To Present the Past in the Present

PANEL (X):

2m x 1.5m POST SCRIPTUM:

The intent of this piece of work was to remove the notion of images in which the Bilderatlas: Mnemosyne was built upon. The intent of this piece of work is to remove content away from context.

The intent of this piece of work is to be read in relation to the methods of how Aby Warburg presented.

For those of you who are well-informed about Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas: Mnemosyne and the richness of art history it beholds, I invite you to detach yourself from the historical analysis of his work and to focus on the ‘now’.

For those of you who are less informed about Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas: Mnemosyne and his methods of cataloguing and categorising contents of art history, I invite you to attach yourself to his demonstration of the ‘then’.

~~~

Tutor: Teresa Stoppani Sharifah Sonia Syed Mokhtar Shah

PREFACE:

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Aby Warburg studied the interplay of images from different periods and cultural contexts. He designed the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne to provide a pictorial representation of the influences of the ancient world in the Renaissance and beyond. It consisted of rearranging canonized images and looking at them across epochs. (1) This essay will not touch upon the subjects that Warburg so carefully reshuffled three times. In fact, it will not discuss or even begin to ponder upon the contents that are contained amongst any of the panels he represented. It will not recognise the sixty-three panels containing nine-hundred and seventy items within it. So, what will it not, not do?

Angel, S.: The mnemosyne atlas and the meaning of panel 79 in Aby Warburg’s Oeuvre as a distributed object. Leonardo 44(3), 266–267: 2011.

The essay will be based on Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne and dissect his methodology behind it.

It will discuss Warburg’s performed duality between curation, articulation and perfection (much like his protagonist) against the sudden, the provoked, the misunderstood. It will present him face to face with a medusa-esque method; one that has left him stunned in time. It will elaborate on his methods of attempt to classify subjects that are beyond the capabilities of being bound.

Becker, Colleen. Aby Warburg’s Pathosformel as methodological paradigm. Journal of Art Historiography Number 9: December 2013.

Arendt, Hannah. The human condition / by Hannah Arendt, introduction by Margaret Canovan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Barale, Alice. Perseus and Medusa: between Warburg and Benjamin. Published 2013.

Britannica. Mnemosyne. Date sited: 2021. https://www.google.com/search?q=mnemosyne...

Canetti, Elias. Crowds and Power. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 1960.

Cousins, Mark. THE UGLY [part 1]. AA FilesNo. 28 (Autumn 1994), pp. 61-64

~~~

Forster, K., Mazzucco, K.: Introduzione ad Aby Warburg e all’Atlante della memoria. Bruno Mondadori: 2002.

Frieze. Picture Piece: Frescoes in the Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara: Francesco del Cossa’s frescoes in the Hall of the Months . Date sited: 2021. https://www.frieze.com/article/picture-piece-frescoes-palazzo-schifanoia-ferrara

To present the past in the present A de(monsrto)strative view of Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas:Mnemosyne

The etymology of the word monstrosity suggests the complex roles that monsters play within society, therefore within ourselves. The word, ‘monster’ derives from, monstrare, meaning ‘to demonstrate’, and monere, ‘to warn’. (2) Monsters, in essence, are demonstrative. They reveal, show, and make evident, often uncomfortably so.

Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, ‘Memories of the Nile: Egyptian Traumas and CommunicationTechnologies in Jan Assmann’s Theory of Cultural Memory’, New German Critique 96, Fall 2005, 119-120.

In a way, Warburg was revealing a new outlook of reading history, he was demonstrating the collapse of time through his series of panels. Soon the monstrous seeps out through his method of words, emotion and the longing for more. Warburg intentionally plays with these forms of demonstration in order to achieve an ever-transforming figure.

Impett L., Süsstrunk S. (2016) Pose and Pathosformel in Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas. In: Hua G., Jégou H. (eds) Computer Vision – ECCV 2016 Workshops. ECCV 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 9913. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46604-0_61

Throughout the essay, elements of the monstrous is revealed through his methodology of creating this memory board. What he was in fact trying to classify and categorise and keep bounded within the panels, seeped, and escaped through his methodology. It was a method where Warburg presented the present; he forced the ‘now’, the ‘sudden’, the ‘ever-transforming’. These methods of demonstration which he intentionally uses, can be broken down further into three categories:

Hedjuk, John. Mask of Medusa. New York: 1985.

