibition (described in the listing for Histoire de Fantômes pour Grandes Personnes provided above), click here.

MNEMOSYNE ATLAS: Aby Warburg's Cosmos of Images. Curated by J. Tanaka. Images with permission of the Warburg Institute, London. Komaba-campus. University of Tokyo. Tokyo. 15 - 22 December 2012.
This exhibition featured reproductions of the original Bilderatlas Mnemosyne with permission from the Warburg Institute, London. It is also included in section I on experiments with Warburg’s Atlas as a method or heuristics (scroll up) because it included three new plates whose construction was inspired by the Atlas. For the catalogue of the exhibition, click here.

2013

Atlas, Suite. Curated by G. Didi-Huberman, with installation design by A. Gisinger. Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro. 28 May 2013 - 28 August 2013.
This exhibition is a revisitation of the original Le Fresnoy exhibition (see the 2012 listing for Histoire de Fantômes pour Grandes Personnes provided above) with site-specific differences. For video documentation of the exhibition and related symposia, click here.

2014

Afteratlas. Curated by G. Didi-Huberman, with installation design by A. Gisinger. Beirut Art Center, Beirut. 23 January 2014 - 22 March 2014.
This exhibition is a revisitation of the original Le Fresnoy exhibition (see the 2012 listing for Histoire de Fantômes pour Grandes Personnes provided above) with site-specific differences. For images of the exhibition, click here.

Nouvelles histoires de fantômes [New Ghosts Stories]. Curated by G. Didi-Huberman, with installation design by A. Gisinger. Palais de Tokyo, Paris. 14 February - 7 September 2014.
This exhibition is a revisitation of the original Le Fresnoy exhibition (see the 2012 listing for Histoire de Fantômes pour Grandes Personnes provided above) with site-specific differences. For video documentation of the exhibition, click here.

Instrument Erinnerung Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne von Aby Warburg (Memory Instrument – Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne). Organized in cooperation with the 8.Salon, Hamburg. Kunstraum Muenchen. 22 May - 15 June 2014.
This exhibition featured a series of large-scale reconstructions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne worked on at 8.Salon in Hamburg between the years 2012 to 2014. It displayed these reconstructions of the Atlas alongside works by artists Andy Hope 30, O. Metzel and B. Reiß. The curatorial statement for the exhibition asserts that the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne is not only an “instrument to be decrypted but to be applied” (English translation from the original German. As indicated by the links provided in the “Warburg” section on the 8.Salon website, the 8.Salon work with Mnemosyne appears to have been inspired by the Engramma online edition of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. To read more about the exhibition, click here. For more information on 8. Salon and its workshops dedicated to individual Atlas plates, click here.

B.III Experiments with Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as method or heuristics
(in chronological order from earliest to most recent)

2001

Introduzione alla Tavola Fantasma. Tavola Fantasma ex tavola 42 di Mnemosyne: dal Teatro della Morte al Teatro della Pietà."La Rivista di Engramma". Issue 6. February/March 2001.
Issue 6 of Engramma features an example of a tavola fantasma (ghost plate) entitled Mnemosyne: dal Teatro della Morte al Teatro della Pietà (Mnemosyne: from the Theatre of Death to the Theatre of Devotion and Compassion). A tavola fantasma is a display featuring initial stages of work with images from the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. It is possible that a tavola fantasma may potentially result in the construction of a new Atlas plate. It is important to note that the editorial board of Engramma considers the tavola fantasma to be preparatory work and not an actual Atlas plate. Click here to see the tavola fantasma and to read what Engramma refers to as its saggio interpretativo or interpretative essay. For all of issue 6, click here.

2002

2008

Tavola ’68: Mnemosyne 1968 – Mnemosyne 2008. "La Rivista di Engramma". Issue 68. December 2008.
Issue 68 of Engramma features the first example of use of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as a heuristic device. All previous exercises with reading the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne can be understood as leading up to this experiment. The editorial staff of Engramma considers this plate to be the first example of an attempt at a new Atlas plate. The issue features a series of articles – including excerpts of essays by filmmaker, poet and philosopher P. P. Pasolini, psychoanalyst and philosopher J. Lacan and philosopher M. Foucault – along with original essays by Engramma contributors and the experimental Atlas plate Tavola ’68 or Plate ’68; the latter was created by collaborators of the Seminario Mnemosyne (Mnemosyne seminar) at the Centro studio classicA IUAV. An essay accompanies Tavola ‘68. Click here to see Tavola ’68 and to read its accompanying essay. For all of Issue 68, click here .

TASWIR Atlas. V Homage to Aby Warburg. Conceived by A.S. Bruckstein Çoruh in cooperation with the Berliner Festspiele and ha’atelier. TASWIR Project Atlas. Design by Benjamin Metz. 2008 and ongoing.
An initiative sponsored by the Goethe Institut and the Robert Bosch Stiftung, the TASWIR Atlas was first presented in an eighteen-room exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin in 2009-2010, and then in the rooms of Aby Warburg’s library in Hamburg for the occasion of the conference Jewish Concepts of Law and Modern Legal Theory in 2010. According to the project’s description, TASWIR, “playfully relocates the axis of European Modernity, which in Warburg’s Mnemosyne is largely seen as an extension of the Renaissance and of classical antiquity, and positions classical exhibits and topics from Islamic and Jewish traditions as constituents of a contemporary order of things that can no longer be called Western.” In its description of its Atlas, TASWIR cites German philosopher of religion J. Guttmann and Austrian scholar of Jewish art history D. Kauffmann’s Geschichte der Attributenlehre (1877). TASWIR’s work with the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne is largely informed by interpretations of the Atlas by art historians G. Didi-Huberman and C. Zumbusch and its perspective on the Atlas is influenced by writing on W. Benjamin’s Arcades Project by scholars S. Buck-Morss, C. Zumbusch and artist J. Toufic. The project privileges the concept of Schlitterlogik or logic of slipping or slithering and the Ikonologie des Zwischenraumes or Iconology of Intervals. TASWIR describes its Atlas as “keep[ing] a kind of “surface-record” of its own doings, a digital palimpsest, overwriting its own history with continuous, yet ephemeral, visual, sonic, philosophical configurations.” For a description of the project, click here. For the TASWIR atlas, click here.
For an essay on what the TASWIR Project refers to as the “tradition” of “palimpsest, abyssal matrix of creation” that it claims has been “repressed by European memory,” see the cited essay by Talmudic scholar D. Boyarin, The Song of Songs, Lock or Key: The Holy Song as a Mashal.in Reading of Midrash, 1990, and other essays by the same author.

2011

TASWIR Projects (2009 and ongoing). Essay by A.S. Bruckstein Çoruh. IBRAAZ: Contemporary Visual Culture in North Africa and the Middle East. 2 November 2012.
An essay in the online journal IBRAAZ by curator A.S. Bruckstein Çoruh on the TASWIR exhibitions and Atlas.

