Aby M Warburg Michael P Steinberg Popular Books

Aby M Warburg Michael P Steinberg Biography & Facts

Aby Moritz Warburg (June 13, 1866 – October 26, 1929) was a German art historian and cultural theorist who founded the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (Warburg Library for Cultural Studies), a private library, which was later moved to the Warburg Institute, London. At the heart of his research was the legacy of the classical world, and the transmission of classical representation, in the most varied areas of Western culture through to the Renaissance. Warburg described himself as: "Amburghese di cuore, ebreo di sangue, d'anima Fiorentino" ('Hamburger at heart, Jew by blood, Florentine in spirit'). Early life and education Aby Warburg was born in Hamburg into the wealthy Warburg family of German Jewish bankers. His ancestors had come to Germany from Italy in the 17th century and settled in the town of Warburg in Westphalia, taking on the town's name as their family name. In the 18th century the Warburgs moved to Altona near Hamburg. Two brothers Warburg founded the banking firm M. M. Warburg & Co in Hamburg, which today again has an office there. Aby Warburg was the first of seven children born to Moritz Warburg, director of the Hamburg bank, and his wife Charlotte, née Oppenheim. Aby Warburg showed an early interest in literature and history and the second eldest son, Max Warburg went into the Hamburg bank, younger brothers Paul and Felix also entered banking. Max Warburg established the Warburg family bank as a "global player". Warburg grew up in a conservative Jewish home environment. Early on he demonstrated an unstable, unpredictable and volatile temperament. Warburg as a child reacted against the religious rituals which were punctiliously observed in his family, and rejected all career plans envisaged for him. He did not want to be a rabbi, as his grandmother wished, nor a doctor or lawyer. Aby Warburg met with resistance from his relatives, but he forced through his plans to study art history. Aby famously made a deal with his brother Max to forfeit his right, as the eldest son, to take over the family firm, in return for an undertaking on Max's part to provide him with all the books he ever needed. In 1886 Warburg began his study of art history, history and archaeology in Bonn and attended the lectures on the history of religion by Hermann Usener, those on cultural history by Karl Lamprecht and on art history by Carl Justi. He continued his studies in Munich and with Hubert Janitschek in Strasbourg, completing under him his dissertation on Botticelli's paintings The Birth of Venus and Primavera. From 1888 to 1889 he studied the sources of these pictures at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. He was now interested in applying the methods of natural science to the human sciences. The dissertation was completed in 1892 and printed in 1893. Warburg's study introduced into art history a new method, that of iconography or iconology, later developed by Erwin Panofsky. After receiving his doctorate Warburg studied for two semesters at the Medical Faculty of the University of Berlin, where he attended lectures on psychology. During this period he undertook a further trip to Florence. Travels in the United States In 1895, Aby's brother Paul Warburg married Nina Loeb (daughter of Solomon Loeb) in New York City, marking the beginning of Aby Warburg's travels in the southwestern United States. Before heading West, he had met veteran anthropologists James Mooney and Frank Hamilton Cushing at the Smithsonian Institution, both of whom contributed to early ethnographies of US American Indians. Warburg's correspondence with James Loeb which began at this time has been discussed in "Studies on Aby Warburg, Fritz Saxl and Gertrud Bing" which focuses on their communications about art and culture. Warburg's first stop in his travels was Mesa Verde to see the Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings. He continued on to visit a number of Pueblo villages in New Mexico before stopping in San Ildefonso, where he had the opportunity to photograph a traditional Antelope dance. In Cochiti, Warburg convinced a priest and his son to illustrate their people's cosmology; their drawing highlighted the importance of meteorological phenomena and serpents to their cultural worldview. Warburg's interest in Hopi snake imagery was also apparent through his interest in the snake dance of the Arizona Hopi. He had first heard of this tradition through discussions with Mooney, and although he never witnessed the dance firsthand it remained influential to his writings about the Hopi. In general, the Hopi culture represented a recurring object of Warburg's fascination: their architecture, rituals, masks, symbolism, and the ancient tradition of pottery painting (a tradition that was undergoing a revival, partly thanks to Nampeyo). Some of Warburg's observations of the Hopi people were informed by the Mennonite missionary, evangelist and ethnographer Heinrich R. Voth. Voth shared Warburg's interest in Hopi religion and culture and provided Warburg with details about the famous Hopi snake dance, as well as introducing him to Hopi people and giving him access to sacred Hopi ceremonies and photographic opportunities. In Oraibi, the last stop in southwestern voyage, Warburg attended and diligintly recorded his experience at Kachina dances. Warburg's American travels served as the inspiration for his first forays into photography and ethnography, but aside from two photographic exhibits, his personal accounts of his experiences among the Pueblo and Hopi peoples remained largely unexamined for nearly three decades. He ended up reviving his travel notes for his now-famous 1923 lecture on the Hopi snake dance ritual. In it, he stressed the kinship of religious thinking in Athens and Oraibi. The lecture also became the grounds by which Warburg was released from his psychiatric treatment at the Bellevue Sanitorium. Florence In 1897 Warburg married, against his father's will, the painter and sculptor Mary Hertz, daughter of Adolph Ferdinand Hertz, a Hamburg senator and member of the Synod of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Hamburg, and Maria Gossler, both members of the traditional Hanseatic elite of Hamburg. The couple had three children: Marietta (1899–1973), Max Adolph (1902–1974) and Frede C. Warburg (1904–2004). In 1898 Warburg and his wife took up residence in Florence. While Warburg was repeatedly plagued by depression, the couple enjoyed a lively social life. Among their Florentine circle could be counted the sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand, the writer Isolde Kurz, the English architect and antiquary Herbert Horne, the Dutch Germanist André Jolles and his wife Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg, and the Belgian art historian Jacques Mesnil. The most famous Renaissance specialist of the time, the American Bernard Berenson, was likewise in Florence at this period. Warburg, for his part, renounced all sentimental aestheticism, and in his writings criticised a vulgarised idealisation of an individu.... Discover the Aby M Warburg Michael P Steinberg popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Aby M Warburg Michael P Steinberg books.