ortiz alexandracharmaine mappingculturalpathswarburgdeleuze arth summer2012

8/14/2019 Ortiz AlexandraCharmaine MappingCulturalPathsWarburgDeleuze ARTH Summer2012

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Mapping Cultural Paths: Warburg, Deleuze, and the Rhizome

Alexandra Charmaine Ortiz

Submitted in Partial Fulfillments of the RequirementsFor the Degree of Master of Arts in Art History

at

Savannah College of Art and Design

August 2012, Alexandra Charmaine Ortiz

The author hereby grants SCAD permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper andelectronic thesis copies of document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereaftercreated.

Signature of Author and Date________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________/___/__________Christoph Kltsch, Ph. D. (Sign here) (Date Here)

Committee Chair

________________________________________________________/___/__________

Jonathan Field, Ph. D. (Sign here) (Date Here)Committee Member

_______________________________________________________/___/__________Stephen Wagner, Ph. D. (Sign here) (Date Here)

Committee Member


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A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Art History Departmentin Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Degree of Master of Arts in Art History

Savannah College of Art and Design

By


Savannah, GA

August 2012


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DEDICATION

This thesis is dedicated to my mother, Ann Ortiz.

Thank you for your unfailing support and kind words throughout my entire life.

I love you.


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my thesis committee for their expert advice and guidance.Special thanks to Dr. Kltsch for helping me to fully realize my topic and continuing to work

with me.

Special thanks also to Dr. Wagner for his patience and continued support.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ...1

Abstract .....6

Introduction ..7

Tracing a Path to Mapping Paths: The Nymph and Atlas Plate 39 ....12

Maps and Rhizomes 21

WarburgsLibrary: Lines of Flight and Plateaus ...25

WarburgsMnemosyne Atlas: Lines of Flight and Plateaus ...36

Two Projects One Model: The Rhizome 44

Conclusion ..54

Figures .56

Bibliography ..111


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FIGURES

Fig. 1: Aby Warburg, unknown photographer, 1900, from http://warburg.sas.ac.uk.

Fig. 2a: Palazzo Schifanoia Frescos, Ferrara, Italy, 1470, from Aby Warburgs

Italian Art and International Astrology in the Palazzo Schifanoia, in Aby Warburg: The

Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 575.

Fig. 2b: Aby Warburg, Palazzo Schifanoia retranslated intoAtlas Plate 27, 1924-1929,from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas Mnemosyne(Spanish translation), 47.

Fig. 3a: Tree of Life, from Ernst Haeckels General Morphology of organisms (1866), inManuel Limas VisualComplexity: Mapping Patterns of Information, 68.

Fig. 3b: Rhizome diagram from Manuel Limas Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns ofInformation, 45.

Fig. 3c: Rhizome diagram from Manuel Limas Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns ofInformation, 55.

Fig. 4a: Rhizome diagram from Manuel Limas Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns ofInformation, 70.

Fig. 4b: Alfred Barr, Cubism and Abstract Art (NY, 1936) book jacket.

Fig. 4c: Daniel Feral, Graffiti and Street Art,from Street Art and Graffiti Gets a Barr

Chart,C-Monster.Net, 2011, http://c-monster.net/blog1/2011/03/30/graffiti-barr chart/,(12 Aug. 2012).

Fig. 5a: Scene from the Third Intermedio of 1589, from Aby Warburgs Theatrical

Costumes for the Intermedi of 1589, inAby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan

Antiquity, 373.

Fig. 5b: Aby Warburg,Dance at Oraibi, May 1896, from Photographs at the Frontier:

Aby Warburg in America (1895-1896), 133.

Fig. 5c: Aby Warburg, Hand-drawn diagrams of theatrical Native American masks withthe SecondIntermezzo, from Photographs at the Frontier: Aby Warburg in

America (1895-1896), 58.

Fig. 6: Image pairings depicting Warburgs broadening interests in a collective human

culture through cross-culture parallels, fromAby Warburg and the Image in

Motion, 241.


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Fig. 7: Sandro Botticelli,Birth of Venus, 1485, oil on canvas, and Primavera, 1482, oil

on canvas, from E. H. Gombrichs,Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography, PL. 5.

Fig. 8a: Warburgs examination ofpathos formulaewithin Botticellis Work, from

Gertrud Bing article A. M. Warburg, unnumbered.

Fig. 8b: Warburgs examination ofpathos formulae, from E. H. Gombrichs,Aby

Warburg: An Intellectual Biography, PL. 6.

Fig. 8c: Niccolo Fiorentino, Medals for Giovanna Tornabuoni, from Aby Warburgs

Sandro BotticellisBirth of Venusand Spring, inAby Warburg: The Renewalof Pagan Antiquity, 116.

Fig. 8d: Botticellis classical Greek influence, from Aby Warburgs Sandro Botticellis

Birth of Venusand Spring, inAby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity,127.

Fig. 8e: Warburgs, Sandro Botticelli, inAby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity,

160.

Fig. 9: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plate 39, 1924-1929, from Martin WarnkesDer BilderatlasMnemosyne(Spanish translation), 69.

Fig. 10a: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plate 41, 1924-1929, from Martin WarnkesDer BilderatlasMnemosyne(Spanish translation), 73.

Fig. 10b: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plate 46, from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas Mnemosyne(Spanish translation), 85.

Fig. 11a: Autobiographical map rhizome drawn by Warburg, date unknown, from KurtForsters Introduction, inAby Warburg The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 41.

Fig. 11b: Autobiographical map rhizome drawn by Warburg, date unknown, from Kurt

Forsters Introduction, inAby Warburg The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 41.

Fig. 11c: Map drawn by Warburg of Hopi villages and Keams Canyon, date unknown,

from Photographs at the Frontier: Aby Warburg in America 1895-1896, 35.

Fig. 12a: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plate A, 1924-1929, from Martin WarnkesDer BilderatlasMnemosyne(Spanish translation), 9.

Fig. 12b: Diagram ofAtlas Plate A, from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas Mnemosyne

(Spanish translation), 9.


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Fig. 13a: Aby Warburg, Wanderkartefrom The Journeys of Sphaera Barbarica Lecture,

1911, from Dorothea McEwansAby Warburg (1866-1929) Dots and Lines.

Mapping the Diffusion of Astrological Motifs in Art History, 247.

Fig. 13b: Aby Warburg, Wanderkarte (red),from the The Journeys of Sphaera

Barbarica Lecture, 1911, from Dorothea McEwansAby Warburg (1866-1929)Dots and Lines. Mapping the Diffusion of Astrological Motifs in Art History,

257.

Fig. 14: Warburgs Early In-houseLibrary, Hamburg, Germany, 1920, from

http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/mnemosyne/Exhibitions/kwb/exhibit.htm.

Fig. 15a: Warburg Institute: 1stFloor: Image, 2012, diagram downloaded from

http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/.

Fig. 15b: Warburg Institute: 2ndFloor: Word, 2012, diagram downloaded from


Fig. 15c: Warburg Institute: 3nd

Floor: Orientation, 2012, diagram downloaded fromhttp://warburg.sas.ac.uk/.

Fig. 15d. Warburg Institute: 4th Floor: Action, 2012, diagram downloaded fromhttp://warburg.sas.ac.uk/.

Fig. 15e: Warburg Institute: Classification Scheme, 2012, diagram downloaded fromhttp://warburg.sas.ac.uk/.

Fig. 15f: Warburg Institute: How To Find A Book, 2012, diagram downloaded from


Fig. 15g: Warburg Institute: How To Find A Bookand Warburg Institute: Classification

Scheme,2012, diagrams downloaded from http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/ and

modified by Charmaine Ortiz.

Fig. 16: The Warburg Institute, Hamburg, Germany, 1926, from

http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/mnemosyne/Exhibitions/kwb/exhibit.htm.

Fig. 17: Warburg Institute: Reading Room with Mnemosyne Atlas, Hamburg, Germany,

1926, from http://warburg.sas.ac.uk.

Fig. 18: Warburg Institutes Catalog System: University of London,from

http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/mnemosyne/SUBJECTS.htm.