ATLAS. How to carry the world on one's back? Curated by Georges Didi-Huberman. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 26 November 2010 - 28 March 2011, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 7 May - 7 August 2011 and Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, 1 October - 27 November 2011.
This experimental exhibition is included in this section because it attempted to create a new walk-through Atlas: printed reproductions of individual plates from the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne were arranged in exhibition display alongside works of artists and scholars whose respective practices art historian G. Didi-Huberman identified as sharing affinities with processes at work in Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. It is important to note that the objective of the exhibition was not to explore instances of direct influence. The exhibition catalogue published by TF Editores, Madrid 2010 is out of print. For a descriptions of the exhibition as it took form in various cities, click the cities in the bibliographic reference above. For an interview with Didi-Huberman and video documentation of the exhibition at the Museo Reina Sofia, click here.

Histoire de fantômes pour grandes personnes (Ghost Stories for Adults). Curated by G. Didi-Huberman, with installation design by A. Gisinger. Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing. 5 October - 5 December 2012.
This exhibition is also listed under the 2012 listings in sections II and III on Bilderatlas Mnemosyne exhibitions and Warburg’s Mnemosynein Contemporary Art (scroll down) because it appears to be the first documented exhibition in which an enlarged projection of a plate from the originalBilderatlas Mnemosyne was displayed, and because it can also be considered an exhibition of contemporary art. The installation design for the exhibition was developed in collaboration with artist A. Gisinger. The Fresnoy exhibition is also included here, in section I on experiments with Warburg’s Atlas because its expansion upon Atlas Plate 42 is an example of experimentation with the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as a method or heuristics. For the Le Fresnoy archived description of the exhibition, click here. For a France Culture radio special on the exhibition edited with images from the exhibition, click here.

2013

2014

Nouvelles histoires de fantômes [New Ghosts Stories]. Curated by G. Didi-Huberman, with installation design by A. Gisinger. Palais de Tokyo, Paris. 14 February- 7 September 2014.
This exhibition is a revisitation of the original Le Fresnoy exhibition (see the 2012 listing for Histoire de Fantômes pour Grandes Personnes provided above) with site-specific differences. For video documentation of the exhibition, click here.

Instrument Erinnerung Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne von Aby Warburg (Memory Instrument – Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne). Organized in cooperation with the 8.Salon, Hamburg. Kunstraum Muenchen. 22 May – 15 June 2014.
This exhibition featured a series of large-scale reconstructions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne worked on at 8.Salon in Hamburg between the years 2012 to 2014. It displayed these reconstructions of the Atlas alongside works by artists Andy Hope 30, O. Metzel and B. Reiß. The curatorial statement for the exhibition asserts that the Bilderatlas is not only an “instrument to be decrypted but to be applied” (English translation from the original German. As indicated by the links provided in the “Warburg” section on the 8.Salon website, the 8.Salon work with Mnemosyne appears to have been inspired by the Engramma online edition of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. To read more about the exhibition, clickhere. For more information on 8. Salon and its workshops dedicated to individual Atlas plates, click here.

B.IV The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art
(in chronological order)

1962

Atlas. A collection of photographs, newspaper cuttings and sketches by G. Richter. 1962 and ongoing.
Reference to Richter’s Atlas in relation to Warburg and the Bilderatlas Mnmemosyne is frequent though debatable. Three articles in Engramma issue 100 address this: C. Baldacci’s Tra Cosmologia Privata e Atlante Culturale: Hanne Darboven e Gerhard Richter; C. Franzoni’s Warburg e l’arte contemporanea: alcune note; A. Mengoni’s Dalla Giustapposizione alla Correlazione: su fotografia e memoria in Atlas di Gerhard Richter. In the 2013 conference Aby Warburg: Art, Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis held at the Helix Center, New York, the likening of Richter’s Atlas to Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne was a significant point of contention in roundtable discussions. For the video documentation of the Helix Center conference, see the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne bibliography. For issue 100 of Engramma, click here.

1983

Kulturgeschichte 1880 – 1983 (Cultural History 1880 – 1983), 1980 – 1983. An encyclopedic installation by H. Darboven. Permanently installed at Dia:Beacon, New York.
The installation Kulturgeschicthe 1880 - 1983 comprises 1,590 sheets measuring 27.5 x 19.75 inches and nineteen sculptural objects. In a description of the work provided by L. Cooke on the website of Dia:Beacon where it is permanently installed, the installation is described as “weaving together cultural, social and historical references with autobiographical documents [;] it synthesizes collective memory with personal history, the social and the private.” In her article in issue 100 of Engramma, C. Baldacci writes: the Kulturgeschichte [by Darboven] is therefore a room of “schizophrenic” memory where the past is neither recounted, nor represented, but rather evoked in a manner that is flat and detached, at times subjective and detailed, at others metaphoric and universal. In the installation, the history of art enters the ebb of culture in full force, just as Aby Warburg taught with his Bilderatlas [Mnemosyne], an example that Darboven must certainly have considered, seeing as Warburg and Darboven shared Hamburg origins.” For Baldacci’s article in issue 100 of Engramma, scroll down to the 2012 listing below. For the Dia:Beacon description of Darboven’s installation, click here. To view the special online project produced to accompany a 1996-1997 exhibition of Darboven’s Kulturgeschichte 1880 – 1983 at Dia’s Chelsea location, click here.

1987

Pathosgeste – MGSMO (Mach große, schlagkräftige, machtdemonstrierende Objekte!). A work by A. Oppermann exhibited at Documenta Kassel 8. 1987.
According to C. Franzoni’s description of Oppermann’s Pathosgeste – MGSMO, “in the installation there were photographs, newspaper clippings, notes, silhouettes cut from photographic enlargements, reproductions of the installation itself. Evident references to the themes and structure of the Bilderatlas [Mnemosyne] were not lacking: [the work makes] recourse to heterogenous materials, the interdependence of word and image, and reflections on gesture” (English translation from the original Italian). In fact, as Franzoni notes, it would seem to be no matter of mere consequence that an artist who implies reference Warburg’s Pathosformel with the term Pathosgeste, lived in Warburg’s native city of Hamburg. Indeed, the same might be said of Hanne Darboven, her house-studio and her installation Cultural History, 1880 – 1983 (for more on this installation, scroll up to the 1983 listing above). Franzoni cites a 2011 article by Bilderatlas Mnemosyne scholar M. Warnke and C. Wedemeyer in which the software used to visualize three of Oppermann’s installations on the University of Lueneburg website is said to have been explicitly inspired by the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. For the hyperimage documentation of Oppermann’s installations, click here. For Franzoni’s article in issue 100 of Engramma, scroll down to the 2012 listing below.

2000

Warburghiana. A collective created by the Italian artists A. Andrighetto, D. Bellini, G. Codeghini with critic E. Grazioli.
As described by the Warburghiana, the activities of the collective include publications, the web magazine Desktop and live public meetings called Concerti Sinottici or Synoptic Concerts. For the members of the collective, the Warburghiana refers to a format, or rather, a way of organizing or arranging matters and materials of interest to the group. For more on the Warburghiana, click here. Scholar C. Franzoni wrote about the Warburghiana in an article in issue 100 of Engramma. For more on this article, scroll down to the 2012 listing below.

