Aby Warburg Quotes

All well — from the neck down.

By associating votive offerings with sacred images, the Catholic Church, it its wisdom, had left its formerly pagan flock a legitimate outlet for the inveterate impulse to associate oneself, or one's own effigy, with the Divine as expressed in the palpable form of the human image.

The few weeks I have had at my disposal have not given me the chance to revive and to work through my old memories in such a way that I might offer you a solid introduction into the psychic life of Indians.

Fritx Saxl lo dijo mejor al llegar a Londres con la biblioteca de Aby Warburg a cuestas, en un par de barcos salidos a hurtadillas, en la noche, del puerto de Hamburgo: “Hay momentos en que no decir nada es la peor manera de decir las cosas

Aby Warburg est ainsi à l’origine d’un fonds bibliophilique inouï. Il a des théories sur le rangement des livres. Notamment celle du bon voisinage. Le livre que l’on cherche n’est pas forcément celui que l’on doit lire. Il faut regarder celui d’à côté.

(...) se rejoue, à travers tous ces conflits, ce que Warburg nommera le Nachleben, la "survivance" d'une instabilité déjà centrale à la culture classique elle-même et que Nietzsche, dans La Naissance de la tragédie, avait déjà bien repérée : c'est le conflit de l'"éthos apollinien" et du "pathos dionysiaque". "Le Quattrocento, conclut Warburg, savait apprécier cette double richesse de l'Antiquité païenne.

While there are deeper regularities in the Universe than the simple circumstances we generally describe as orderly, all that order, simple and complex, seems to derive from laws of Nature established at the Big Bang (or earlier), rather than as a consequence of belated intervention by an imperfect deity. “God is to be found in the details” is the famous dictum of the German scholar Aby Warburg. But, amid much elegance and precision, the details of life and the Universe also exhibit haphazard, jury-rigged arrangements and much poor planning. What shall we make of this: an edifice abandoned early in construction by the architect? The evidence, so far at least and laws of Nature aside, does not require a Designer. Maybe there is one hiding, maddeningly unwilling to be revealed. Sometimes it seems a very slender hope. The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal. --Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Every generation", Aby Warburg mused long ago, "gets the Renaissance of Antiquity that it deserves.

But Freud was also wary of art's tendency to confuse reality and unreality. If Leonardo was a neurotic, then he needed to be cured. Freud, like his near-contemporary Wölfflin, was biased towards order and composition: composition of the artwork, composition of the personality. This bias supported a sequestering and marginalization of avant-garde art, whose basic principle was mistrust of composition. But then Freud was not an avant-garde thinker. Like Aby Warburg, he saw the potential for disorder in the human personality but sought to contain that potential.