Fig. 19. Aby Warburg,Multiple Atlas Plates, 1924-1929, from http://warburg.sas.ac.uk.


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Fig. 20a: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plate 77, 1924-1929, from Martin WarnkesDer BilderatlasMnemosyne(Spanish translation), 129.

Fig. 20b: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plate 77(rearrangements), 1924-1929, from Martin Warnkes

Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne(Spanish translation), XIV.

Fig. 21: Aby Warburg,Multiple Atlas Plates, 1924-1929, from http://warburg.sas.ac.uk.

Fig. 22a: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plate C,1924-1929,from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas

Mnemosyne(Spanish translation), 13.

Fig. 22b: Diagram ofAtlas Plate C, 1924-1929, from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas

Mnemosyne(Spanish translation), 13.

Fig. 22c: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plate 1, 1924-1929, from Martin WarnkesDer BilderatlasMnemosyne(Spanish translation), 14.

Fig. 22d: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plate 2, 1924-1929, from Martin WarnkesDer BilderatlasMnemosyne(Spanish translation), 16.

Fig. 22e: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plate B, from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas Mnemosyne


Fig. 22f: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plate 20, from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas Mnemosyne


Fig. 22g: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plate 21, from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas Mnemosyne(Spanish translation), 32.

Fig. 22h: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plate 22, from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas Mnemosyne(Spanish translation), 30.

Fig. 22i: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plate 23a, from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas Mnemosyne


Fig. 23a: Yumi Takhasi and Ikuyo Shibukawas Color Coordination, from Edward TuftesEnvisioning Information, 33.

Fig. 23b: Yumi Takhasi and Ikuyo Shibukawas Color Coordination, from Edward TuftesEnvisioning Information, 33, modified by Charmaine Ortiz.

Fig. 23c: Yumi Takhasi and Ikuyo Shibukawas Color Coordination, from Edward Tuftes

Envisioning Information, 33, modified by Charmaine Ortiz.

Fig. 23d: Yumi Takhasi and Ikuyo Shibukawas Color Coordination, from Edward Tuftes

Envisioning Information, 33, modified by Charmaine Ortiz.


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Fig. 24a: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plate B, from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas Mnemosyne

(Spanish translation), 10, modified by Charmaine Ortiz.

Fig. 24b: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plates B, 21, 22, and 23a, from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas

Mnemosyne(Spanish translation), modified by Charmaine Ortiz.

Fig. 24c: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plates B, 21, 22, and 23a, from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas


Fig. 24d: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plates B, 21, 22, and 23a, from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas


Fig. 25a: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plate B, from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas Mnemosyne

(Spanish translation), modified by Charmaine Ortiz.

Fig. 25b: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plates B, 20, 22, and 23a, from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas


Fig. 25c: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plates B, 20, 22, and 23a, from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas


Fig. 25d: Aby Warburg,Atlas Plates B, 20, 22, and 23a, from Martin WarnkesDer Bilderatlas



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August 2012

The art historian, Aby Warburg, studied cultural production by creating visual maps

composed of literary texts and photographs, theLibraryand theMnemosyne Atlas (1868-1929).

Conceptually spanning geographical space and time, these maps are known as rhizomes becausethey expose a vast network of formal and conceptual interconnections within cultural production.

This thesis asserts that Aby WarburgsLibraryandMnemosyne Atlasanticipated theconcept of the rhizome as it was much later theorized by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. This

research examines WarburgsLibraryandMnemosyne Atlasas complex map-rhizomes usingtheoretical notions of lines of flight and planes of consistency delineated in Deleuze and

GuattarisA Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. In addition to utilizing Deleuze

and Guattaris text to cross-examine WarburgsLibraryandMnemosyne Atlass rhizomaticcapabilities of collapsing, reconstructing, forging lines of flight, forming planes of convergence,

and user performance, I will identify earlier maps that Warburg drew and annotated. The

operative descriptions of these early maps inform us of Warburgs extended use of conceptualcartography, which continued throughout his lifetime.

The comprehensive examination of Warburgs writings and projects presented in thisresearch affirms that hisLibraryandMnemosyne Atlasvisualize cultural information through

map formats, which present organized complexities of decentralized and distributed cultural

information. Ultimately these maps provide an invaluable resource for comprehending culturalhistorys influence on symbolic forms and their conceptual positioning within a broader network

of interconnected historical meanings.


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Introduction

As a cultural historian, Aby Warburg contributed immensely to the methodologies

utilized within arts history. Warburgs implication that works of art are documents1of the

psychological states of human civilization and his method of mapping these psychological

tendencies through an open2rhizome are informative to our understanding of cultural history

(Fig. 1). Some of Warburgs instruments, The LibraryandMnemosyne Atlascan be described as

rhizomatic. These rhizomes are composed of literary texts and photographs which expose the

network of conceptual and formal interconnections within cultural production.

Warburg developed theLibraryand theMnemosyne Atlasduring the nineteenth century

when Wlfflins formalist theories dominated the art historical discipline. Formalisms narrow

scope disregarded the societal and historical implications of an artworks cultural context by

emphasizing its visual form. As a counter to formalism, Warburg sought3 a new methodology

which would provide a more comprehensive understanding of art and include its relations to

1Kurt W. Forster, Introduction, inAby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity(Los Angeles: The GettyResearch Institute, 1999), 55, 57. Forster writes documents are central to Warburgs approach because they stem

from individuals. They cast light on individual psychology and relationship with social institutions. Forster

continues to explain Warburgs focus on artworks and literature as the important documents of human civilizationstating that regarded as documents, artifacts real their own prehistory and the manifold threads that come together

in their making; through their aftereffects they outlive their own time within the compendium of cultural memory.2Ibid., 36. Forster states the questions that Warburg began to ask about works of art inevitably led him beyond the

traditional categories in which art history had installed itself. His interest extended outside the canon of high art, notbecause he was tired of this but in order to understand it better. He regarded works of art not as once-and-for-all,

self-authenticating objects but as the select vehicles of cultural memory. Works of art were therefore fraught not

only with untapped treasures of memory but also with misunderstandings and riddles.3Simon O Sullivan,Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari: Thought beyond Representation(NY: Palgrave

MacMillan, 2006), 14, 17. O Sullivan writes we need also to allow the notion of the rhizome to somewhatcollapse our art-art history distinctions, or at least to see each as being in rhizomatic connection with the other.

Warburg believed in a reconstruction through collapse as a positive aspect of the rhizome. In his perspective it wasa way to remove academic boundaries and blockages which would allow the art historical discipline to open itself to

a variety of points of entry (including psychology and anthropology). O Sullivan continues to describe the opening

up of blockages permitted by the rhizome and thinking in multiplicities as he writes the rhizome names a principle

of connectivity. It implies a contact, and movement, between different milieus and registers, between areas that areusually thought of as distinct and discrete. Such a smearing is creativeIn life this leads to less one-dimensional

and straitjacketed existence. Connections and alliances can be made between different people, different objects, and

different practices, which in itself allows for more flexibility, more fluidity.


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anthropology and psychology.4In 1912 the Warburgian method

5was born when Warburg

proclaimed the need for the multidisciplinary expansion of art history.6 In his 1912 lecture,

regarding the symbolic meanings7within the frescos at Schifanoias Palace of Ferrara, Italy

(Figures 2a, 2b), he stated that

In attempting to elucidate the fresco in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, I hope to haveshown how an iconological analysis that can range freely, with no fear of border guards,

and can treat the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds as a coherent historical

unity.how such a method, by taking pains to illuminate one single obscurity, can castlight on great universal evolutionary processes in all their interconnectedness.

8

Warburg advocated the interconnectedness of an artifacts cultural context and believed that it

must be comprehensively studied by utilizing various disciplines.

9

His methods aimed at a

deeper understanding of the social, political, and psychological dimensions10

that constituted the

creation, recollection, and transformation of visual imagery.11

Through hisLibrarys

symbolically placed texts and theMnemosyne Atlassarranged images, Warburg sought to

survey the scope of multiplicities present throughout our schizophrenic cultural landscape.