Ingold, Tim. Life of lines. London: 2015.

Merriam-Webster. Definition of Atlas. Date sited: 2021. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ atlas Michaud, Philippe-Alain. Aby Warburg and the image in motion / Philippe-Alain Michaud ; translated

by Sophie Hawkes. New York : Zone Books, 2004.

He used words which can purposefully be misunderstood. I will use my words to understand the misunderstood in the form of a scholastic essay.

Plato. Plato’s Cosmology; the Timaeus of Plato. London : New York, Harcourt, Brace,K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. ltd.; 1937.

He used emotion which provokes the suddenness of the present. I will use a mixture of words and images to graphically provoke the present…(in future circumstances).

Plato. Plato’s Phaedrus. Cambridge :University Press, 1952.

And lastly, he was longing for perfection which left his work (un)accidentally unfinished, or rather ever transforming. I will invite those longing to collaborate to present yourselves (monstrare) to the presence of the present.

(1) Warburg Institute. Bilderatlas: Mnemosyner. Date sited: 2021. https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/archive/bilderatlas-mnemosyne (2) University of Cambridge Research. Etymology of Monsters. Published: 2015. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/what-is-a-monster (3) Merriam-Webster. Definition of Atlas. Date sited: 2021. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atlas (4) Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, ‘Memories of the Nile: Egyptian Traumas and CommunicationTechnologies in Jan Assmann’s Theory of Cultural Memory’, New German Critique 96, Fall 2005, 119-120.

(5) Becker, Colleen. Aby Warburg’s Pathosformel as methodological paradigm. Journal of Art Historiography Number 9: December 2013

University of Cambridge Research. Etymology of Monsters. Published: 2015. https://www.cam.ac.uk/ research/discussion/what-is-a-monster Warburg Institute. Bilderatlas: Mnemosyner. Date sited: 2021. https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/archive/bilderatlas-mnemosyne

WORDS:

EMOTION:

LONGING:

Words should be spoken from the very beginning because order matters in this sense. In the sense of Bellmer and the Anagram, it did not as much, but that will come later. Based on the importance of order, the first words of Warburg and his project is the title itself: Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. Warburg’s choice of vocabulary of the ‘Atlas’ exemplifies his interest in Greek mythology. If written in a capitalised format, ATLAS is known as the Titan who revolted and is forever forced to bear the weight of the heavens on his shoulder; one who bears a heavy burden. However, when not capitalised, in the way that Warburg used it, it is defined as ‘a bound collection of maps often including illustrations, informative tables, or textual matter’. (3) Warburg demonstrates himself in both capitalised and lowercased versions. He had to support the heavy burden of trying to collapse time; at the same time, he tried to project that mass into enclosing the weighted contents he worked with.

Warburg introduced the term ‘Pathosformel’ to describe expressive gestures of heightened affective intensity. The term was coined by Warburg from the basis of ‘pathos’, meaning emotion and ‘formel’, meaning formula. What Warburg wanted to demonstrate with the concept of the pathos formula was the result of a transformation: something that is individual and refers to a specific event (pathos) becoming something generic and permanent (formula). (9) He saw these affects as being formalised, historically in objects of art. For Warburg, the formalisation in question is primarily a matter of movement: certain aspects of artworks function such that they effectively ‘freeze’ a movement. Through his careful curation, Warburg was able to achieve the presence of temporal emotion through history. He demonstrated temporality and historicity simultaneously. He provoked present thoughts about the past through emotion.

