WARBURG C Iconology of The Interval-Libre
WARBURG C Iconology of The Interval-Libre
WARBURG C Iconology of The Interval-Libre
To cite this article: Mat t hewa Rampley (2001) Iconology of t he int erval: Aby Warburg's legacy, Word & Image: A Journal of
Verbal/ Visual Enquiry, 17:4, 303-324, DOI: 10.1080/ 02666286.2001.10435723
To link to this article: ht t p:/ / dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/ 02666286.2001.10435723
Warburg's legacy
MATTHEW RAMPLEY
WORD &
IMAGE. VOL.
17.
It has long been recognized that Aby \I\Tarburg played a central role,
perhaps even the central role, in elevating the role of iconology in Art
History. Having been traditionally regarded as an ancillary activity, iconological interpretation came to displace the concern with aesthetic form and
style predominant in late nineteenth-century art historical discourse. I
Through the work of collaborators, students and followers such as Fritz
Saxl, Edgar \l\Tind, Erwin Panofsky or Ernst Gombrich, iconology became,
from the I930S onwards, established as a canonical method in art historical
interpretation. Although semiological, psychoanalytical and culturalmaterialist interpretations have subsequently dislodged iconology from its
central place in the practice of Art History, iconology still maintains
prominence in much contemporary scholarship.' Indeed, while iconological
methods are often regarded as the culmination of the bourgeois tradition of
scholarship in Art History, it has also been argued that iconology, especially
as formulated by Warburg's student Panofsky, in many ways anticipated
subsequent theoretical positions, in particular, the semiological analysis of
images. 3 However, although the idea of the iconological 'method' is
common currency, its origins in the writings of Warburg have become
largely obscured. The reasons for this are quite clear. Until the recent translation of The Renewal of Pagan Antiquiry, most of \l\Tarburg's work has
remained inaccessible to anglophone readers, and those few other writings
already translated lie scattered across a variety of different publications.'
Furthermore, the bulk of his work remains unpublished even in German:
the texts gathered together for the publication, in I932, of Die Emeuerung der
heidnischen Antike, the first two volumes of a projected six-volume edition of
\l\Tarburg's work, constitute only a small proportion of his total output.')
Consequently Warburg's work, though acknowledged as ground-breaking,
has tended to be eclipsed by the more voluminous writings of Panofsky,
Wittkower and others.
The appearance, therefore, of The Renewal of Pagan Alltiquiry, presents an
opportune moment to reassess the legacy of \I\T arburg, and in this article I
intend to examine in particular his notion of iconology. As I shall indicate,
there are important differences between \l\Tarburg's understanding of
iconology and better known formulations of the concept, such as that of
Panofsky; these differences have often been overlooked as the thought of the
one has become assimilated to that of the other. I do not raise this merely in
order to offer a corrective to the reading of War burg. Rather, my intention
is to draw out the distinct implications of Warburg's thinking, and to
examine the critical issues raised as its intellectual legacy. In particular, a
N 0 . 4 , OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2 0 0 I
central focus of War burg's writing was what he termed the 'iconology of the
interval', a conception of iconology intimately connected with questions of
representation, spectatorship and cultural memory.6 Accordingly, I shall
first discuss his conception of iconology before examining in turn his
treatment of the questions of subjectivity and memory.
Iconology of the interval
The iconological method is most immediately and most often associated
with vVarburg's student Panofsky. In Studies ill lconology Panofsky lays out his
famous tripartite schema of natural, iconographic and iconologicallevels of
interpretation.? In particular, using the example of a man offering a
greeting with his hat, Panofsky distinguishes between the putatively natural
recognition of the main raising his hat, the socially embedded meaning, or
iconography, of the gesture of raising a hat in mid-twentieth-century
Europe, and the iconological meaning of the gesture, in which it is set
against a background of implicit values and assumptions, including
knowledge of the character of the man in question. In terms of visual representations these three levels of interpretation correspond to three strata of
meaning or content within the representation, namely, primary or natural
subject-matter, secondary or conventional subject-matter, and intrinsic
meanmg.