The operation of WarburgsLibraryandMnemosyne Atlascan be analyzed using12

Gilles

4E. H. Gombrich,An Intellectual Biography (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1986), 89. Warburg stated in a draft

for his 1923 lecture on the Serpent Ritual, moreover, I had acquired an honest disgust of aestheticizing art history.

The formal approach to the image- devoid of understanding its biological necessity as a product between religionand art-appeared to me to lead merely to barren word-mongering5Gertrud Bing, A.M. Warburg,Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes28 (1965), 300.6Mark A. Russell,Between Tradition and Modernity: Aby Warburg and the Public Purposes of Art(New York:

Berghahn Books, 2007), 2. Aby Warburg was the son of a wealthy bank owner, the M.M. Warburg & Co. Bank.Warburgs family financed his library and his career as a scholar. Author Russell mentions that even though

Warburg was constantly involved with his research, he also spent time engaging in community and civic affairs.7E.H. Gombrich, Aby Warburg: His Aims and Methods: An Anniversary Lecture,Journal of the Warburg and

Courtauld Institutes62 (1999), 268. Warburgs 1912 lecture described his analysis of the three figures marking each

month within the Palazzo Schifanoias Ferrara fresco cycle. Warburg concluded that the figures representing Greekdecans were derived from classical literary subjects like astronomy.8Ibid., 271.9Deleuze also advocates the removal of blockages and the interconnectivity of a multiplicity present in the rhizome.10Gombrich,An Intellectual Biography, 66. Gombrich describes Warburgs methodology in relation to thepathos

formulaand collective memory. He writes that Warburgs concern, as we have seen, is not with the identification

of pictorial content but with mental images and their emotional aura.11Mark Roskill, The Interpretation of Pictures(Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989), 98.12John Rajchman, The Deleuze Connections(Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2000), 27, 39. 115. Rajchman

elaborates on the experimental contacts with the real which are encouraged through Deleuzes philosophies. He


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Deleuze and Felix Guattaris explanation of a rhizome,A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and

Schizophrenia (1980).13

In brief, Deleuze summaries the rhizome by stating

Let us summarize the principal characteristics of a rhizome: unlike trees or their roots, the

rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked totraits of the same nature; it brings into play very different regimes of signs, and even

nonsign states... It has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from

which it grows and which it overspills...The rhizome operates by variation, expansion,conquest, capture, offshootsunlike tracings, the rhizome pertains to a map that must be

produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectable, reversible,

modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exists and its own lines of flighttherhizome is an acentered, nonhierarchical, nonsignfiying system without a General and

without an organizing memory or central automaton, defined solely by a circulation of

states.14

Warburgs

15

LibraryandMnemosyne Atlasimplement map rhizomes which are organized

complexities of decentralized and distributed cultural information that allow for continual

writes that Deleuze was ever on the lookout for what is new or singular in others; and he tried to encourage uses

while discouraging interpretations of his philosophy by others. This analysis seeks to understand how WarburgsLibraryandAtlascan theoretically operate using Deleuzes philosophies concerning rhizomes, lines of flight,plateaus, and multiplicities. Rajchman continues to elaborate on the invaluable uses of philosophy, writing that

rather there is a sense in which what is new in philosophy remains so- indeed it belongs precisely to thepaideiaof

studying past philosophers to show what is still new in them. Thus in Deleuzes studies, each philosopher emerges

with fresh features as a kind of contemporary in the process exposing new connections between or across strata.Warburgs projects and cryptic notes have their own philosophy which resonates with contemporary visual theories.Through the new connections made with Deleuze in this analysis Warburgs projects and methodology appear newer

than ever before as contemporary forms of thought. Rajchman warns however that although a philosophy may thus

throw off many uses in the arts or in criticism, it should always resist being itself cast in turn as a new theory,which, fallen from the sky, one could then just apply. For philosophy is not a theory; it is an art of plunging into

this peculiar zone of the unthought, that destabilizes clichs and ready-made ideas, in which both art and thought

come alive and discover their resonance with one another.13

O Sullivan,Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari, 11-12. O Sullivan describesA Thousand Plateauswritingthat it was one of the first books I had looked at that successfully performed its contentA Thousand Plateaus, is

something else altogether: an attempt to reconfigure the way we think about the world in an affirmative and creative

manner. In this senseA Thousand Plateausmight be understood as a box of psychic tools, or strategies, to help us

construct our lives differently.14

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia(Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 1987), 21.15Ibid., 14. Though Warburg built hisLibraryandAtlashis function as author differs from the term Deleuze usesfor Freud, which was General. In Deleuzes view the General dictates the right and wrongs (gives direction by

creating oppositions and dualisms) of the lines of flight within a rhizome; the General enforces rules and sustains a

hierarchy from the outside. Deleuze describes Freud as having a Generals relationship acting as the power

takeover by the signifier being that the lines of flight cannot move naturally and change as they would because anoutside individual controls them and enforces his will on them (as in Little Hans case). Warburg presented a

nonexclusive rhizome in which any individual could perform by interacting, modifying, and reflecting on it. His

open rhizome contains multiple entryways for a multitude of users.


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modification16

and connectivity (Figures 3a-3c ). Deleuze explains these malleable

characteristics as qualities of the rhizome writing it is not a question of this or that place on

earth, or of a given moment in history, still less of this or that category of thought. It is a question

of a model that is perpetually in construction or collapsing, and of a process that is perpetually

prolonging itself, breaking off and starting up again.17

Warburg relied on the breakdowns and

reconstructions prone to a rhizome which gave his Atlas the ability to construct meanings across

a single panel while also breaking off and reforming onto other panels. This persistent

constructive ability also extended into hisLibrary, through processes of networking across

different physical levels via a single book and shelves of books which contained numerous

entryways for a multitude of research directions. In TheDeleuze ConnectionsRajchman relates

that Deleuze calls his logic constructivist, not deconstructionist. It is not so much about

undoing identities as of putting differences together in open or complex wholes.18

Warburgs

LibraryandAtlasdo not focus on establishing the definitive meaning for specific iconography

(deconstructing the Florentine Renaissance). Rather his collective materials survey our cultural

historical landscape by placing differences together in open and complex wholes (constructing a

plurality of interconnected cultures).

Deleuze and Guattaris observations inA Thousand Plateausdispel the historical

misconceptions surrounding WarburgsLibraryandAtlasby defining the rhizomes operation

16Rajchman, 73. Warburg constantly reworked the physical and conceptual organizations of photographs and books

within hisAtlasandLibrary. This constant reworking was due to the new encounters and thoughts which wouldcreate shifts in his perception. Rachjman describes these shifts in thought writing that to attain the power of

thought is thus to lose ones philosophical self-assurance or being through encounter with something that shakes upthought, complicates it, recasts it rules. WarburgsAtlasandLibrarywere his conceptual constructs for his

theories on the formal, conceptual, and cross-cultural interconnections within cultural production. Shifts in

Warburgs perception through unique encounters were reflected in new arrangements in hisAtlasandLibrary.

These encounters would recast the rules, complicate, and shake up any assurance Warburg may have had in previousorganization patterns.17Deleuze and Guattari, 20.18Rajchman, 57.


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and establishing the value of its fragments as totalities. Deleuze gives the example of a book as

he writes that a strange mystification: a book all the more total for being fragmented.19

This

research uses Deleuzes and Guattaris philosophies to destabilize the position that Warburgs

projects were incomplete, fragmented, or too cryptic for comprehension.20

The analysis asserts

that WarburgsLibraryandMnemosyne Atlasanticipate the concept of the rhizome as it was

much later theorized by Deleuze and Guattari. Preliminary segments Tracing a Path to Mapping

PathsandMaps and Rhizomesprovidean informative background to Warburgs constructive21

processes, while WarburgsLibrary: Plateaus and Lines of Flightand WarburgsAtlas:

Plateaus and Lines of Flightfully exhibit his practice of using rhizomes through historic

examples. Through the lens of Deleuzian philosophies WarburgsLibraryandMnemosyne Atlas

can be seen as comprehensively complete rhizomes which have great explanatory power for

19Deleuze and Guattari, 6.20Simon O Sullivan, Pragmatics for the Production of Subjectivity,Journal for Cultural Research10, no. 4 (Oct.