2003

That Bodies Speak Has Been Known for a Long Time. Curated by S. Breitwieser. Generali Foundation, Vienna. 22 January - 25 April 2003.
An explicitly stated objective of this exhibition is to explore Warburg’s term Pathosformel. For the exhibition program, click here. For the Walther König catalogue of the exhibition, with texts by D. Kamer, U. Biemann, S. Adorf, G. Agamben, A. Streither and J. Koether, click here.

That Bodies Speak Has Been Known for a Long Time. Review of the eponymous exhibition by N. Scheyerer. Frieze Magazine. Issue 83. May 2004.
For a description of the Generali Foundation exhibition, see the listing directly above. To read Scheyerer’s Frieze review, click here.

2004

The Shape, The Scent, The Feel of Things, 2004 - 2005. A performance by J. Jonas commissioned and performed at Dia:Beacon, New York. October 2005.
The Feminist Art Base reprints a review by C. Taft from Artforum.com in which the project is described as the “result of Jonas’s research into German art historian Aby Warburg’s essay about a fin de siècle trip to the American Southwest. Warburg's musings served as therapeutic tool aiding his recovery from a mental breakdown, and Jonas's installation retains this condition of transformation.” The performance features two “archive boards” as props and “totemic objects.” For an excerpt of video documentation of the performance at the Haus der Kulturen Welt in Berlin, click here. For the MIT catalogue of the exhibition, click here. C. Franzoni discusses this work in an article in issue 100 of Engramma. For more information on this article, scroll down to the 2012 listing below.

Venus Transit, 2004. A work by artist W. Tillmans. Exhibited in 50 Moons of Saturn. The Second Torino Triennale. Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and Palazzina della Società Promotrice delle Belle Arti, Turin. Curated by D. Birnbaum. 6 November 2008 - 1 February 2009.
Venus Transit, 2004, is a work by W. Tillmans which curator N. Cullinan described in his Artforum review, 2^nd Turin Triennial, as an “homage to Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas.” For a copy of the article purchased and republished online by the information service MutualArt.com, click here. For the Skira catalogue of the second Torino Triennale, click here. For installation views of Tillmans’ work, click here. For an image of Venus Transit, 2004 and a description of the work published by the British newspaper, The Guardian, click here.
In January 2013 the German weekly newspaper Zeit (Nr. 03/2013) featured an article on Warburg entitled Denn Bedeuteung schlummert überall. The article’s author W. Ullrich mentions Tillmans, as well as artists H-P. Feldmann and R. Prince as “Arrangeuren von Bilden” or arrangers of images or pictures, whose work shares affinities with the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. To read the article in the original German, click here.

Aby Warburg: The Archive of Memory. Directed by E. Breitbart. Breitbartfilms. 2004.
The film project The Archive of Memory by is described as “a visual essay made by [Canadian] filmmaker E. Breitbart made in response to the work of Aby Warburg.” Screening organized by OSA Archivum at the Galeria Centralis, Budapest, April 17 2008. For online access to the film published by the website arthistorylab.com on 17 June 2014, click here. For a description of the film on the filmmaker’s website, click here.

Collected Works: Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas. Article by B. Dillon. Frieze Magazine. Issue 80. January/February 2004.
This article by curator B. Dillon – an introduction to Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and publications of his collected works – is a frequently cited source among curators and artists. It is also referenced by culture and media anthropologist M. Blassnigg (see the 2012 listing for the seminar Reinstating the Visual) in her 2009 publication Time, Memory, Consciousness and the Cinematic Experience. Footnotes to Dillon’s article indicate its publication was likely inspired by the English translation of art historian and film curator P-A. Michaud’s Aby Warburg e l’Image en Mouvement (Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion, 2004). To read Dillon’s article, click here.

2005

Peter Piller Archives. Witte de With, Rotterdam. 19 November 2005 - 8 January 2006.
The press release to the exhibition describes German artist P. Pillers work as “giv[ing] photographs from newspapers and archives a second lease of life. What is perceived as boring or monotonous at first glance proves to be a treasure trove that contains undiscovered relationships and exciting meanings.” For images and further description of the exhibition, click here. For the Witte de With and Revolver Verlag artist book that accompanied the exhibition, click here. For artist and musician D. Eichler’s article on Piller’s exhibition and artist book, see the listing titled Classified Information, directly below.

2006

Classified Information. An article by artist and musician D. Eichler on P. Piller’s artist book. Frieze Magazine. Issue 103. November/December 2006.
Eichler writes that “the logic of these [Piller’s] installations relates to ideas developed by Aby Warburg for his Mnemosyne Atlas (1924 - 1929).” More specifically, Eichler references the “good neighbour principle” which is more frequently referred to by scholars in relation to Warburg’s library rather than to the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. As affinities to the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, Eichler draws attention to Piller’s practice of “mix and match (…) from his archive”: “sometimes images are reprinted in different sizes or colours or framed in different ways (to emphasize his divergent sources) and then arranged in clusters or like a visual crossword puzzle.” To read the article, click here.

Group Material Archive. An archive of the activities of the collective Group Material created by D. Ashford and J. Ault. Fales Library Downtown Collection at New York University, New York. 2006 - 2008.
In a 2010 article by Ashford on his participation in the collective Group Material (1982 – 1996), he asks “how do abstract understandings and images of the world become origins for democratic urgency?” In one part of his response, he asserts: “I want to understand the associative modernist historicisms that these images present: Andre Malreaux’s “Imaginary Museum” and Aby Warburg’s “Memory Atlas” are both in my mind creative mappings that make available to us autonomous misrecognitions of existing protocol.” To read the article, click here. Ashford’s website features a reproduction of Plate C from the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in the section Misc. For the reproduction of the panel in the context of Ashford’s website, click here. For examples of exhibitions by Group Material, click here.

2007

Some Gay and Lesbian Artists and/or Artists relevant to Homo-Social Culture. From the eponymous exhibition by H. Olesen. Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne. 26 October - 27 November 2007.
In interview, artist H. Olesen was asked “Did Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas play a role when you were envisioning the project?” Olesen responds: “Yes, and I did not only make a formal reference to Aby Warburg.” Olesen refers to the Atlas as a “grammar of pathos formulas, a compendium of gestures, and also an atlas of titles,” a “grammar of signs (…) which was an advance in our concept of categorization.” For more images from the exhibition, see the description of the interview titled Future Bodies and Gendered Prophecy from Mousse Magazine, directly below. For images from the exhibition, click here and scroll to the 2007 listing for Henrik Olesen.

Future Bodies and Gendered Prophecy. An interview with artist H. Olesen by curator L. Fassi. Mousse. Issue 18. April 2009.
For the description of the H. Olesen exhibition, see the listing directly above. To read the Mousse interview with Olesen, click here.