Panofsky's tripartite scheme is open to a variety of criticisms. First, it has
become commonplace to point out that the notion of a 'natural' level of
interpretation is highly problematic. s Second, while the meaning of the
distinction between iconographical and iconological analysis is perhaps clear
in the simplified example of the man raising his hat, Pan ofsky himself
frequently elides the difference between the two in his actual historical interpretations. His study of early Netherlandish painting, for example, focuses
on the presence of socially encoded moti5 and themes, and largely fails to
explore the dimension of tacit symbolism and values that would inform the
'intrinsic meaning'. 9 Hence, while 'iconology' analyses the unconscious
assumption of symbolic codes and meanings, Panofsky's studies tend to focus
on the conscious artistic use of symbols and conventions. Despite such
weaknesses, Panofsky's method offered a crucial art historical insight,
namely, recognition of the social mediation of pictorial meaning. Thus, the
iconological interpretation attends to the presence of visual symbols and
their conventionalized meanings, coupled with an examination of parallels
in other cultural practices such as literature, philosophy, law and so forth.
In this, Panofsky was also indebted to Ernst Cassirer's philosophy of
symbolic forms, though only following through the full implications of the
latter's historicized Kantianism in a few essays, such as his studies of perspective or proportion.
It is possible to perceive an affinity between Panofsky's notion of
iconology as the study of the social mediation of pictorial representation and
the Marxist attention to the ideological determinants of the visual arts.
Iconology can thus be regarded as a form of ideological analysis, albeit
without the materialist basis of Marxist strategies. Furthermore, Panofsky's
iconology takes part in the wider shift that has occurred in the Humanities
and the Social Sciences, namely, the spatialization of culture. In the
nineteenth century culture was primarily viewed in historical, genetic terms,
I
304
(J
MATTHEW RAMPLEY
but from the early twentieth century cultural formations increasingly come
to be placed within a synchronic network of signs and symbols. Although
Panofsky does not use such terminology, his notion of iconology can be seen
as anticipating a conception of culture as a symbolic or discursive space, and
it is undoubtedly on account of this that parallels have been drawn between
iconology and semiology.
The precedent for Panofsky's interpretation of iconology can be seen in
many of the writings of Aby Warburg. His doctoral study of Botti celli's Birth
oj Venus and Primavera presents an exemplary case of careful, attentive reconstruction of the cultural milieu, Quattrocento Florence, within which Botticelli's paintings were produced.!! In that study, Warburg reconstructs the
discourse of Antiquity current in Renaissance Florence, drawing on a
variety of other cultural documents of the time, including the poetry of
writers such as Angelo Poliziano and Zanobio Acciaiuoli, certain passages
from Alberti's De PictzlTa, a cassone representation of Venus and Aeneas, or a
medal struck by Niccolo Fiorentino for Lorenzo Tornabuoni.
A similar process can be seen at work in Warburg's other major study,
that of the meaning and use of astrological symbols in Reformation
Germany, in which the significance of Di.irer's famous engraving Jvfelencolia I
is set against the background of the obsession with astrology in midsixteenth-century Germany.!> In this study vVarburg explores the manifold
ways in which supposedly 'primitive' astrological beliefs persisted into the
Reformation in Germany, even among supporters of Luther, who personally
discouraged such practices. Amongst ,1\7 arburg's voluminous unpublished
writings, too, there are examples of a similar method at work. In his lecture
of I926 on 'Italian Antiquity in the Age of Rembrandt',! 3 Warburg explores
the cultural symbolism and resonance of Roman antiquity for the early
Dutch Republic, highlighting, for example, the popularity of Antonio
Tempesta's engraved illustrations of Ovid and Tacitus, or the prominence of
the mythic Batavian leader Claudius Civilis in official pageants, literary
works such as Vondel's drama The BatazJian Brothers, or in the original
decoration of the town hall of Amstndam q
The impression which a cursory reading of these texts might give, namely,
that Warburg was concerned above all with the reconstruction of the historical milieu of specific works of art, is misleading. At the beginning of the
lecture on Rembrandt's he distances himself from historicism and a vague
sense of the spirit of the age, which arises, he argues, 'all the while the
various parallels of word and image are not brought into a systematically
ordered series of luminous objects, and as long as the material and formal
connections between art and drama (whether that consists of cultic performances, mime plays, or theatre with dialogue and singing) are not seen in
the light of their mutual significance (let alone viewed together systematically'.!5 Despite his stress on a systematic method, vVarburg does not offer
a system in the manner of Panofsky; but his emphasis invites comparison
with his student, who has most often been regarded as completing much of
the work of War burg, endowing it with greater philosophical rigour.
