Aby Warburg’s Babylonian paradigm

Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas, now a series of disassembled images, has drawn the attention of art historians and philosophers alike, primarily because of its enigmatic format and display, which seemingly defy explanation. Originally conceived of as a picture atlas, the project consisted of a series of image plates put together in the last years before Warburg’s death in October 1929. In it were compiled a wide range of images linked together by the invisible threads of Warburg’s unconventional thought. That this was not a pictorial inventory of the history of art is clear, as it was divided neither in a strictly historical nor clearly defined regional manner. Even taking into account the current growing interest in anachrony and the amalgamation of art history and the anthropology of art, the atlas went well beyond the art historical concerns of Warburg’s own time and the parameters of art historical research that came to be established later. It included reproductions of works of art, along with various photographs, postcards, and newspaper clippings, the connections between them not always self-evident and often, in fact, rather elusive. Warburg called this atlas display Mnemosyne, a name he also wanted for the motto of his library in Hamburg as a collection of knowledge. The archival goddess and mother of the muses thus presided over the final work of his life.