2006), 317. O Sullivan writes, Warburg, who wrote his lecture on the serpent rituals of the Pueblo Indians in orderto prove (unsuccessfully) that he was fit to leave the sanatorium in which he had been incarcerated. There is a

substantial amount of negativity surrounding Warburgs life and his research as reflected in commentaries by not

only OSullivan but Gombrich and Forster. Most accusations center upon Warburgs time spent at the sanatorium

and extend his bouts of psychosis to include his writing, and projects (their fragmented, cryptic, and supposedlyincomprehensible natures as extensions of his supposed insanity). Warburgs projects are often dismissed because ofthese psychotic accusations. This lack of credit is misfortune since most of Warburgs original theories formed the

theoretical basis of the major essays and publications these writers later put forth to the public.21Gombrich,An Intellectual Biography, 284, 5. Forster, Introduction, inAby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan

Antiquity(Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 1999), 46. According to Gombrich and Forster, Warburgs

later use of rhizomes stemmed from his evolving research processes using collective memory andpathosformula. I

have attempted to briefly introduce this development which I feel is necessary for comprehending Warburgs later

research methods; however I share a similar perspective to Gombrich. Gombrich wrote that it was indeed myconviction that the ideas underlyingMnemosynecould be made accessible only by tracing their growth in Warburgs

mind that sent me back to the earlier notebooks and ultimately led me to a genetic approach. For the history of

Warburgs development lies the key, not only to his private language, but also to the form which he ultimately

wanted to give to his lifes work. Warburgs methodology is deeply rooted in his personal codified language and

life-long private studies. Gombrich describes the fuller understanding needed to comprehend Warburgs writingsstating that the reader is often confronted with some of Warburgs more cryptic jottings, the formulations he wrote

for himself rather than for others and which have subsequently to be explained and expanded in light of what isknown of Warburgs readings and preoccupations. This applies in particular to the fragments on the theory of

expression which reached back to Warburgs student days and which were to be included in a promised complete

edition. Even the small selection which I decided to incorporate in this text will be found to be daunting. However,

they could certainly not be omitted since they demonstrate more clearly than any other of Warburgs notes the rangeand ambition of his intellectual aspirations far beyond the confines of art-historical studies. Forster also comments

on Warburgs style of research as he states that Warburgs language is often cryptically condensed, and his

fragmentary treatment of unusual subjects ran counter to the habits of fellow scholars.


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contemporary visual culture (Fig. 4a-4c).

Tracing a Path to Mapping Paths: TheNymphandAtlas Plate 39

Warburgs research on Classical Greece and the Florentine Renaissance served as a point

of entry for his later rhizomatic studies on cultural production. His theoretical shift22

from tracing

the definitive classical origin of Florentine23

Renaissance iconography to a broader24

mapping of

cultural production can be likened to Deleuzes theories of placing a tracing back into the

rhizome map.25

In this section I will examine Warburgs theoretical shift to rhizomatic processes

by comparing his early methodology, tracingthe path of origin for specific iconography (its

definitive root-meaning) to later mappingits paths of formal and conceptual associations (non-

origins nondefinitive meanings). Through the example of theNymphit will be evident that

mapping paths rather than tracing a single path allowed Warburg to create comprehensive

observations on the multiplicity of interconnections within cultural history. The creation of an

open map rather than a closed tracing resonates with Deleuzes and Guattaris theories on map-

rhizomes. Ultimately, it is the map-rhizome which informs our perspective on the operative

22Gombrich,An Intellectual Biography, 98. Gombrich describes Warburgs shift in perspective stating that one

thing was clear to the former student of Lamprecht and of Justi: a period such as the Renaissance could not be

summed up in any simple formula. Whatever happened could only have been the result of complex cross-current

which it was the task of the true historian to map and to understand.23Gertrude Bing, Editorial Foreword, inAby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 82. Gertrude Bing

comments on Warburgs expanding interests as she writes once his field of observation had been enlarged to

encompass Germany in one direction and the Orient in another, Warburgs original inquiry into the posthumous life

of antiquity was expanded into the examination of exchanges of mental inheritance between South and North,

between East and West24Gombrich,An Intellectual Biography, 13. Gombrich explains that Warburg branched out from his specialist

studies of Florentine milieu around Lorenzo de Medici into a psychology of culture which aimed, in his own words,at a diagnosis of Westernman.25Deleuze and Guattari, 13-14. Deleuze accounts for the initial tracings and points of entry as evidenced by

Warburgs earlier research on the Florentine Renaissance which positioned him for a much broader pursuit. Deleuze

states it is a question of method: the tracings should always be put back on the map. This operation and theprevious one are not at all symmetrical. For it is inaccurate to say that a tracing reproduces a map. Instead like a

photograph or X ray that begins by selecting or isolating, by artificial means such as coloration or other restrictive

procedures, what it intends to reproduce. The imitator always creates the model, and attracts it.


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functions of WarburgsLibraryandAtlas.

Warburgs early research, tracing the historical transmission of classical motifs and

gestures within the Florentine Renaissance via thepathos formula, provided him with the

theoretical basis for constructing his subsequent map-rhizomes. Warburg analyzed visual

imagery by examining its social-historical interconnections with expressive psychology,

theorizing that societal expressions were deliberated between a unique balance of imagery (form

and concept): a Dionysian (irrational, magical) and Apollonian (rational, science-based).26

His

theory on thepathos formulaspeculated that society utilized its collective memory27

to draw

upon previously used empathetic motifs

28

and gestures which would adequately signify its

26Gombrich, Aby Warburg, 271. Gombrich insists that Warburgs theories are heavily influenced by Darwinism,

despite Warburgs distaste for evolutionary historical models typically associated with Viennas formalist school.27Gombrich,An Intellectual Biography, 222, 223. Deleuze and Guattari, 17-18. Gombrich describes the memorysrole in aiding the transmission, metamorphosis, and survival of imagery and symbols which make up the rhizomes in

Warburgs cultural historical projects. Gombrich states that what we call memory thus has a dual role to perform.

It is the storehouse of images which are evoked through the phobic reflex by substituting mythical beings for real

causes. But it is also the receptacle of the names and images through which we arrive at the idea of an objectiveuniverse governed by laws. In this receptacle our linguistic reactions to events (and their images equivalents) are

selected and stored as permanent records of experience. These linguistic or image reactions to stimuli we call

expressions, and the history of civilization is thus concerned with the expressions deposited in the records of

mankind. The knowledge of this dual role of memory is vital for the self-knowledge of man. For each stimulus isstill capable of arousing in us the primitive phobic reaction of projection together with, and side by side with, thecivilized reaction of naming and explanation, which is another word for drawing on the collective reactions of the

past for dominating impressionsin art the image evoked by the stimulus is still an end in itself. Both art and

religion thus belong to the intermediate region of symbolic activity in which the tragic biopolarity of man findsexpression and conciliation. In an effort to come to grasp with the multiplicity of nerve fibers and signals projected

throughout time and space within memory Warburg writes in his notes that all mankind is eternally and at all times

schizophrenic. Ontogenetically, however, we may perhaps describe one type of response to memory images as prior

and primitive, though it continues on the sidelines. At the later stage the memory no longer arouses an immediate,purposeful reflex movement- be it one of a combative or a religious nature- but the memory images are now

consciously stored in pictures and signs. Between these two stages we find a treatment of the impression that may

be described as the symbolic mode of thought. Deleuze concurs with Warburgs schizophrenic perspective when

conceptualizing society, culture, and the human psyche. As Warburg disagrees with the exclusive and cultural

closed perspective of Formalism, Deleuze disagrees with the closed aims of psychoanalysis. Deleuze writes takepsychoanalysis as an example again: it subjects the unconscious to arborescent structures, hierarchical graphs,

recapitulatory memories, central organs, the phallus, the phallus-tree-not only in its theory but also in its practice ofcalculation and treatment. Psychoanalysis cannot change its method in this regard: it bases its own dictatorial power

upon a dictatorial conception of the unconscious. Psychoanalysiss margin of maneuverability is therefore very

limited. In both psychoanalysis and its object, there is always a general leader (General Freud). Schizoanalysis, on

the other hand, treats work of finite automa (a rhizome), and thus arrives at an entirely different state of theunconscious.28Gombrich,An Intellectual Biography, 261. Gombrich writes that the symbol, in Warburgs reading, was the

counterpart, in the collective mind, of the engram in the nervous system of the individual. It continued existence


