1st Edition

Studies on Aby Warburg, Fritz Saxl and Gertrud Bing

By Dorothea McEwan Copyright 2023
346 Pages 56 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

346 Pages 56 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

346 Pages 56 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Originally published in German, Italian and French these articles have been translated into English for the first time by the author, the former archivist of The Warburg Institute, London. Aby Warburg’s research and writings centred on images, their origins and metamorphoses, and their explanations and interpretations. The articles include discussions of Warburg’s academic work with colleagues... Read more

Part I. Articles on a selection of Warburg’s main research topics

 

Chapter 1. Personal and zodiacal. Warburg’s comments on the Palazzo Schifanoia lecture in 1912

Chapter 2. ‘IDEA VINCIT’, ‘The victorious, flying Idea’. An artistic commission by Aby Warburg

 

Chapter 3. A fight against windmills. On Rivista Illustrata, Warburg’s pro-Italian publishing initiative

 

Chapter 4. On the origins of the Serpent Ritual Lecture. Motive and motivation. Healing through remembrance

 

Chapter 5. The František Pospíšil – Aby Warburg correspondence in the Warburg Institute

 

Part II. Aby Warburg’s collaboration with James Loeb and Fritz Saxl

 

Chapter 6. Facets of friendship: Aby Warburg and James Loeb. Friends, scholars, relatives, patrons of the art

 

Chapter 7. Fritz Saxl and Aby Warburg: appreciation of a friendship. Evaluating collaboration, tracing contacts to the ‘Vienna School’

 

Part III. Topics which caught Warburg’s interest

 

Chapter 8. A trouvaille from the Warburg Institute Archive on Mandaeism and Gnosticism

 

Chapter 9. Warburg’s view of Strzygowski as reflected in the Aby Warburg correspondence

 

Chapter 10. Bringing light into darkness. Aby Warburg and Fritz Saxl in conversation on Mithras

 

Chapter 11. Caricature as war effort: Aby Warburg’s ‘new style in word and image’, 1914–1918.

 

Part IV. Judaica

 

Chapter 12. ‘…probably latent antisemitism’

 

Chapter 13. Aby to Gisela Warburg: against the ‘pioneers of this-worldliness’

 

Chapter 14. ‘What I can represent as a Jew, I can also represent as a Catholic’. On Alfons Augustinus Barb’s scholarly career and his change of religion

 

Part V. Struwwelpeter

 

Chapter 15. Aby Warburg’s interpretation of the Russian translation of Struwwelpeter and the political parodies Struwwelhitler – A Nazi Storybook and Schicklgrüber.

 

Part VI. Aby Warburg and Mary Warburg

 

Chapter 16. The ‘Palazzo Potetje’: Mary Warburg’s triptych

Part VII. Interview with Dorothea McEwan

 

Chapter 17. The Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg as seen through its archive in London and Dorothea McEwan’s other research interests. Interview by Céline Trautmann-Waller with Dorothea McEwan, 2 August 2018

 

Bibliography

Biography

Dorothea McEwan was appointed the first archivist of The Warburg Institute Archive, London in 1993. Her research interests include Aby Warburg and Fritz Saxl and Ethiopian illuminated manuscripts and Ethiopian history. In 2008 she was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, in 2017 she was elected Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and in 2021 she was awarded the Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria.