Aisthesis (May 2012)
Passagenwerke per Mnemosyne
Abstract
In the panels of Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas the choice of images, the composing strategy of each plate, the arrangement of the work as a whole are momentous issues. As the exhibition 'Mnemosyne ritrovata' highlighted, the composition of the Atlas is conceived as a wide story divided into different phases, with interlaced thematic and chronological threads, telling the connections between the topical interest of works of art and their relationship with models: the Atlas represents, by way of images, the mechanics of the classical tradition in a geographic area that has its centre in the Mediterranean basin, and spanning in terms of chronology from the proto-history of Mediterranean civilization to contemporary age. The comparison between the various releases of the Bilderatlas – especially between the last version that Warburg left at his death, documented by pictures taken in 1929, and the 'Daedalus version' reconstructed in 1993 – reveals the importance, in the montage of every single panel, of the spacing between images, that corresponds to a kind of punctuation of the whole story: in each plate, on those very spaces – Denkraum, space for the thought – images contend for their role and room for survival. In the game of the Atlas, the theatre of Memory is on stage.
