Journal
Just published: Colección Biblioteca Warburg
First volume of the new Argentine series published, edited by Uwe Fleckner and Felisa Santos
The first volume of the new series Colección Biblioteca Warburg, edited by Uwe Fleckner and Felisa Santos and published by Miluno Editorial, has been published in Argentina: Aby Warburg: Adivinación pagana antigua en palabras e imágenes en tiempos de Lutero (Pagan-Antique Prophecy in Words and Images in the Age of Luther).
This book by Aby Warburg, which deals with a specific historical moment – Luther’s time – through the images circulating at the time, is an undisputed pioneer of contemporary visual media studies, as it opens up the field of art history to »plebeian« images: Pamphlets, images printed in books, which were weapons at the time – Schlagbilder (striking images) or »slogans in pictures« – that had hitherto not been taken into consideration by historians concerned with aesthetics.
Warburg seeks to decipher the phenomena contained therein, to understand astrology, which decisively permeates this world, as a kind of attempt to mediate between magic and science, between monstra and stars, between affects and reason; he sees Janus figures in the astrologer and also in Luther and Dürer, borderline figures that can also be openers to the light. He wants to explain the ambiguity of these polarities, which are presented as such in retrospect, but which are originally united because they have »a common root«. He also does this to illuminate his own present, in which images were used to attract, move, provoke the masses, and these reflections can also illuminate our today’s world, in which the need for a Denkraum is evident.
Thus, this text, more than a century old, is highly topical for all those who want to shed light on the role of images in political struggles and in our culture as a whole, and who want to preserve the »Denkraum of a clear historical consciousness«.
Colección Biblioteca Warburg, Volume I
Aby Warburg: Adivinación pagana antigua en palabras e imágenes en tiempos de Lutero
Edited by Uwe Fleckner and Felisa Santos
Translation and foreword: Felisa Santos
Miluno Editorial, September 2024, ISBN: 9789873782114, 29.000 arg$
Spanish, 248 pages, softcover, 12.5 x 20 cm
Aby Warburg / Neuerscheinungen