2008

Saturn Table, 2008. A work by artist W. Tillmans. Exhibited in 50 Moons of Saturn. The Second Torino Triennale. Curated by Daniel Birnbaum. 6 November 2008 - 1 February 2009.
Saturn Table, 2008, is a work by W. Tillmans which curator N. Cullinan described in his Artforum review, 2^nd Turin Triennial, as an “homage to Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas.” For a copy of the article purchased and republished online by the information service MutualArt.com, click here. For the Skira catalogue of the second Torino Triennale, click here. For installation views of Tillmans’ work, click here.
In January 2013 the German weekly newspaper Zeit (Issue 03/2013) featured an article entitled Denn Bedeuteung schlummert überall by W. Ullrich which mentions Tillmans, as well as artists H-P. Feldmann and R. Prince as “Arrangeuren von Bilden” or arrangers of images or pictures, whose work shares certain affinities with Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. To read the article in the original German, click here.

TASWIR Atlas. V Homage to Aby Warburg. Conceived by A.S. Bruckstein Çoruh in cooperation with the Berliner Festspiele and ha’atelier. TASWIR Project Atlas. Design by B. Metz.
For a longer description, refer to the 2008 listings in section II of Experiments (scroll up). To see the TASWIR Atlas, click here.

TASWIR Projects (2009 and ongoing). IBRAAZ: Contemporary Visual Culture in North Africa and the Middle East. 2 November 2012.
An essay in the online journal IBRAAZ by curator A.S. Bruckstein Çoruh on the TASWIR exhibitions and Atlas (see the listing directly above). To read the essay, click here.

Found Forms, 2008. A multi-projection film performance by artist S. VanDerBeek. Exhibited at Stan VanDerBeek, Works from 1950 - 1980. Guild & Greyshkul Gallery, New York. 13 September - 18 October 2008. Exhibited at The BOX Gallery, Los Angeles. 13 September - 25 October 2014.
For a description of the performance and the exhibition, refer to the listing Stan VanDerBeek directly below. For video documentation of Found Forms, 2008, at the Gwangju Biennale 2010, click here. To watch VanDerBeek’s films, click here.

Stan VanDerBeek. An article by F. Meade. Artforum. January 2009.
The Artforum article refers to VanDerBeek’s Found Forms, 2008, as “reminiscent of Aby Warburg’s anachronistic Mnemosyne Atlas, 1924 - 1929, in its penchant for delirious cataloguing and cross-referencing of gestural expression and figurative similitude.” Further discussion of VanDerBeek’s approach to film editing and multi-projection as well as his manifesto The Cinema Delimina - Films from the Underground, could be of interest for discussions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in relation to montage. To read the Artforum article, click here.

2009

Mnemosyne - L'atlante delle immagini. Curated by C. Boemio. Centro Arti Visive Pescheria, Pesaro. 13 - 28 June 2009.
The curatorial statement for the exhibition refers to “MNEMOSYNE – L’Atlante delle Immagini” as the “testo cult dello storico dell’arte Aby Warburg” (the cult text of art historian Aby Warburg). Reference is made to Warburg’s zum Bild das Wort or to the image the word, and Pathosformeln, which it defines as “formule espressive di emozione” or expressive formulas of emotion. The exhibition aims to “attualizza e reinterpreta” (update and reinterpret) the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne “in chiave contemporanea” (in contemporary terms, however, it is unclear how it intends to do this). For images from the exhibition, click here.

2010

Nachleben. Curated by F. Meade and L. Raven. Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building, NYC, New York. 7 - 29 May 2010.
The exhibition works with what it calls Warburg’s “signature idea” Nachleben, which it defines with implicit reference to G. Didi-Huberman’s dialectic of “afterlife” and “survival,” “continuity” and “metapmorphosis.” The Goethe-Institut show is a described in its press release as “a display of contemporary art works and a series of related programs [that] bring together artistic practices that share an affinity with Warburg's proposals” and it refers to these proposals as “associative thinking, image sequencing, and a dialectics of seeing that extends across eras, cultures, and methodologies.” According to the exhibition curators, “Nachleben implies an engagement with sequence, gesture, and rupture as an interrelated way of seeing, encountering, and remembering images” rather than “renascence” or “wholesale replacement.” For images from the exhibition, click here. For a PDF version of the accompanying publication, click here.

The Makes, 2010. A film by artist E. Baudelaire. Screened at the Hammer Museum for the occasion of the artist’s Hammer Project. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. 21 September 2012.
Baudelaire’s description of the film refers to the process of its creation as “reminiscent of Eisentstein’s collision-montages, or Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, since it delves into the unconscious memory of images and plays on the narrative possibilities that emerge from the space between juxtaposed images.” In the context of his description, Baudelaire makes use of the term Mnemosyne as a metonymic reference for the Atlas akin to that made by use of the term Leporello for concertina books, printed material folded into a book format through the accordeon-pleat. The term Leporello is taken from Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto for Mozart’s opera Il dissoluto punito, ossia il Don Giovanni (The Rake Punished or Don Giovanni, 1787) and is named for the servant of Don Giovanni who keeps a register of Don Giovanni’s conquests in a concertina book. Baudelaire calls his film, “an assisted Mnemosyne, because the orphaned film stills are put back into movement by a text that functions like a program dictating the reading of these images.” For the full description of the film by Baudelaire, click here and scroll down to the entry for The Makes. For a video preview of The Makes, click here.

Scopophilia. A 25-minute long slide installation by photographer N. Goldin, commissioned by the Louvre Museum, Paris. Exhibited at Nan Goldin: Scopophilia. Matthew Marks Gallery, New York. 29 October - 23 December 2011.
The slide installation Scopophilia by photographer N. Goldin is discussed as working with a “process of recognition (…) very close to Aby Warburg’s idea of Pathosformel (pathos formula) in L. Dumenil’s essay The Haptic Eye: On Nan Goldin’s Scopophilia, in the anthology Sensational Pleasures in Cinema, Literature and Visual Culture: The Phallic Eye (2014). For video documentation of the exhibition including photographs also featured in the slide installation, click here.

Nan Goldin. A review of the exhibition Scopophilia by J. Akel. Artforum. Critics Picks. October - December 2011.
This review of the Matthew Marks exhibition in Artforum makes reference to Warburg’s phrase eine ikonologie des Zwischenraumes, referred to by the author as the “Iconology of the Interval”. To read the review, click here.

ATLAS. How to carry the world on one's back? Curated by G. Didi-Huberman. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 26 November 2010 - 28 March 2011, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 7 May - 7 August 2011 and Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, 1 October - 27 November 2011.
This experimental exhibition surrounded printed reproductions of individual Atlas plates with works of artists and scholars whose respective practices art historian G. Didi-Huberman identified as sharing affinities with processes at work in the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. It is important to note that the objective of the exhibition was not to suggest instances of direct influence in correlations between the Atlas and the various works selected by Didi-Huberman.
The exhibition catalogue published by TF Editores, Madrid 2010 is out of print. For a descriptions of the exhibition as it took form in various cities, click the cities in the bibliographic reference above. For an interview with Didi-Huberman and video documentation of the exhibition at the Museo Reina Sofia, click here.