A part of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne commonly overlooked is the performative aspect of Warburg’s work over the years. His decision to verbalise words rather than inscribe his thoughts ensured that his creation was always located within the present moment rather than frozen like the historical artefacts he was ironically demonstrating. For example, Assmanns’ theory of ‘communicative memory’, referring to the everyday interactions between subjects and their contexts, expanded the referential matrix for Warburg as a historical figure. ‘Communicative memory’ refers to the realm of living memories, that is, the memories of the recent past which members of the community produce and share in a more or less spontaneous and unorganised fashion, while ‘cultural memory’ encompasses more organised forms of social long-term memory. (4) The range of communicative memory extends to up to three or four generations; cultural memory goes beyond this span to provide the members of a community with a sense of identity and unity by relating the present to collectively binding conceptualisations of the past. Warburg’s emphasis on communicative memory served the purpose of inventing new narratives based on presenting the context of the present along with it. In a sense, his format spoke of its content, the culturally abiding but constantly changing and self-reinventing metaphors and images he took as his subject. (5) The demonstrative role of the monstrous (monstrare) in this instance would be the role of irony provoked by Warburg. The irony lies in the hands of the observer or audience because the position of the observer generates contradictions by looking forwards and backwards at the same time.

This moment of ambiguity opens the door for possibilities.

Pathos formula is therefore an expression of the changing interference between stored and formalisation. It acted as a depository for emotions to be evoked and provoked. It was an attempt to contain irretractable reactions such as disgust and laughter. The monster in itself was bound in a storage facility within oneself. Warburg would play with the notion of release and imprisonment with this method of demonstration. He would imprison the monstrous aspect of the Pathos formula through the formulaic and calculative nature of performance. The introduced term, Pathos formula not only revealed a long history of being handed down by tradition, but also shaped the current history dynamically through its sudden bursts of contagious emotion. (10) Emotions that spread as quickly as they disintegrate. In the words of Arendt, ‘the actor always moves among and in relation to other acting beings, he is never merely a “doer” but always and at the same time a sufferer…’. (11) The protagonist of this play would be emotion. Its existence was birthed in relation to the context around it and its sufferings were also in relation to the evolving loss of context. In this duality of the subject and the object, the consequent deeds and sufferings, the action and reaction, is where the monster remains. As a formalisation in this complex sense, a pathos formula enables circulation: what has been an individual event becomes formulaic and can thus be copied and shared and categorised; which is what he tried to do.

As we began with a Titan, we will conclude with a Titaness: Mnemosyne. (14) The goddess of memory symbolised many aspects of Warburg’s methodology. Most prominently so would be through the notion of longing. He uses his panels as a memory board to trigger the memories of those that have known and then have left. It is to have seen and then to have not seen. The term memory board and cultural memory cuts a cross section through both the content and methodology of the Bilderatlas: Mnemosyne. It categorises images to serve as a reminder of themes, yet evokes deeper cultural contexts. It is as if the monstrous half of oneself is being forced away from the other half in order to be a part of this memory board. We are attached to these panels and its contents because we are constantly reminded of them; it is not through our memory of them. Our memories of them are formed through our interactions within them. The materialised formality of this symbolised object reminds us of the behaviour we should be undertaking when with them. However, the individual interactions amongst subjects within the images presented is what embeds these memories.

Words were a form of communication, but it was also a possibility for misunderstanding. It is not a mode of defining the subject but rather provoking thoughts and questions in that moment in time – it provokes an instant reaction and is therefore the monster itself. Even through the view of Aristotle, monsters were to be recognised as a ‘mistake on purpose’ in nature. (6) Warburg could not control these reactions with his words but could only guide it. Language is something which is meant to be the most accurate information tool, yet it is part of a shifting sense – it is the principle of insufficiency – the incompleteness of the whole. He was fiddling with the idea of controlling the possibility of insufficiency through choosing to verbalise his work.

Although the possibility of insufficiency serves as one method of misunderstandings, another can be understood through rearranged sufficiency: the anagram. The essence of the anagram is to rearrange letters within words and perhaps this scale of reorganisation was also explored by Warburg. If words are seen as his panels and letters are seen as the images, he curates; then an anagram presents itself.