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current irrational and rational mental states.29

These balancing psyches dictated the use and reuse

of certain gestures, motifs, and symbols at specific historical times. InArt Encounters: Deleuze

and Guattari, O Sullivan describes this process writing Art can also be seen as a solution in

this sense, as part of a general, creative evolution, the forms of art precisely providing solutions

to problems of space and time, perception, and memory (problems of human existence).30

As

reusable solutions to societal demands for expression, these reoccurring visual forms created

traceable points throughout history. Warburg identified these points of solution and connected

them by tracing the path of their reoccurrences and metamorphosis throughout various historical

periods. McEwan describes Warburgs tracing approach writing that he

tried to understand the transmission of thought, the transmission and metamorphoses ofimages; he called his endeavor the research into the Wanderstrassen des Geistes, paths

traced or taken by the mind, meandering bye-ways of the mind, from classical antiquity

to Renaissance Europe and beyond to contemporary art When researching images ofhuman passions, he looked at the formulae which had been created in classical antiquity;

and furthermore, he followed their journeys and metamorphoses as he became convinced

that they allowed one to draw certain conclusions about the nature and contents of thememory of humankind.

31

Warburg traced the journeys and metamorphosis of cultural imagery by studying its projections

of thepathos formula:32

Dionysian barbarism and Apollonian grandeur.33

As a result, he

and validity amidst all transformations was, therefore, a postulate of the theory. He looked for what he sometimes

called aLeitfossil, borrowing the term from the geologist who determines geological strata from the evolutionary

stage of certain organisms that dominate the epoch concerned. To uncover and display the state of these evolutionsof the symbol in the successive periods of history was to be the aim of the method Warburg hoped to develop.29Russell,Between Tradition, 22. Russell states that Warburgs thinking was dominated byNachleben, which

might be translated as survival. While preserving a perspective on the Renaissance as the threshold of the modern

world, he emphasized that it was not simply about the recovery of the lost traditions of antiquity; more

fundamentally, it embodied a process of cultural memory that sublimated human anxieties and passions that hadbeen given formulaic expression in classical antiquity and were long stored in the collective unconscious.30O Sullivan,Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari,103.31Dorothea McEwan, Aby Warburgs (1866-1929) Dots and Lines. Mapping the Diffusion of Astrological Motifs

in Art History, German Studies Review 29, no. 2 (May 2006), 244-245.32Bing, A.M. Warburg, 309. Gertrud Bing, a fellow scholar and personal friend of Warburg, stated that his

pathos formulaepermitted him to class together wide ranges of Renaissance works under a common expressivepropose rather than formal similarity.33Matthew Rampley,Remembrance of Things Past: On Aby M. Warburg and Walter Benjamin(Wiesbaden:

Harassowitz, 2000), 55.


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characterized the societal-psyche of classical antiquity by its irrational magical-pagan34

iconography which ultimately threatened35

the rationale of subsequent periods.36

McEwan writes

that these struggling forces were

a paradigmatic example in his research into the processes of social memory. Looking at

images of the gods of classical antiquity and their survival and/or resurfacing in a

Christian milieu occupied Warburg throughout his life, from his student days in the 1880sto his correspondence with Father Joseph Fischer, the author of the cartographic work on

Ptolemy, in 1902 and to his final years when the topic had fanned out to embrace an

investigation into thought processes of image making and the metamorphosis ofmemorizing or memory which Warburg presented in condensed form in his Picture Atlas

or Mnemosyne Atlas towards the end of his life.37

For Warburg the iconography in the Florentine Renaissance presented the return of the classical

psychological and societal struggle for balance between Greek Pagan and Christian forces (the

historical transmission of classical Greek thought and imagery to a modern time).This classical

Greek struggle Warburg felt had reappeared throughout history using many guises and he was

34Gombrich,An Intellectual Biography, 308-309. Gombrich elaborates on Paganism and the traceable points createdby societys collective psyche writing that by paganism as we know, Warburg meant a psychological state, the

state of surrender to impulses of frenzy and of fear. It was this fateful heritage he meant to study, and in this quest

he freely identified the life of the individual and that of the collective mind. The drama of the revival of these

impulses that had been dormant in the collective memory is mainly played out on the stage of theRenaissance.Warburg himself, as we know, was not so easily satisfied with this rediscovery of types andstereotypes. Committed as he was to the psychological explanations he continued to marvel at the re-appearance of

artistic forms till he had absorbed the phenomenon into an extended psychological theory of social memory. Even

in this new context, as we have seen, the re-emergence of apathos formulais not seen as a stylistic phenomenon butrather as a psychological symptom, an index of the state of the collective mind.35Gombrich,An Intellectual Biography, 80. Gombrich describes the Classical emotional fervor derived from

accessories in motion (identified through thepathos formula) and its relationship to collective memory, association,

and reconstructed thoughts stating that a detached and rational mind can read representation of a figure in motion,supplying from experience what has gone before and what comes after. It is the beholders memory, the

associations stored up in his mind, which permit this act of rational reconstruction. This rational act appeared to

Warburg to be superior to the unreflective association by which we tend to endow any ornamental form with

movement This latter reaction he links with empathy and thus with those primitive fears which project a vague

feeling of threatening life into any shape that might be conceived as a pursing predator. In this aspect, Warburgbelieved that each individual had a universal knowledge and empathetic response to specific motifs and imagery

which signified primal mental states. In theory when an individual viewed a universal fearful image they wouldrecall its past historical uses as a fearful motif (multiple past memories of the motif as being fearful would then

justify its fearfulness as an empathetic response being that it had been historically proven to incite fear). By recalling

memories of the images past historical uses the individual creates a reconstruction of the image which informs their

present moment of beholding it.36Matthew Rampley, Symbol to Allegory: Aby Warburgs Theory of Art,Art Bulletin79, no. 1 (March, 1997):

50.37McEwan, 248.


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intent on identifying, connecting, and tracing the path of its transference (Figures 5a-5c).

Despite Warburgs initial singular focus on tracing the path of the Florentine

Renaissances classical heritage, the vastness38

of his rhizomes collected and orchestrated

materials books (text) and photographs (images), attest to the multitude of paths: societal values,

acts, and circumstances from a collective human culture which interested him (Fig. 6). Ernst

Gombrich (1901-2001) elaborates writing that

even if we lacked this evidence of Warburgs deliberate selectivity in the choice of

themes and examples, he has provided us with overwhelming proof of this contrast

between the narrow focus of his historical research and the breadth of his outlook in hisLibrary. It almost looks as if the range of books which he acquired with such unerring

feeling for their relevance to multifarious fields of research was meant to compensate himfor the obsessive narrowness of his subject matter throughout so many years of his active

life. Convinced as he was of the need to study any subject in the round and to look at itfrom many sides in ever-varying permutations, he also wanted to construct an instrument

that would enable him and others to apply this method to areas he had felt compelled to

ignore. In this he succeeded beyond his most sanguine dreams.39

Warburgs construction of theLibrarysandAtlassmap-rhizomes broadened the capacity for

cultural research through a fuller range of materials. However, within Warburgs rhizomes points

of his early research can be noted including his tracing of theNymphas40

historical path of

transmission and metamorphosis. Deleuze explains the potential for these tracings to be plugged

38Deleuze and Guattari, 8. Warburg collected varied materials and avoided the single standpoint of his research

being unified under the namesake of the Florentine Renaissance. As a result I believe he avoided this limited

standpoint because he was interested in a variety of aspects related to humankinds necessity for visual imagery.Deleuze writes about the unifying principles in relation to the rhizome stating that multiplicities are rhizomatic, and

expose arborescent pseudomultiplicities for what they are. There is no unity to serve as a pivot in the object or to

divide in the subject. A unified linear body of research would imply the false supposition that Warburgs subjects

could be easily divided and that they had a single specific origin.39

Gombrich,An Intellectual Biography, 18.40Ibid., 122, 127. Gombrich describes the implications ofpathos formulaand accessories in motion to Warburg,

writing that the classical impulse of expressive gesture and rapid motion is no longer a literary matter: it is seen asthe liberation from humdrum realism, as a safety valve through which passion can pour forth. The admired models

of classical sculpture, the triumphal arches and triumphal reliefs, helped to remove the ban which the ascetic art of

the Middle Ages had imposed on the expression of unrestrained emotion. In this vision of the history of art the

Nymphacould become the very symbol of liberation and emancipation. He continues to write that Warburgtherefore considers that a work of this kind should be treated as key to the psychology not only of the artist but also

of the patron and, through him, of a whole period. Behind this approach we can discern Lamprechts conception of

pictorial art as the direct indicator of a periods mentality.