Warburg's emphasis on the necessity of systematic method has been
viewed by some as exemplified in his painstaking attention to details,
summed up in the famous maxim that 'God is in the detail'.!6 However,
such an interpretation misrepresents Warburg's interest in culture as a
306
MATTHEvV RAI\IIPLEY
308
l\,1/\TTHE\Y RAlvIPLE'l<'
23 - vVarburg,
[Final Version]" p. 7.
Arch of
vVarburg
Introduction
sculpture, the triumph of existence confronted the souls of subsequent generations in all its shattering contradictoriness, as both the affirmation oflife and
the negation of the self. They could see it on the pagan sarcophagi of Dionysus
in the tumult of his orgiastic following, or in the form of the victory procession
of the emperor on the Roman triumphal arch."3 At times Warburg even
comes to regard classical antiquity as wholly Dionysian, a zero point of
barbarism against which all cultural progress is to be measured.
One focus of War burg's interest was therefore the twofold appropriation of
the classical inheritance, and if we return to his early Botticelli study, it
becomes apparent that alongside the putative grace and elegance of Botti celli's
paintings War burg is also attentive to elements in the paintings, in particular
the animated way in which Botticelli has depicted the drapery of the figures,
which contradicts Winckelmann's version of antiquity. Already in the Renaissance, therefore, a sensitivity to the Dionysian can be seen, and \1\1 arburg
traces its manifestation in, for example, engravings by Durer,4 or The Battle of
Constantine by the School of Raphael (figure 4), which vVarburg contrasts with
Piero della Francesca's version!5
The second way in which the polarities of the Renaissance become
manifest is through the conflict between 'classicism' and 'realism'. \1\1 arburg
returns repeatedly to the contradiction between the introduction of the
Dionysian pathos of classical sculpture in the early Renaissance (and
\l\1arburg regards Donatello as central to this process), and the continued
popularity in Florence of the courtly style of the late Middle Ages, apparent
in the prominence, for example, of Burgundian tapestries.o 6 Specifically,
\1\1 arburg is drawn to the conflict between the emergent historical sensibility
that underpinned the appropriation of classical forms in Quattrocento
Florence and the fact that the art of Flanders, Germany and Burgundy
exhibits a remarkable lack of historical distance; classical subject-matter was
still presented in contemporary guise.
"IATTHEW RAMPLEY
( Ref 30 ovcrieaj)
3 11
lVIATTHE\V RAJ\,IPLEY
Version]" p. 2.
314
l\IATTHE\\'
46 - Ibid., p. 97.
53 - Ibid., p. 3 10 .
MATTHE"W RAMPLEY
66 - Warburg, 'Grundlegende
Bruchstiicke zu einer monistischen
Kunstpsychologie', Warburg Archive, No.
+3.2, 3 28 .
67 -
Version]" p.
Introduction [Final
2.
58 - E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of
Primili", Rellgioll (Oxford, 1965); C. E. R.
Lloyd,
l\Ientalitirs (Cambridge,
199 0 ).
This is what is most distinctive about vVarburg's method and yet what is
also most problematic. This becomes apparent once his rdiance on notions
of collective psychology and memory are subjected to closer scrutiny.
As I stated above, vVarburg's thought draws on a tradition in which the
psychology of the individual is projected onto the larger social collective.
