Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion

Rating:
Summary: butterflies in the details
Review: It is my hope there will be more such pleasing books and articles about Aby Warburg's life and works. M.'s book suffices to place the Florentine and Native American explorations of Warburg in context and in (usefully) anachronistic correspondance. The complete title promises an image in motion, though most of the images Warburg used for his work were static plates. Mightily, M. shows the energies of the figures--the reticulations and folds of serpents and veils--express the flash of a captured ecstatic movement that enthralled Warburg and echoes the Dionysian-pagan vision of Nietzsche.

The pursuit of iconography and quest for symbols and similar energies in art and ritual culture still remain prominent in the writing of working Warburgians. However, Warburg himself gains popularity now too among historians who find interest in his techniques (montage work and avoidance of narrative) and M. makes similar claims for Warburg's relevance to cinema and film theory.

Spanning biography, analysis, theory and history, this book is most handsomely produced (gorgeous b/w plates), utterly readable, and completely cogent.