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back into a natural state via that map writing plug the tracings back into the map, connect the

roots or trees back up with a rhizomeIf it is true that it is of the essence of the map or rhizome

to have multiple entryways, then it is plausible that one could even enter them through tracings

or the root-tree, assuming necessary precautions are taken.41

WarburgsLibraryandAtlas

exemplify how he plugged his tracings back into the rhizome-map allowing for paths of formal

and conceptual lines of flight42

to broaden and proliferate (a specific point burgeons lines).

Warburgs study of theNympha43

exemplifies how he traced the Greek origin of

empathetic gestures and motifs within the Renaissance to later map the information into a visual

rhizome. His doctoral dissertation presents an examination of the classicalpathos formulae in

Botticellis paintings,Birth of Venus andSpring44

which he later translated into anAtlasPlate

41Deleuze and Guattari, 14.42Ibid. Deleuze describes the multiplicitys relationship to the rhizome by stating there are no points or positions

in a rhizome, such as those found in a structure, tree, or root. There are only lines. When Glen Gould speeds up the

performance of a piece, he is not just displaying virtuosity, he is transforming the musical points into lines, he ismaking the whole piece proliferate.43Gombrich,An Intellectual Biography, 125. After the writing of Warburgs dissertation on Botticelli, he began tofocus on a specific motif of striding women in fluttering garments which he called Nympha. For Warburg the

image of the Nymphwas a highly loaded symbol that embodied the Renaissances process of imaging the mostimportant aspects of Classic Greek society (the hallmarks of the society). In this instance Warburg considered other

female imagery of classical women with flowing draperies to be derivatives ofNympha. Gombrich states that, to

Warburg theNymphawas the classical Victoria, returned to life in the Renaissance; more exactly, she was the

visual expression of those same tendencies which had gained shaped in the Victoria of Roman art. She is thepagan spirit because in and through her form elemental passions could find an outlet. Gombrich continues to

explain the reuse of the Nymphaform in later periods as she provided the psyche a way to break free from societal

pressure, all the while using a familiar and historically proven form. Gombrich states that Warburg sees in the

Nymphathe eruption of primitive emotion through the crust of Christian self-control and bourgeois decorum.44

Aby Warburg, Sandro Botticellis Birth of Venus and Spring: An Examination of Concepts of Antiquity in theItalian Early Renaissance, inAby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 89. The prefatory notes in Warburgs

dissertation state that This work sets out to adduce, for purposes of comparison with Sandro Botticellis celebratedmythological paintings, theBirth of Venusand Spring, the analogous ideas that appear in contemporary art theory

and poetic literature, and thus to exemplify what it was about antiquity that interested the artists of the

Quattrocento. It is possible to trace, step by step, how the artist and their advisers recognized the antique as a

model that demanded an intensification of outward movement, and how they turned to antique sources wheneveraccessory forms- those garments and of hair- were to be represented in motion. It may be added that this evidence

has it value for psychological aesthetics in that it enables us to observe, within a milieu of working artists, an

emerging sense of the aesthetic act of empathy as a determinant of style.


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(Fig. 7).45

In his 1893 dissertation, he identifies the classical meaning of BotticellisNymphaby

locating her historical pose, flowing hair, and fluttering garments within the common tropes used

by the passionate-hedonistic Greeks (Figures 8a-8e).46

Warburg utilizes classical literature

including authors such as Homer, Pliny, Alberti, and Poliziano47

to comprehend Botticellis

historical-psychological context for recalling and reusing classical texts and symbols in his

Renaissance paintings (tracing and configuring historical points of transmission). Ultimately, for

Warburg, BotticellisBirth of Venusand Springsignified the resurfacing of the classical societal

and psychological struggle for balance between hedonistic pagan forces and humanistic

rationalism (connecting the points to a path).

He theorized that the return of this historical

struggle was embodied within Botticellis modern work through his classical references and his

prevailing choice of pagan tropes (confirmed path of transmission-classical thought to a modern

time).48

In 1924 Warburg mapped this research ontoAtlas Plate 39but with new directions and

broader paths (Fig. 9).49

45Martin Warnke and Fernando Checa (Spanish Translation),Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, (Madrid: Spain, 2010),

46-48. Warburg also transcribed some of his other research projects including his work on the frescos at the Palazzo

Schifanoia ontoAtlas Plate 27, 28, and29.46Russell,Between Tradition, 22. Warburg read these classical gestures as empathetic devices orpathos formulae

which were utilized to recall the primitive symbolism of antiquity.47Warburg, Sandro Botticellis Birth of Venus and Spring: An Examination of Concepts of Antiquity in the Italian

Early Renaissance, 90. Warburg writes that there are affinities between Botticellis painting and the description ofa sculptural relief of the birth of Venus in the Giostraof Poliziano. Both of these indication point to the same

direction, since Polizianos description was inspired by the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. The plausible supposition

that the concettowas given to Botticelli by Poliziano himself, the erudite friend of Lorenzo de Medici (for whom,

according to Vasari, Botticelli painted a Pallas), the fact that, as will be shown, the painter departs from the Homeric

Hymn at exactly the same points as the poet.48Ibid., 141-142. Warburg writes firmly persuaded of their own equality with the ancients, the artist of the

Florentine Quattrocento made vigorous efforts to extract from the life around them analogous forms that they couldwork into art in their own way. If the influence of antiquity then led to the unthinking repetition of superficially

agitated motifs of motion, this was not the fault of the antique (which has subsequently inspired others, ever since

Winckelmann, to describe it with the equal conviction as the fountainhead of tranquil grandeur): the fault lay in the

artists, and in their lack of mature artistic direction. Botticelli was one of those who were all too pliable. To showhow Sandro Botticelli dealt with contemporary views of antiquity as a force that demanded resistance or submission,

and how much of that force became his secondary substance, has formed the purpose of this inquiry.49Joaquin Chamorro Mielke,Atlas Mnemosyne(Madrid, AKAL Publishers: 2010), 69.


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Atlas Plate 39 is an early plate50

that re-presents Warburgs 1893 dissertation as a visual

map-rhizome. In contrast to Warburgs dissertation, which traced the origin of meaning for a

specific motif (a path), theAtlasplate does not intend to present a definitive answer to

Botticellis iconography. Instead theAtlasseeks to visually survey its psycho-social and

historical context by presenting a multitude of possible meanings through associable forms

(paths of both rational and irrational states of a form and concept).Atlas Plate 39and the other

Atlasplates do not exhibit a hierarchy or tree-branch style of deconstructive organization. Instead

the plates display an array of images which are formally and conceptually relatable. OnAtlas

Plate 39Warburg has included images of Venus, Daphne, Fortuna, Minerva and Athena all

pinned in mobile positions upon the black ground of the Atlas. His placement of photographs

presents lines51

of formal associations in which the viewer links similar females across different

points on the Atlas. Likewise, conceptual associations can be simulated by considering Venus

divine presentation in relation to the other females in God-like tropes. Questions Warburg and

other viewers may have gathered as they linked image to image may have included: How does

this form signify Godliness and Why? Does the symbol formally or conceptually relate to a

sinister pagan God (irrational form or irrational concept) or a God of Enlightenment (rational

form and rational concept) through thepathos formula? What societal purpose did this symbol

serve in the past? How does that compare to the function it has now? What need of society is it

fulfilling or representing? Warburg asked these similar questions as he wrote on December 15

1890

50Ibid., v. (l.c.). Warburgs Atlas was started after 1924, upon returning from the sanatorium. After his traumaticexperiences in the psychiatric ward the Atlass direct method of presentation and its malleable format must have

been well received by Warburg.51Gilles Deleuzes theoretical notion of lines of flight can be described as an operator which establishes new

conceptual territory through relations (lines of association forging links on a common ground or plateau), andredefines conceptual territory (lines of association stimulating a different set of relations through a change in nature).

