The technical apparatus of the Warburg Haus

ABSTRACT

The article focuses on the technical apparatus installed at the Warburg Haus in Hamburg by Aby Warburg and how this is crucial in understanding the development and the evolution of the Mnemosyne Atlas. This apparatus is examined to determine that the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg was a highly advance site of image production, having a bureaucratic structure that resembles that of a bank. Fritz Saxl is discussed as bringing continuity to an image led form of art history when the Warburg moved to London. Saxl and Witkover’s work is seen as a fore-runner of Kenneth Clark’s Civilization and John Berger’s Ways of Seeing and as an engrammatic species of Warburg’s Atlas.

KEYWORDS:

• Warburg
• Mnemosyne Atlas
• Kenneth Clark
• John Berger
• Fritz Saxl
• apparatus

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Mick Finch’s research takes the form of studio practice, writing and pedagogical projects. He exhibits his work regularly and internationally most recently in Engrams, a one-person show at the Piper Gallery (London 2013) and the group show Painting, Tableau, Stage (Urban Space, Columbus, Ohio, 2013). He has published widely on visual art practices and is associate editor of the Journal of Visual Art Practice and the Journal of Contemporary Painting for which in 2015, he co-edited a special edition on Simon Hantai’s work. He lived, exhibited and taught for 20 years in France and has written extensively about post-war French art. He leads the Tableau research project at CSM an outcome of which was the conference Tableau: Painting Photo Object at Tate Modern in 2011. He is a member of the French research group Peinture: un réseau de recherche funded by the French Ministry of Culture. In 2011, he was an Abbey Fellow in Painting at the British School in Rome and he is a Senior Scholar of the Terra Foundation in Paris.

Notes

1. For details about Bilderfahrzeuge go to http://iconology.hypotheses.org Accessed 28 December 2015.

2. Details of the history of house are taken from Rachiele (2004) article ‘Mnemosyne, tappa Amburgo Appunti per la storia della Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg’.

3. For a discussion about the projectors of the KBW see Hensel (2012), The Mediality of Art History: Aby Warburg and Photography.