BILDERFAHRZEUGE Blog

Bilderfahrzeuge Lecture series 2022-2023

gimes.” The series has been conceived and organised by the sub-group “Art & Nationhood,” comprising Andreas Beyer, Alexandra Marraccini, Oliver O’Donnell and Judith Rottenburg, and is presented in conjunction with and supported by the Warburg Institute.

New Exhibition: “Füssli, the Realm of Dreams and the Fantastic” at Musée Jacquemart-André

16 September 2022 – 23 January 2023
Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris


In autumn 2022, the Musée Jacquemart-André will hold an exhibition devoted to the oeuvre of the Swiss-born British painter, Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli, 1741–1825). Comprising sixty works from public and private collections, the itinerary will present the most emblematic of works by Füssli, the artist of the imaginary and the sublime. From Shakespearean themes to representations of dreams, nightmares, and apparitions, and mythological and Biblical illustrations, Füssli forged a new aesthetic that shifted between reality and the fantastic.


Aby Warburgs Bilderkosmos. “Eine Art Weltkrieg” von Anselm Franke und Erhard Schüttpelz

Der unscheinbar daherkommende Band Eine Art Weltkrieg von Anselm Franke und Erhard Schüttpelz (Spector Books 2021) unternimmt den Versuch, den „meistgelesene[n] Text Warburgs und der Kunstgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts“ (S. 14), namentlich Aby Warburgs sogenanntes Schlangenritual, und die sich seither um diese Ausführungen rankenden – oder sollte man sagen: schlängelnden? – Diskurse wie Bilddiskkurse neu einzuordnen.

The four versions of Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Picture Atlas.

Most discussions of Aby Warburg’s picture atlas understandably focus on issues of iconography and iconology. In contrast, this blog concentrates exclusively on aspects of its material history and the photographic campaigns that guaranteed the survival of the various stages, or ‘series’ of the Atlas. Much of this history has been discussed by Claudia Wedepohl and the curators of the recent Mnemosyne atlas exhibition, Roberto Ohrt and Axel Heil, in their monumental publication Aby Warburg: Bilderatlas Mnemosyne – The Original [1]. The present blog revisits these issues with a tight focus on the questions ‘What did the original atlas in Hamburg consist of?’ and ‘How many times was it photographed?’ While I propose a different answer to the second question than the above mentioned authors, with regard to the first one, my aim is rather to present in greater detail the basic facts. I am doing this not least to counter some misconceptions of the original presentation of the atlas in the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (K.B.W.)

Dusty Frames: Looking at 19th and 20th Century Art in the Courtauld Gallery.

Ascending the semi-circular staircase of the Courtauld Gallery, with its freshly coated electric blue bannisters, the visitor undertakes a physically demanding and intellectually exhilarating climb through centuries of artistic production that are carefully arranged across three floors. The Gallery has recently reopened its doors with much pomp after a two-year hiatus for building renovations, welcoming seasoned and new crowds to its sleek, clean-cut spaces.

Die Welt spiegeln. Rudolf Bernoulli, Fritz Saxl und eine Sammlung kosmologischer Bilder

Am 11. Januar 1929 schreibt Fritz Saxl an den Schweizer Kunsthistoriker Rudolf Bernoulli, Konservator der graphischen Sammlung der ETH in Zürich: Es „ist doch wirklich sehr schade, dass der Weltspiegel nicht mehr die Welt weiter zu spiegeln beabsichtigt.” Kurz zuvor hatte Bernoulli ihm die Einstellung einer Serie von Vignetten historischer Kosmosbilder angekündigt, die er ab 1921 wöchentlich im Weltspiegel publiziert hatte. Er bot auch an, der K.B.W. etwaige Nummern, die noch fehlten, nachzusenden. So finden sich in der Bibliothek des Warburg Institute heute sämtliche Exemplare des Weltspiegels von 1921 bis 1929 als gebundene Sammlung.

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