The plateau contains a multiplicity of interconnections. The dimension of the plateaus multiplicity is defined by the

number of lines of flight which connect upon it.


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how does art become decorative and how is this process organically rooted in the essence

of art? Why does a flourish please us? Why do we speak of the decline of art when itbecomes decorative? Is this perhaps rooted in the way in which we come to terms with

the external world by positing reasons and causes, a process in which the creation of art is

only one special stage in our attempt to bring order into the phenomena of the outside

world? This would mean that anymore who is more reflective, more prudent and hesitantthan those who immediately point to a definitive person as an originator and are satisfied

with this explanation, has something of the artist in him?52

OSullivan describes the relevancy of these functional questions which are associated with

Warburgs thinking in multiplicities and rhizomes writing we are less involved in questions of

definition and more with notions of function. We no longer ask the interminable question: What

does art, what does this artwork, mean? But rather, what does art, what does this art work,

do?53

WarburgsAtlasandLibrarysrhizomes explored the interconnected functions of visual

forms and concepts by promoting experiment and experience, rather than setting boundaries

through definitive meaning. As a result,Atlas Plate 39and the otherAtlasplates do not contain a

single definitive meaning, point of entry, nor path of logic. Rather nonhierarchical non-

teleological paths of association (formal and conceptual) happen simultaneously as the viewer

interacts with theAtlasby simulating a variety of interconnections (experimenting through

experience). If literally drawn out these interconnections would create an entanglement of lines

which would spill out of the single plate onto the other plates including Atlas Plate 41and 46

(Figures 10a, 10b). In this respect,Atlas Plate 39 could theoretically not be centered on

Botticelli; rather it could be a point of entry for another symbol which takes flight throughout

other expanses of the rhizome.

52Gombrich,An Intellectual Biography, 81.53O Sullivan,Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari, 22.


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Maps and Rhizomes

As part of his research on the Florentine Renaissance Warburg created hand drawn maps

and diagrams to visually support his theories. As evidenced by two autobiographical drawings

Warburg frequently used map formats to construct surveying views of historical time and

geographical space (Figures 11a-11c). Warburg extended his use of conceptual cartography

through the use of map-rhizomes which he implemented within hisLibraryandAtlas(Figures

12a, 12b). This section,Maps and Rhizomes,explains how Warburgs early mapping processes

extended into the creation of hisLibraryandAtlasas maps. The conceptual functions of the

LibraryandAtlasare then specifically identified using Deleuze and Guattaris theories as map-

rhizomes. The following sections Warburgs Library: Lines of FlightandPlateaus and

Warburgs Atlas: Lines of flight and Plateaususe Deleuze and Guattaris explanations on the

operations of map-rhizomes to comprehend the functions of WarburgsLibraryandAtlas. These

individual analyses then lead into a joint examination of Two Projects One Model: the Rhizome,

which compares theLibrarysandAtlassshared rhizomatic characteristics using Deleuze and

Guattaris commentaries fromA Thousand Plateaus.

McEwan states that Warburg relied upon a variety of maps, charts, and diagrams to

conduct and present his research. She accounts for Warburgs early use and creation of maps

writing that Warburg

was keen on a visual research tool, charts, to show the origins of ideas and images andtheir journeys over vast territories and timescales. The language and method used by

Warburg were those of cartography...A map presents a birds eye view. It makes it easy

to grasp large chunks of information. For Warburg maps were heuristic tools, or findingaids, for his research, in particular for his interest in the network of roads of ideas. He

was a mapmaker, and selective like all mapmakers. His selection had a purpose to show

the diffusion of ideas.54

McEwans research presents early maps created by Warburg including The Journeys of Sphaera

54McEwan, 248, 252.


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Barbarica (1911) which displays the journey of images through lines sketched in color over two

geographical maps of the Mediterranean and the Middle East (Figures 13a, 13b).55

McEwan also

discusses another map drawn by Warburg56

which was incorporated into his research on the

frescos at Schifanoias Palace of Ferrara, Italy and included on Atlas Plate A.57

These maps

were outline maps specifically drawn to chart the routes of images with astrological information

and dots and lines inserted by Warburg which make visible the diffusion and direction supposed

or real, of the images of these constellations traveling through time and space.58

A maps

physical ability to chart conceptual routes that span geographical space and time is described by

O Sullivan. He writes that in cultural production and in art every work is made up of a plurality

of trajectories that coexist and are readable only on a map, and that change direction depending

on the trajectories that are retained. These internalized trajectories are inseparable from

becomings. Trajectories and becoming: art makes each of them present in the other, it renders

their mutual presence perceptible.59

In order to perceive the historical routes of cultural imagery,

Warburg created maps which flattened multiplicities onto a plane. This process of flattening

allowed the plurality of trajectories rendered through cultural production to be seen and explored

(multiple paths on a map vs. single path on a tracing).

55Ibid., 245.56Ibid., 252.57

Ibid., 256, 259. McEwan writes the first picture is a map of images, the third the family tree of an importantfamily which traced its origins from the fifteenth century back to classical antiquity. In this way a single research

topic, family research, exemplified its link to the general research topic of orientation. She continues to detail the

images of theAtlas Plate A as the first being the representation of the sky populated by zoomorphic and

anthropomorphic images of stars of 1684, the Wanderkarteand a hand drawn Tornabuoni-Medici genealogy. These

pictures are captioned Orientation, Exchange and Social Integration. She concludes that Warburgs researchinto visual memory, mapping the movement of memory, turned into a multimedia project: it comprised of the

creation of charts outlining the journey of images, superimposed onto geographical maps, the arrangements ofphotographs on mobile walls and a projected publication in book form. Warburg, with the help of dots and lines,

tried to supply the guiding principles and orientation in a maze of our intellectual heritage, a way beyond the

rudiment of perception called astrology, pointed to a life no longer governed by fear. He found it important to show

people that from a vantage point even higher than a tower they could see spread out below them the network ofroads and understand connections.58Ibid., 252.59O Sullivan,Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari,36.


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Deleuze draws parallels between the map and the rhizome which inform our

understanding of Warburgs early research (tracing a path) and his later projects (mapping

paths), TheMnemosyne AtlasandLibrary. Rajchman explains that Deleuze tries to envisage a

semiotics that would be diagrammatic or cartographic rather than symbolic or iconic, and

diagnostic of other possibilities rather than predictive or explanatory; and he talks of abstract

machines that would thus be diagrams of multiplicities.60

InA Thousand Plateaus,Deleuze

uniquely entails rhizomes as a viable diagram method for the mapping of multiplicities.