Reinstating the Visual: Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas. Transtechnology Research Seminar Series organized by M. Punt and M. Blassnigg. Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK. 20 October 2010 - 15 June 2011.
This session of the transdisciplinary research group Transtechnology Research in the Faculty of the Arts, Plymouth, was organized by art and technology scholar M. Punt (The Post-Digital Membrane, 2000) and culture and media anthropologist M. Blassnigg (Time, Memory, Consciousness and the Cinema Experience, 2009). It featured a series of seminars in which seminar leaders (graduate students of Plymouth University) discussed individual plates of the Atlas in relation to their respective research projects. For more information, click here.

2011

Melvin Moti: The Art of Orientation. Curated by Alice Koegel. Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. 12 November 2011 - 4 March 2012. Catalogue produced by Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.
The installation by M. Moti attempts to work with Warburg’s concept of Denkraum or “thinking space”. For more information on the publication that accompanied the exhibition, click here.

Snake Society. An article by G. Macuga and J. Castelo, and M. Szewczyk, "Recorded Conversation with Goshka Macuga." Konteksty. N. 2-3 (203 - 294). 2011.
For more on artist G. Macuga's interest in Warburg, see listing below for A Chicago Comedy and Goshka Macuga: Madness and Ritual. Click here to access the website of the Polish journal Konteksty.

2012

Histoire de fantômes pour grandes personnes (Ghost Stories for Adults). Curated by G. Didi-Huberman, with installation design by A. Gisinger. Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing. 5 October - 5 December 2012.
This exhibition is also included under the 2012 listings in sections II. Exhibitions and III. Experiments (scroll up for both): it appears to be the first documented instance in which an enlarged projection of a plate from the original Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and it features an experimental expansion of Plate 42 that works with Warburg’s Atlas as a method or heuristic device. The Le Fresnoy exhibition is listed in this section on Mnemosyne and contemporary art because many of the images collected by G. Didi-Huberman for his expansion of Plate 42 are considered examples of contemporary art; in addition, Didi-Huberman explicitly drew attention to his project as an example of collaboration between an art historian and a contemporary artist (in this case, A. Gisinger). For the Le Fresnoy archived description of the exhibition, click here. For a France Culture radio special on the exhibition edited with images from the exhibition, click here.

Mnemosyne 42. English translation of essay by G. Didi-Huberman on the Le Fresnoy exhibition. Manifesta Journal. 16 July 2012.
The Manifesta Journal is is an international project dedicated to the study of curating practices started by the Manifesta Foundation, Amsterdam. For the Manifesta Journal’s English translation of G. Didi-Huberman’s essay on the Le Fresnoy exhibition (described in the listing for Histoire de Fantômes pour Grandes Personnes provided above), click here.

One-Time Pad, 2012. A scenographic installation of works by T. Scheibitz. Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main. 29 September 2012 - 13 January 2013. BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. 26 July 2013 - 3 November 2013.
An article on the Frankfurt exhibition quotes Scheibitz as stating, “It’s about activating collective memory, about things and images that we all know and can categorize, or at least think we can categorize. (…) For me, Warburg’s method of approaching images from an iconographic standpoint is much more interesting. I view everything without respect, but seriously.” The author of the article asserts that the way the publications Scheibitz produces to accompany his exhibitions “almost didactically give an introduction to his method and artistic language” is “fully in keeping with Warburg’s apt observation that so-called “head images” can onvey a statement better than a “headline.”
The archive room at the Frankfurt exhibition is said to have displayed pin-up boards with “miniature photographs” of Scheibitz’ works “next to paintings that are similar in formal terms.” Video documentation of the Gateshead exhibition shows Scheibitz working with a similar pinboard; it also shows him arranging miniature placeholders, made from small images of his works, inside exhibition space maquettes. For images from the Frankfurt exhibition, click here. For the video produced for the Gateshead exhibition, click here.

Warburg e l’Arte Contemporanea: Alcune Note. An article by C. Franzoni. "La Rivista di Engramma". Issue 100. September/October 2012.
This article in Issue 100 of Engramma by C. Franzoni (author of Tirannia dello Sguardo, 2006) discusses the trend of explicit reference to Aby Warburg by many contemporary artists. Among the artists discussed are Joan Jonas, Anna Opperman, and a web collective called the Warburghiana founded by A. Andrighetto, D. Bellini, G. Codeghini and E. Grazioli. Franzoni also addresses the case of G. Richter’s oft-cited Atlas and repeats the question of art critic B. Buchloch and the Warburghiana’s E. Grazioli: “Is it Warburg, or is it Baudrillard, who is behind this Atlas?” To read the article, click here.

Camulodunon. Curated by M. Cotton. Firstsite, Colchester. 25 September 2011 - 22 January 2012.
The press release to the exhibition describes the project as the inaugural show of Firstsite. It is said to have “explored themes of excavation, ritual and reenactment, gathering anecdotes from literature, popular culture and local legend.” The exhibition is also said to have “considered how artworks negotiate their relationship to artefacts in the museum, the notion of objects as a source of information and the idea of contemporary culture as future historical record.” For the catalogue of the exhibition and the exhibition image gallery, click here. See the description of the review below for reference to the Mnemosyne Atlas.

Camulodunum. Review of the eponymous exhibition by J. Cahill. Frieze Magazine. January 2012.
The review explicitly references the Mnemosyne Atlas (dated 1923) as a “strategy” of “display,” a “sprawling pictorial constellation.” This somewhat off-hand reference is interesting for its conflation of Warburg and W. Benjamin through the use of Benjamin’s oft-cited term “constellation.” It also likens the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the Horniman in London. To read the review, click here.

Baby Snakes Hatching. Ruins. Ruins. An exhibition by M. Hofstad Gunnes. Curated by E. Hammer. UKS, Oslo. 3 May - 17 June 2012.
An exhibition by Norwegian Berlin-based artist and filmmaker M. Hofstad Gunnes, in which the life cycle of snakes is connected with architecture. The content of the book is based on research material Gunnes reproduced from books in the archives of Warburg Institute, London, Naturkunde Museum, Berlin, and Baukunst archive, Akademie der Kunste, Berlin. For video documentation of the film Baby Snakes Hatching, Ruins. Ruins, click here.

On Rotation, or Talking to Moths Between Paranoid Fantasies and Psychomotor Agitations. A short story by E.V. Bovino. In Baby Snakes Hatching. Ruins. Ruins. Mai Hofstad Gunnes. Publication design by N. May. Torpedo Press, UKS, 2012.
The Torpedo Press publication that accompanied the eponymous exhibition, Baby Snakes Hatching. Ruins. Ruins. features an experimental short story by E.V. Bovino. The short story was written through a series of images recounted by Gunnes in two Skype sessions; the latter sessions employed various psychoanalytic methods. For the entire Torpedo Press publication, click here. For a PDF copy of the story, click here.

