11 November - 30 December 2019

I continuing to read Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum and though I find it hard work I am amazed at how the ideas expressed in it keep occurring in other, unexpected areas of my research. I have been surprised to discover the reach of Aby Warburg’s ideas influencing not only artists such as Kitaj but also writers such as TS Eliott and Ezra Pound. Warbugian ideas are defined by Edgar Wind Saxl in his 1957 lectures as ‘the main object of the study of art as seen by the Warburgians was to define it as more than a history of artistic vision. It should be understood instead as one branch of the cultural history of it’s period, inextricably linked with history, politics, literature, religion and philosophy and undergoing mutual influence with these other fields’ M Livingstone (1980)

 

Griselda Pollock’s discussion of Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas archive very interesting and I am excited by the idea that radical shifts in the way images or art is interpreted can be affected, by setting up encounters that remove them from the ‘phallocentric and nationalistic art historical tradition’. 

 

I certainly intend to continue to investigate Pollock and the Mnemosyne Atlas as it feels as if it might unearth something surprisingly and useful.

 

Pollock, G (2007) Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space and the Archive Abingdon UK : Routledge

 

Livingstone, M (1980) Iconology as a Theme in the Early Works of R B Kitaj The Burlington Magazine URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/880055 

[Accessed 16 December 2019]