This is most apparent in anthropological theories of primitive culture, the
most important aspect of which is the emphasis on the idea of primitive
'mentality' or psychology. In certain respects this conflation of the individual and the social can be traced back to Hegel. Although this intellectual
debt remains implicit, there is a elear antecedent in Hegel's conflation of
ontogcncsis and phylogencsis, and in his mapping of thc parallels bct\NCCn
the genesis of self-consciousness and the evolution of the social Geist. This
notion of a collective primitive psychology has been tl1f object of considerable criticism within anthropology. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, and more
recently G. E. R. Lloyd, have highlighted the difficulties that arise with the
idea of the primitive mind. 08 In particular, such theories tend to focus em
religious ritual beliefs and practices, and "Varburg is no exception to this
rule. His lecture based on his experience with the Pueblo Indians of South
'tVestern America focuses almost exclusively on the variety of ritual dances
he witnesses. Specifically, his assertion that the Indians 'stand on the middle
ground between magic and logos '" a culture of touch and a culture of
thought' G9 is based on his analysis of the role of religious symbolism where,
for example, complex meteorological phenomena such as lightning are
expressed through the concrete symbol of the snake, and where the snake
dance invoking the weather god involves imitation of the snake. However,
as Evans-Pritchard suggested nearly 50 years ago, while such purportedly
primitive religions rely heavily on concrete symbols, the symbols themselves
may well function as little more than signs or indices; hence the snakesymbol may simply operate as a metaphor. 70 Furthermore, attention to the
specific question of religion ignores the greater part of the social life of socalled 'primitives', which relies on just the same form of instrumental reason
supposedly characteristic only of modernity. In his study of the Azande
Evans-Pritchard highlights the fact that supposedly sacred spaces and
objects are frequently treated by the Azande as normal profane artefacts
and places.7 1 The theory of primitive mentality would have to explain such
contradictions as a manifestation of schizophrenia, and it is not at all clear
how an entire society or culture could be regarded as schizophrenic; often
the use of such vocabulary in this case serves simply to highlight the
presence of some cultural contradiction, rather than to make a substantive
psychoanalytic point. More generally, too, the notion of primitive, indeed
any collective mentalities rests to a large extent on the assumption of beliefs
held by the culture being studied, belief in demons, in magic, in occult
sympathies, in identity of representation and object and so forth. But it has
been argued by Rodney Needham that the use of 'belief' as a term of crosscultural analysis may be severely problematic.)" Not only is it almost impossible to identify any specific mental state corresponding to believing, but
also the very concept of belief is particular to vVestern culture, having few
counterparts in other cultures. I shall return to this theme later.
vVarburg's own attempt to construct an anthropological psychology of the
Renaissance seems just as problematic, therefore, as those psychological and
3I 8
l\L\.TTH EW RAl\IPLEY
7-J. - Ibid., p.
2+0.
statement of allegiance to God rather than belief in His existence. Thus even
for the Renaissance, reference to belief (in the modern sense) has to bc
exercized, ifat all, with extreme caution, and this also affects the psychological anthropology dependent on the assumption of belief. I shall return to the
consequences of this problem in the conclusion.
Mnernosyne
An essential part of vVarburg's analysis of the 'oscillation between a theory
of causation based on signs' was his theory of collective memory. The origins
of his ideas on memory in the work of Richard Semon and Ti to Vignoli are
well documented. i i The heart of his theory rests on the notion that visual
symbols function as archives of the mental state of the producer. Hence a
whole range of cognitive and emotional states somehow imprint themselves
on the visual symbol, in the form of 'pathos formulae', the term he used to
denote representations of the bodily expression of human affectivity. The
symbol itself he referred to as an 'engram' or 'dynamogram'. As a consequence of his interest in genealogy, vVarburg was concerned above all with
the original impression of a variety of visual symbols which, being traced
back to primitive origins, almost always have their roots in a Dionysian state
of primal fear. In addition, Warburg held that unmediated exposure to a
primitive engram would reawaken the same emotions, primarily fear, that
fuelled their original creation. An added dimension is thus given to his
iconological method. I have already stressed the importance of motivic
transformation to Warburg's approach, and the significance of that process
now becomes clearer, inasmuch as it is concerned with the reception of a
psychic.ally c.harged cultural legacy. As I have shown, for vVarburg the
Renaissance is less a process of simple repetition of antiquity than one of
appropriation, and likewise cultural memory is more than simply a matter of
neutral recollection. In one sense, for each generation of artists the task is
simple: either to sublimate the primitive memories which, like a stubborn
residue, have become attached to inherited symbols and motifs, or to regress
and allow those memories to be reactivated. In this regard one recurrent
focus of interest was the role of astrology; the figures of the zodiac can be
traced back to primitive origins, when they were actual deities that were
held to influence mundane events in a very concrete manner. Subsequently
they were sublimated, first, into mythic allegories, then into mere navigational aids,?3
Every memory, no matter how private it may be, even the memory of events to
which we were the only witness, the memory of thoughts and inexpressible
feelings, is linked to a whole collection of notions that many others possess ...
when we summon LIp a memory ... we connect it to others that surround it: in
truth it is because all around us there are other memories connected to it,
inherent in the objects and beings of the milieu we inhabit, or in us ourselves:
reference points in space and time, conceptions of history, geography,
biography, politics ... 'A'
i\-IATTHE'"
RA;'I,IPLEY
88 - Ibid., p. 151.