Lieber Aby Warburg, Was tun mit Bildern ? (Dear Aby Warburg, What can be done with images?) Curated by E. Schmidt. Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen. 2 December 2012 - 3 March 2012.
In the curator’s statement for the exhibition, the show is described as an “homage to the ‘artistic’ art historian.” “We value Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas because it displays variable, non-systematic ordering parameters, but also because the combination of divergent picture sources and their carrying materials and fixtures – as an aesthetic unity – appears extremely provisional and haptic.” For images from the exhibition, click here. For the catalogue published by Kehrer, Heidelberg, click here.

The Treasure Chests of Mnemosyne: A Symposium on Sarkis, Aby Warburg and Memory. A symposium organized for the occasion of Ballads, a Sarkis installation on view at Submarine Wharf. Organized by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and the Port of Rotterdam. Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam. 1 September 2012.
The symposium takes its title from a book published in 1995 by Hambur art historian U. Fleckner and Turkish-Armenian artist Sarkis, and explored the influence of Warburg and the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne on Sarkis. The symposium featured the participation of art historians U. Fleckner and S. Lütticke, curator L. Levy and artists Sarkis and A. Singh. For images and video documentation of the exhibition Ballads, visit here. For video of the conference by U. Fleckner and S. Lütticken, click here.

2013

The Picture Collection. A series of photographs by T. Simon. Exhibited at the John Berggruen Gallery. 16 January - 28 February 2013.
For a description of the exhibition, see the reference to the Frieze Magazine article directly below. For images from the exhibition, click here.

Taryn Simon. A review of the exhibition The Picture Collection by J. Akel. Frieze Magazine. Issue 156. June - August 2013.
The very first sentence of this exhibition review published in Frieze Magazine cites “Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas” (dated as 1928 – 1929, rather than the commonly accepted 1924 – 1929) before even mentioning the artist T. Simon. The review cites the Mnemosyne Atlas as “equally profound and perverse” and suggests affinities between “Warburg’s dizzying taxonomic project” and Simon’s The Picture Collection (also referred to as The Last Picture) making reference to the ikonologie des Zwischenraumes (which it calls the “iconology of interval”) and Pathosformel (to which reference is only implied with the phrase “narrative of ‘gestural forms’ used in relation to he Mnemosyne Atlas). Simon’s The Picture Collection was created using what the exhibition press release refers to as “the world’s largest circulating picture library,” that of the New York Public Library. It mentions the use of this library by A. Warhol who is said to have stolen several of its advertising images, and by D. Rivera, in particular in work for his Man at the Crossroads mural at Rockefeller Center. For images from the exhibition, click here. To read the Frieze Magazine review, click here.

Alm’s Box, 2013 as sculpture by B. Bloom. From the exhibition As it Were … So to Speak: A Museum Collection in Dialogue with Barbara Bloom. Exhibition design in collaboration with K. Saylor. Jewish Museum, New York. 5 March - 4 August 2013.
The Jewish Museum in New York is the former home of Frieda and Felix Warburg. According to the press release, the exhibition “mines the collections [of the Jewish Museum] to create tableaux that evoke dialogues between imagined historical guests” and is “inspired by Talmudic discourse that takes place across time and place.” A blogger who runs the Tumblr site What’s This Cat’s Story cites B. Dillon’s Frieze Magazine article on the Mnemosyne Atlas (scroll up to the 2004 listing under the section Exhibitions) in writing of Bloom’s work, Alm’s Box, as a “strange figural floating.” According to the anonymous blogger’s designation of Alm’s Box as Object of the Week, “Warburg functions here as more than a useful epigraph to Bloom’s project: one of Aby’s younger brothers, Felix, built a six-story mansion on New York’s Upper East Side in 1908. The mansion is now the Jewish Museum.” Barbara Bloom was included among the artists featured in G. Didi-Huberman’s Madrid Exhibition Atlas: How to Carry the World On One’s Back? Consider Bloom’s sculpture, Alm’s Box, in relation to the much-circulated photograph of the Warburg brothers in which Aby Warburg is shown holding out his hand to his brother Max. To see the Tumblr post, click here. For mention of this gesture by the online journal Engramma in its timeline of Warburg’s biography, click here and see the second row in the timeline table.

The Resistance to Symbols. Essay by J. Allen inspired by the reconfiguration of the Berlin-based Hoffmann Collection into an exhibition titled The Year of the Snake. Sammlung Hoffmann, Berlin. Mousse Magazine. Issue 40. September 2013.
This essay begins with an abstract that asks: “If the present Warburg revival seems to be more a question of form than of method—along the lines of a new cult of proliferation of images—can some kind of rebirth exist for mythology today? What are the unexplored and even political potentialities of symbolism and allegory?” Allen writes through six images, four of which were on view at the Sammlung Hoffman including: Paradise and the Fall, 2013, by E. Hoffmann-Koenige; Urobos Flag, 1990, by B. Vautier; CP 2013/001, 1967 – 2009, by C. Posenenske and The Law of the Unknown Neighbor: Inferno Romanticized, 2013, by S. G. Rhodes. To read the essay, click here. For more on the Sammlung Hoffmann, click here.

Entering the Flow: Museum between Archive and Gesamtkunstwerk. Essay by B. Groys. E-flux. Journal 50. December 2013.
This essay by philosopher B. Groys was originally presented as a talk at the Museo Reina Sophia on 8 November 2013. It theorizes on what Groys refers to as the “traditional” “main occupation of art (…) to resist the flow of time” using an image of the Boards of the Rembrandt Exhibition, 1926, cited as from Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas. The essay writes through this image alongside eight others including a 3D rendering of J.L. Borges’ short story The Library of Babel (1941) and an undated photographic self-portrait in the hospital tweeted by Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei. Groys has produced video essays and lectures that make tactical use of montage (see Thinking in Loop: Three Videos on Iconoclasm, Ritual and Immortality, 2008). To read the e-flux essay, click here.

2014

A Chicago Comedy and its Preparatory Notes. A play, and documentation of its preparation, by artist G. Macuba. Created in residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The play debuted in Berlin at the 8th Berlin Biennial fort Contemporary Art. September 2013 to May 2014. Berlin Debut of the Chicago Comedy, May 29, 2014.
According to the blog created by MOCA Chicago for Macuga's residency, Aby Warburg "has been a dependable source of inspiration for Macuga for a number of years." Macuga's Comedy, created on the occasion of her residency at MOSA, works with Warburg's unpublished play Hamburg Conversation on Art: Hamburg Comedy, 1896 (discussed by E. Gombrich in Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Bibliograph). Warburg's Hamburg Conversations is characterized by MOCA curators as "about the struggles between Hamburg's avant-garde and art traditionalists" and is one of a number of "leads" that Macuga interweaves to create the Chicago Comedy. The play itself is described as an "irreverent homage" to Warburg. For more on the performance in Berlin and on preparation for the project during Macuga's residency in Chicago, click here. For Macuga's discussion of her interest in Warburg, see G. Wilson Flash Art (n. 278) interview from 2001.