This could be understood further through the work of Hans Bellmer. The German artist focused on the notion of language in relation with the body. He elaborates on the idea that ‘the body is like a sentence that invites us to rearrange it, so that its real meaning becomes clear through a series of endless anagrams. (7) Bellmer was looking beyond the relationship of words between two parties; he was rather looking at words in relation to oneself. ‘One’ and ‘self’. Two halves of a whole. What is verbalised/ written against what is understood. The morphing nature of words and sentences is translated into the forming of a personal account. This highlights similarities between Bellmer’s work on the Anagram and Warburg’s methodology. In both instances, they were guiding ‘the Other’/’Oneself’ to formalise their reactions and thoughts through the possibility of sufficiency and insufficiency. Or, more eloquently translated – through the possibility of possibility.

The belief to transmit and circulate energy and power to the observer was a notion that Warburg was familiar with in his earlier work too. Warburg had questioned why the figures return in Del Cossa’s frescoes after seven hundred years of exile in scholarly treatises with their vitality undiminished. (12) He reasons this with the underlying conviction that images have the ability to not only demonstrate and present themselves in its exteriority, but they are also able to embody a ‘signature’ of energy constellation within one’s interiority. They are simultaneously an indication of force as well as a means of funnelling it.

Even those sitting in within his microcosm of emotive provocations were stunned by his ability to provoke a suitable reaction. G. Bing who was Warburg’s collaborator and assistant, spoke about the emergence of emotional strength through Warburg’s intention of art in antiquity: “The gestures of classical art, in their first formulations, come from a period in which the reality of myths was a ritual reality...

These gestures are still capable of provoking a suitable reaction”. (13) Suitable was an intriguing way to describe emotion. What is a suitable reaction? Perhaps what G. Bing meant was an uncontrollable reaction. That in a sense would be the most suitable reaction towards the art of antiquity. An unfiltered emotion that in its purest form, reacts to what is in front of it. It is as if the observer can find comfort in the hesitance of the artist through a force that monstrously transcends an expanding and shrinking vision of excess, an excess of possibilities.

(Note: I chose to not include any graphic elements in this format of the essay as it would not coincide with the methodology chosen. Therefore, I chose to state that this section of the essay, titled: Emotion, is a mere statement of what could come. What will be presented in the future about the present will be an attempt to graphically provoke the observer through the use of Pathos formula in its entirety. The ability to elaborate on Warburg’s intention and methodology with the use of moving images will be explored. Similar to Warburg in the Bilderatlas: Mnemosyne, the middle part of the work was left as an element of progress and the moment within emotion is stated to do the same).

We will end with the beginning.

The use of the word Atlas exemplifies Warburg’s playful nature with words. He used the structure and methodology of cartography as a tool to present and process information spanning time and space. This was visually connecting the visible in a two-dimensional layout. If one finds oneself in a labyrinth, one does not understand its layout, one cannot orient oneself. But seen from above, from a perspective of possibility and words, paths, links, contours, bridges over obstacles become visible and may be grasped intellectually. (8) He used the scientific nature of mapping and rearranging to articulate a strong basis for an argument. Without this strong basis and pretence, his ability to introduce us to the realm of possibilities would have been less possible. In essence, Warburg chose to use words to humble our perspective from that of a god-like, fully formed view, to a view of the (un)formed and (in)complete.

Words were used as a tool to present the past in the presence of a (de)monstrous(ative) perspective.

(6) Aristotle. Aristotle’s Physics. Books 1 & 2. Oxford :Clarendon P., 1970.

(7) Friedman, Samantha: Moma. Endless Anagrams: Hans Bellmer and Anna Gaskell’s Imaginary Conversation. Published: 2012. https://www. moma.org explore/inside_out/2012/06/14/endless-anagrams-hans-bellmer-and-anna-gaskells-imaginary-conversation/ (8) McEwan, Dorothea. Aby Warburg’s (1866-1929) Dots and Lines. Mapping the Diffusion of AstrologicalMotifs in Art History.

The Johns Hopkins University Press. German Studies Review , May, 2006, Vol. 29, No. 2 (May, 2006), pp. 243-268

(9) Forster, K., Mazzucco, K.: Introduzione ad Aby Warburg e all’Atlante della memoria. Bruno Mondadori: 2002 (10) Impett L., Süsstrunk S. (2016) Pose and Pathosformel in Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas. In: Hua G., Jégou H. (eds) Computer Vision – ECCV 2016 Workshops. ECCV 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 9913. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46604-0_61 (11) Canetti, Elias. Crowds and Power. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 1960.