89 - Ibid., p. 155
with the later discovery of work such as the Hellenistic Laocoon sculpture.
This raises a difficulty, however, for W'arburg's general theory. As Warburg
knew only too well, though the Quattrocentro witnessed an enormous
expansion in the knowledge of classical culture, including the widespread
dissemination of Greek and Roman texts, a knowledge of classical antiquity
was continuous prior to this period. 86 In Italy its monuments were ever
present, most particularly in Rome, from the Arch of Constantine to the
Colosseum to Trajan's Column, but, inexplicably, it was only during the
course of the Quattrocento that the authentic Dionysian and Apollinian
bases of antiquity were 'remembered', in contrast with the various degraded
versions that had persisted through the Middle Ages. 'Where a contemporary
commentator might look for relevant social, economic or other historical
factors that underlay this difference, vVarburg fails to account for the
mechanisms that brought about this shift in the manner of recollection. And
in any case this notion also contradicts his theory of the engram, according
to which direct exposure always communicates its full psychic impact.
vVarburg does not explain how this full psychic impact was somehow
deflected during the course of the Middle Ages. vVarburg's reading of the
Laocoon, though an important part of his critique of the view of antiquity
stemming from Winckelmann, also serves to undermine his own position.
For Winckelmann's 'misreading' of the group, emphasizing its tranquillity,
should, according to vVarburg's notion of the engram, not even be possible.
And in any case, vVarburg's own reading of the group, or of Botticelli's
paintings, for example, depends on mediation by a vast array of pictorial
and textual material. The concept of the unmediated encounter with the
engram thus does not square either with 'Varburg's method or with his
wider historical picture.
vVarburg's interest in social memory is thus deeply questionable as it
stands, but can be retrieved if reformulated in the light of Freud, in partiClllar, his paper of 1914 on 'Remembering, Repeating and Working
Through' .87 In this paper Freud distinguishes between repetition-compulsion and recollection; repressed traumatic experiences are not remembered
but rather acted out, without the patient realizing that the experience is
being repeated. The greater the trauma, the more likely it is that the
repressed experience will surface through a process of compulsive repetition
than through a genuine act of remembrance. As Freud notes, 'the greater
the resistance, the more extensively will acting out (repetition) replaces
remembering' .88 Thus, though the compulsion to repeat reiterates a
repressed, forgotten, past experience, it functions within a perpetual present,
acting in the place of memory. For Freud genuine recollection arises
through the phenomenon of transference, 'the awakening of the memories,
which appear without difficulty, as it were, after the resistance has been
overcome'.89
Freud's discussion is here concerned with the specific issue of clinical
treatment, but in other works his account of trauma, repression and repetition functions as a frame of analysis for wider cultural phenomena. Freud
frequently returned to the question, 'what are the ways and means
employed by one generation in order to hand on its mental states to the
next one?'.9 0 In '.Moses and Monotheism' the emergence of Judaism and its
eventual supplanting by Christianity are interpreted by analogy with the
321
92
Ibid., p. 99.
Conclusion
Although it has become the focus of a resurgence of scholarly interest, much
of the thought of Aby VVarburg has now become deeply problematic. In
particular, his reliance on the notion of a collective mentality and his theory
of social memory are open to a wide range of criticisms. In modified form,
however, his work presents a rich legacy, and I shall conclude by outlining
its continuing importance.
I began my analysis of \'Varburg's 'iconology of the interval' by means of
a comparison with Panofsky, drawing particular attention to the importance
for vVarburg of iconological differences. A crucial distinction between
324
l\IATTHE'"
RAl\II'LEY
100 -
Illotc
68).
I
- PolariJ' and Allalogy. Two 7)peJ of
Argumwtatioll ill Ear[J' (;rnk Thollgh.t
1986).