Goshka Macuga: Madness and Ritual. Galerie Rudiger Schottle, Munich. 12 Septembre 2014 to 8 November 2014.
Many of the works on view in the exhibition were used in Macuga's performance at the Berlin Biennial (see listing for A Chicago Comedy and its Preparatory Notes). They feature sculptural works that combine scenography, collage, assemblage and tapestry. For images from the exhibition, click here.

The Fake, The Fold and the Erased. Exhibition by L. Gendre. Galerie Thomas Fischer. Berlin. 8 February - 29 March 2014.
The exhibition features a work that the exhibition press release describes as appropriating the “outlines of Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas.” For images from the exhibition, click here.

The Fake, The Fold and the Erased. A review by curator H. Ballet of the eponymous exhibition by L. Gendre at Galerie Thomas Fischer. Le Salon Journal. March 2014.
The entire introductory paragraph of this review is dedicated to Aby Warburg and the Mnemosyne Atlas. Ballet describes the Mnemosyne Atlas as an “important inspiration” for Gendre. The Erased, 2014 is described as “an archival box and a video slide show. In the archival box, on the left hand side, is placed a photo that represents Warburg's library in Hamburg, while on the right hand side there is a pile of 66 graphite drawings made after the plates of the Atlas.” For the entire review and more images of the exhibition, click here.

Saturnine Swing. An exhibition by M. Bizer. Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York. 17 March - 26 April 2014.
The press release to the exhibition refers to the exhibition as “a metaphysical space” composed of drawings, paintings, sculptures and multi-part installations, that “weave history, memory and narrative into a multi-layered realm (…) address[ing] issues activated by our comprehension of reality.” According to the release, “for this exhibition, Bizer’s particular references include Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s notion of the rhizome.” This combination of the Mnemosyne Atlas and the rhizome is, indeed, in circulation and enjoys considerable popularity among curators, artists and young art historians: in fact, in North American colleges and universities, Warburg’s work is usually approached via Deleuzean theory. Evidence of this trend can be found in a recent Masters thesis in Art History written on the topic of the Atlas and the rhizome entitled Warburg, Deleuze and the Rhizome (2012). For images from the exhibition Saturnine Swing, click here.

Instrument Erinnerung Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne von Aby Warburg (Memory Instrument - Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne). Organized in cooperation with the 8.Salon, Hamburg. Kunstraum Muenchen. 22 May - 15 June 2014.
This exhibition showed a series of large-scale reconstructions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne worked on at 8.Salon in Hamburg between the years 2012 to 2014. It displayed these reconstructions of the Atlas alongside works by artists Andy Hope 30, O. Metzel and B. Reiß. The curatorial statement for the exhibition asserts that the Bilderatlas is not only an “instrument to be decrypted but to be applied” (English translation from the original German. As indicated by the links provided in the “Warburg” section on the 8.Salon website, the 8.Salon work with Mnemosyne appears to have been inspired by the Engramma online edition of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. To read more about the exhibition, click here. For more information on 8. Salon and its workshops dedicated to individual Atlas plates, click here.

***

This online publication is part of the dissertation project tentatively titled Of Moles, Moths, Echidna and Truffle-Pigs for completion at the University of California, San Diego in 2015. [CITE: E.V. Bovino, The Nachleben of Mnemosyne: the Afterlife of the Bilderatlas. "La Rivista di Engramma". Issue 119. September 2014.]

* with the support of the Mediterranean Seminar University of California Multi-Campus Research Project

Atlas Genesis

by Seminario Mnemosyne

A. Orientation
B. Observatory
B.I_Interpretative Readings of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne
B.II_Exhibitions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and Relevant Documentation
B.III_Experiments with Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as method or heuristics
B.IV_The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art

A. Orientation

The present section of the Atlas Mnemosyne online edition is an attempt to document the Nachleben or afterlife of the Atlas, since Aby Warburg’s fatal cardiac arrest in 1929.

Sources from Gesammelte Schriften (1932) for Warburg’s use of the term Nachleben

A. Warburg, Bildniskunst und florentinisches Burgertum (1902) in Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Gertrud Bing. Vol. 1. Leipzig-Berlin: B.G. Teubner. p. 118.

A. Warburg. Francesco Sassettis letztwillige Verfugung (1907) in Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Gertrud Bing. Vol. 1. Leipzig-Berlin: B.G. Teubner. p. 156.

A. Warburg. Mediceische Feste am Hofe der Valois auf Flandr. Teppichen in der Galleria degli Uffizi (1927) in Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Gertrud Bing. Vol. 1. Leipzig-Berlin: B.G. Teubner. p. 258

A. Warburg. Orientalisierende Astrologie (1926) in Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Gertrud Bing. Vol. 2. Leipzig-Berlin: B.G. Teubner. p. 564.

A. Warburg. Footnotes to Heidnisch-antike Weissang in Wort und Bild zu Luthers Zeiten (1920) in Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Gertrud Bing. Vol. 2. Leipzig-Berlin: B.G. Teubner. p. 649.

B. Observatory

B.I Interpretative Readings of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne

2000

2001

2002

2004

2009

2012

2013

B.II Exhibitions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and Relevant Documentation
(cross-referenced in the Bibliography)

1992

1993

1994

1996

1998

1999

2001

2004

2007

2008

2011

2012

Die entfesselte Antike. Aby Warburg und die Geburt der Pathosformel in Hamburg (Antiquity Unleashed. Aby Warburg and the Origins of the Pathos-formula in Hamburg). Curated by M. A.Hurttig und T. Ketelsen. Hamburger Kunstalle, Hamburg and Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Köln. 2 March - 28 May 2012.
For a description of this exhibition, which traveled to Cologne from Hamburg, see the listing directly above. For a more information and video documentation of the Cologne exhibition, click here.

2013

2014

B.III Experiments with Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as method or heuristics
(in chronological order from earliest to most recent)

2001

Introduzione alla Tavola Fantasma. Tavola Fantasma ex tavola 42 di Mnemosyne: dal Teatro della Morte al Teatro della Pietà."La Rivista di Engramma". Issue 6. February/March 2001.
Issue 6 of Engramma features an example of a tavola fantasma (ghost plate) entitled Mnemosyne: dal Teatro della Morte al Teatro della Pietà (Mnemosyne: from the Theatre of Death to the Theatre of Devotion and Compassion). A tavola fantasma is a display featuring initial stages of work with images from the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. It is possible that a tavola fantasma may potentially result in the construction of a new Atlas plate. It is important to note that the editorial board of Engramma considers the tavola fantasma to be preparatory work and not an actual Atlas plate. Click here to see the tavola fantasma and to read what Engramma refers to as its saggio interpretativo or interpretative essay. For all of issue 6, click here.