(12) Frieze. Picture Piece: Frescoes in the Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara: Francesco del Cossa’s frescoes in the Hall of the Months . Date sited: 2021. https://www.frieze.com/article/picture-piece-frescoes-palazzo-schifanoia-ferrara (13) Angel, S.: The mnemosyne atlas and the meaning of panel 79 in Aby Warburg’s Oeuvre as a distributed object. Leonardo 44(3), 266–267 (2011)

Longing enters us in the realm of possibilities that Warburg introduces through verbalisation and leaves through a lingering taste of emotion. It is an encompassment of words said and emotions felt. It is the want to complete a form permanently yet remain incomplete eternally as well. It is Mnemosyne at her core. Warburg was never able to finish the panels about his mythical hero Perseus. He died before being able to do so. Perhaps the monstrous incident of the unfinished through him chasing his hero was purposeful. He left enough panels for his thoughts and decisions to be understood but missed out the middle part so that his piece will forever remain open to possibilities and ever-transfiguring according to an individual’s reaction towards it. Within this microcosm of memory through the unfinished panels, the concept of totality as we know it, is questioned. The rigidness of a full form and desire to achieve perfection over a lifetime becomes more fragmented with the reduction in numbers. This fragmentation damages, or in actual fact repairs the Bilderatlas: Mnemosyne because its transient state blurs the legibility of a finished story. Through a fragmented portrayal and a collapse of time, the idea of rearranging, reorganising, recollecting a sequence, a series, creates a lineage. A lineage to be passed on. A linear arrangement of thoughts. It is something being presented in the present and is ever in transfiguration. It will only exist for that moment in time as it is before it is rearranged and transformed again.

It remains transforming.

I would like to conclude similarly to how Warburg concluded – in progress, a piece that was left unfinished, incomplete, not of full form.

‘The living being had no need of eyes when there was nothing remain? ing outside him to be seen, nor of ears when there was no surrounding atmosphere to be breathed... it was not necessary to bestow upon him hands, nor had he any need of feet. . . and he was made to move within his own limits, revolving in a circle.’ – Plato (15) Similar to Plato’s description, the Bilderatlas: Mnemosyne was revolving purely in its interiority.

Images are framed within a border. Images are arranged within panels with limits. Panels are institutionalised through the order of its arrangement. It limits the presentation of oneself to a wider sphere.

That is why the demonstrative nature of Warburg’s method through memory equates the monster to a threshold rather than a limit or boundary. It bridges the gap between ‘the within’ and pushes it towards ‘the with(out)’. From its interior to exterior. It traps the law of arrangement because it is not defined.

It is a space of appearance and potentiality for those brave enough to encounter. So let me call upon you to present yourself, similar to a rendezvous meeting. The etymology of the word rendezvous itself comes from the late 16th century French; rendez-vous, imperative of se rendre. Literally, it translates to ‘present yourselves’ and that is exactly what we will do, we will present ourselves (in both forms) to formulate our own pasts.

I would like to cordially invite scholars around the world to be part of this collapse of time. In the words of Mark Cousins in the Ugly, ‘a moment in the unfolding of a beauty whose form as a totality is all the more triumphant for having overcome the resistance to itself in its ‘moments’ of ugliness’.

(16) Let us gather amongst those moments of ugliness and follow in the footsteps of Warburg. The misunderstandings, thought-provoking arrangements and (un)formed nature of Warburg was not a method to approach totality. It was a (de)monstro(tive) way to overcome the resistance of totality in its whole presence.

(14) Britannica. Mnemosyne. Date sited: 2021. https://www.google.com/search?q=mnemosyne...

(15) Plato. Plato’s Cosmology; the Timaeus of Plato. Timaeus, 33A~34a. London: 1937.

(16) Cousins, Mark. THE UGLY [part 1]. AA FilesNo. 28 (Autumn 1994), pp. 61-64