2002

2008

2011

Histoire de fantômes pour grandes personnes (Ghost Stories for Adults). Curated by G. Didi-Huberman, with installation design by A. Gisinger. Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing. 5 October - 5 December 2012.
This exhibition is also listed under the 2012 listings in sections II and III on Bilderatlas Mnemosyne exhibitions and Warburg’s Mnemosynein Contemporary Art (scroll down) because it appears to be the first documented exhibition in which an enlarged projection of a plate from the originalBilderatlas Mnemosyne was displayed, and because it can also be considered an exhibition of contemporary art. The installation design for the exhibition was developed in collaboration with artist A. Gisinger. The Fresnoy exhibition is also included here, in section I on experiments with Warburg’s Atlas because its expansion upon Atlas Plate 42 is an example of experimentation with the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as a method or heuristics. For the Le Fresnoy archived description of the exhibition, click here. For a France Culture radio special on the exhibition edited with images from the exhibition, click here.

2013

2014

Instrument Erinnerung Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne von Aby Warburg (Memory Instrument – Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne). Organized in cooperation with the 8.Salon, Hamburg. Kunstraum Muenchen. 22 May – 15 June 2014.
This exhibition featured a series of large-scale reconstructions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne worked on at 8.Salon in Hamburg between the years 2012 to 2014. It displayed these reconstructions of the Atlas alongside works by artists Andy Hope 30, O. Metzel and B. Reiß. The curatorial statement for the exhibition asserts that the Bilderatlas is not only an “instrument to be decrypted but to be applied” (English translation from the original German. As indicated by the links provided in the “Warburg” section on the 8.Salon website, the 8.Salon work with Mnemosyne appears to have been inspired by the Engramma online edition of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. To read more about the exhibition, clickhere. For more information on 8. Salon and its workshops dedicated to individual Atlas plates, click here.

B.IV The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art
(in chronological order)

1962

1983

1987

2000

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Histoire de fantômes pour grandes personnes (Ghost Stories for Adults). Curated by G. Didi-Huberman, with installation design by A. Gisinger. Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing. 5 October - 5 December 2012.
This exhibition is also included under the 2012 listings in sections II. Exhibitions and III. Experiments (scroll up for both): it appears to be the first documented instance in which an enlarged projection of a plate from the original Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and it features an experimental expansion of Plate 42 that works with Warburg’s Atlas as a method or heuristic device. The Le Fresnoy exhibition is listed in this section on Mnemosyne and contemporary art because many of the images collected by G. Didi-Huberman for his expansion of Plate 42 are considered examples of contemporary art; in addition, Didi-Huberman explicitly drew attention to his project as an example of collaboration between an art historian and a contemporary artist (in this case, A. Gisinger). For the Le Fresnoy archived description of the exhibition, click here. For a France Culture radio special on the exhibition edited with images from the exhibition, click here.

2013

2014

***

* with the support of the Mediterranean Seminar University of California Multi-Campus Research Project

La Rivista di Engramma
ISSN 1826-901X
Mnemosyne Atlas on line [2004] 2012-

testi: centro studi classicA-Iuav
webmaster: elisa bastianello

versione inglese: elizabeth thomson
progetto grafico: daniele savasta

texts: centro studi classicA-Iuav
webmaster: elisa bastianello

english version: elizabeth thomson
graphic design: daniele savasta

Aby Warburg
Mnemosyne Atlas Aby Warburg
Mnemosyne Atlas

english italiano

Atlas Genesis
[Genesi dell’Atlante]

by Seminario Mnemosyne

A. Orientation
B. Observatory
B.I_Interpretative Readings of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne
B.II_Exhibitions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and Relevant Documentation
B.III_Experiments with Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as method or heuristics
B.IV_The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art

A. Orientation

Sources from Gesammelte Schriften (1932) for Warburg’s use of the term Nachleben

B. Observatory

B.I Interpretative Readings of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne

Exhibitions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and Relevant Documentation
(cross-referenced in the Bibliography)

B.III Experiments with Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as method or heuristics
(in chronological order from earliest to most recent)

B.IV The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art
(in chronological order)

Atlas Genesis

by Seminario Mnemosyne

A. Orientation
B. Observatory
B.I_Interpretative Readings of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne
B.II_Exhibitions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and Relevant Documentation
B.III_Experiments with Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as method or heuristics
B.IV_The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art

A. Orientation

Sources from Gesammelte Schriften (1932) for Warburg’s use of the term Nachleben

B. Observatory

B.I Interpretative Readings of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne

B.II Exhibitions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and Relevant Documentation
(cross-referenced in the Bibliography)

B.III Experiments with Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as method or heuristics
(in chronological order from earliest to most recent)

B.IV The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art
(in chronological order)

Aby WarburgMnemosyne Atlas Aby WarburgMnemosyne Atlas

englishitaliano

Atlas Genesis [Genesi dell’Atlante]

by Seminario Mnemosyne

A. Orientation B. Observatory B.I_Interpretative Readings of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne B.II_Exhibitions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and Relevant Documentation B.III_Experiments with Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as method or heuristics B.IV_The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art

A. Orientation

Sources from Gesammelte Schriften (1932) for Warburg’s use of the term Nachleben

B. Observatory

B.I Interpretative Readings of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne

Exhibitions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and Relevant Documentation (cross-referenced in the Bibliography)

B.III Experiments with Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as method or heuristics (in chronological order from earliest to most recent)

B.IV The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art (in chronological order)

Atlas Genesis

by Seminario Mnemosyne

A. Orientation B. Observatory B.I_Interpretative Readings of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne B.II_Exhibitions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and Relevant Documentation B.III_Experiments with Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as method or heuristics B.IV_The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art

A. Orientation

Sources from Gesammelte Schriften (1932) for Warburg’s use of the term Nachleben

B. Observatory

B.I Interpretative Readings of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne

B.II Exhibitions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and Relevant Documentation (cross-referenced in the Bibliography)

B.III Experiments with Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as method or heuristics (in chronological order from earliest to most recent)

B.IV The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art (in chronological order)

Aby Warburg
Mnemosyne Atlas Aby Warburg
Mnemosyne Atlas

english italiano

Atlas Genesis
[Genesi dell’Atlante]

A. Orientation
B. Observatory
B.I_Interpretative Readings of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne
B.II_Exhibitions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and Relevant Documentation
B.III_Experiments with Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as method or heuristics
B.IV_The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art

Exhibitions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and Relevant Documentation
(cross-referenced in the Bibliography)

B.III Experiments with Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as method or heuristics
(in chronological order from earliest to most recent)

B.IV The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art
(in chronological order)

A. Orientation
B. Observatory
B.I_Interpretative Readings of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne
B.II_Exhibitions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and Relevant Documentation
B.III_Experiments with Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as method or heuristics
B.IV_The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art

B.II Exhibitions of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and Relevant Documentation
(cross-referenced in the Bibliography)

B.III Experiments with Bilderatlas Mnemosyne as method or heuristics
(in chronological order from earliest to most recent)

B.IV The Bilderatlas Mnemosyne in Contemporary Art
(in chronological order)