Warburg used rhizomes in hisLibraryandAtlasto map the interconnections which cultural

artifacts orchestrate across different disciplines, cultures, and time periods. Deleuze explains that

The tree articulates and hierarchizes tracings; tracings are like the leaves of a tree.61

Therhizome is altogether different, a map and not a tracing. Make a map, not a

tracingWhat distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward

an experimentation in contact with the real. The map does not reproduce an unconsciousclosed in upon itself; it constructs the unconscious. It fosters connections between fields,

the removal of blockages on bodies without organs, the maximum opening of bodies

without organs onto a plane of consistency.62

It is itself a part of the rhizome. The map isopen and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, and susceptible

to constant modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting,reworked by an individual, group, or social formation. It can be drawn on a wall,

conceived of as a work of art, constructed as a political action or as mediation. Perhaps

60Rajchman, 67.61Deleuze and Guattari, 18. Deleuze continues to express his distrust in the conceptual efficiency of the root-branchand tree-model. He states it is odd how the tree has dominated Western reality and all of Western thought, from

botany to biology and anatomy, but also gnosiology theology, ontology, all of philosophythe root-foundation,

Grund, racine, fondement. The West has a special relation to the forest, and deforestation; the fields carved from the

forest are populated with seed plants produced by cultivation based on species lineages of arborescent type; animalraising, carried out on fallow fields, selects lineages forming an entire animal arborescence. The East presents a

different figure: a relation to the steppe and the garden (or in some cases, the desert and the oasis) rather than forest

and field; cultivation of tubers by fragmentation of the individual; a casting aside or bracketing of animal raising,

which is confined to closed spaces or pushed out onto the steppes of the nomads.Does not the East, Oceania in

particular, offer something like a rhizomatic model opposed in every respect to the Western model of thetree?...Here in the West, the tree has implanted itself in our bodies rigidifying and stratifying even the sexes. We

have lost the rhizome, or grass.62A removal of blockages or a leveling of the field can be considered an aspect of Warburgs method, since he

relied on subjects including philosophy, biology, astrology, and anthropology which were initially underutilized

fields of research within art history during the late 1800s. Warburg removed art historical biases by attempting to

remove the blockages that prevented the study of craft and popular culture alongside classical masterpieces. Forexample Warburgs Atlas combines both prominent Greek sculptures with contemporary kitsch items, including

modern postage stamps and magazine ads, viewing them all as valid lines of flight in terms of their collective

cultural importance.


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one of the most important characteristics of the rhizome is that it always has multiple

entrywaysA map has multiple entryways, as opposed to the tracing, which alwayscomes back to the same. The map has to do with performance,

63whereas the tracing

always involved alleged competence.64

TheLibrarysandAtlassrhizomatic-maps provided Warburg a flexible model for merging both

high and low forms of cultural production, fostering new connections through the removal of

historical blockages,65

and for combining art and non-art historical documents for a fuller

perspective66

of human culture. Though specifically created by Warburg, hisLibraryandAtlas

served as unique instruments which encouraged a multitude of different users and processes of

interaction. Rajchman describes this process of performance writing that

more than a matter of logic, [it] is something one must make or do, and learn by makingor doing-le multiple,il faut le faireIn other words, to make connections one need not

knowledge, certainty, or even ontology, but rather a trust that something may come out,

thought one is not yet completely sure whatits motto is not to predict, but to remainattentive to the unknown knocking at the door

67.The problem of experience or

experiment in philosophy in short becomes one of forging conceptual relations not

already given in constructions whose elements fit together not like pieces of a puzzle butrather like disparate stones brought together temporally in an as yet uncemented

wall68

in which each element counts on its own, yet in relation to others.69

63The intentions of WarburgsLibraryandAtlas: reading and pulling various books from the shelves and the overallscanning and association of the images on the Atlas plates can be considered as a performance of its rhizome.64Deleuze and Guattari, 12.65Russell, 23. Russell believed that Warburg viewed pictorial imagery as the product of the human experience. Ashe explored its manifestations he dissolved the boundary between high art and craft and adopted an approach that

was multidisciplinary.66Gombrich,An Intellectual Biography,127. Warburg continually arranged the materials within hisLibraryand

Atlasin a rhizomatic format so that he could comprehend their cultural and psychological implications to humancivilization. For Warburg, broader societal concepts including the moral values, religious standpoints such as mans

relation to nature or to the supernatural, as well as the overall welfare of a society (mental states experienced by both

artist and his community) were embodied within theLibrarysbooks he organized and the photos he arranged in hisAtlasPlates. Warburg used hisLibraryandAtlasto map and present the networking connections (conceptual and

formal) which a culture like Classical Greece established amongst past, present, and future societies. Gombrichcomments on this process as he examines some of Warburgs early notes on the Florentine Renaissance, he states

to him the images of the past were important as human documents. If only we can succeed in restoring theiroriginal setting, in placing them in the cultural milieu from which they sprang, if we uncover the threads which link

them with the human beings of the past, they reveal to us something of the psychological fabric of their period and

of its dominate mental states and attitudes. Warburg persistently investigated new meanings using subtle shifts of

his collected materials for presenting their cultural interconnections to other societies.67Rajchman, 6-7.68Ibid., 20.69Ibid., 148.


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WarburgsLibraryand theAtlasconstructed connections through their interrelated

nonhierarchical organizations of information which were not rooted in a specific form of

knowledge. This openness encouraged interaction through experience and experiment as users

could enter the map-rhizome at any point of interest and forge multiple direct and indirect

connections through intuitivefoldings.70

WarburgsLibrary: Lines of Flight and Plateaus

WarburgsLibraryis a three-dimensional rhizome map71

which presents the conceptual

interconnections between cultural knowledge and cultural artifacts. Warburg initiated this three-

dimensional rhizome in 1901 when he began to collect documents from fifteenth century

Florentine culture in his Hamburg home.72

For more than twenty years he single-handedly

collected texts for hisLibrarywhich included many non-art historical works such as

aerodynamics, astronomy, and chemistry. Visiting researchers to his early homeLibrarywere

70For additional information on folding see Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (Minneapolis: TheUniversity of Minnesota Press, 1992). Deleuzes notion offoldingentails a process of perceiving subjects which arealways in the act of becoming (the full perception of a subject is always developing through endless chains of new

associations). In this process a subject can be perceived by an infinite number of associations created by the brining

together of differences (the subject is defined by what it is, what it is not, what it could be, an and, and logic). Thebending and blending of differences constitutes thefoldingprocess, as links are created by freely twisting and

interweaving an infinite number of direct and indirect associations. The practice offoldingallows one to more

comprehensively perceive a subject by removing boundaries, compressing time and space, and allowing for

interconnections to be fully realized through experimentation. A metaphor for understanding Deleuzesfoldingprocess and its relation to the line of flight can be seen through a bending process with a sheet of paper. As a corner

of the paper is diagonally bent to meet another corner the two corners create an association (through this process the

different corners are linked together through a literal physical association however Deleuzianfoldscan also be

physically created through the linking of conceptual meanings and associations). If the two corners are unbent and

flattened back out the faint line in the middle of the paper that linked the two corners can be theoretically describedas the line of flight. The line of flight is the invisible conceptual bridge for the two corners which were physically

brought together through the process of association (Deleuzesfolding). We can now perceive a nature of the paperby the relation of these two corners as seen through a line of flight which created a link through thefoldingprocess

of association.71Kurt W. Forster, Introduction, inAby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 52. Forster describes

WarburgsLibraryas a method to display the contents of the collective memory archive in a systematic spatialarrangement.72Udo Kultermann, The History of Art History(New York: Abaris Books), 212, Questia e-book,

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=102084589 (accessed Nov. 16 2009).


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baffled by the constantly shifting catalog system he employed (Fig. 14).73

Despite complaints,

Warburg was dedicated to the rationale of hisLibrarywhich he utilized as a conceptual

construct, a three-dimensional map-rhizome for presenting cultural multiplicities.

Warburg perceived the books in hisLibraryas cultural documents that embodied a

multiplicity of networking connections within human civilization. Deleuze shares a similar

perspective on the cultural importance of the book and its networking capabilities stating that

the world has become chaos, but the book remains the image of the world: radicle choasmos

rather than root-cosmos.74

In this regard books are conceivable as reflective images of the

societies that produce them. However, books themselves do not present the root, origin, mirror

(the original for the one that becomes two), or single meaning of an organized world (cosmos as

an organized system). Rather books form a radicle75

with the world itself, as part of the rhizome

of connections (chaosmos or chaos- cosmos). This choasmos is physically manifested by

Warburgs collection of books which he orchestrated using map like placements within the

rhizome of hisLibrary. Deleuze and Guattari emphasize the book as a component of a rhizome

stating

A book has neither object nor subject; it is made of variously formed matters, and very

different dates and speeds. To attribute the book to a subject is to overlook this working

of matters, and the exteriority of their relations. It is to fabricate a beneficent God to

explain geological movements. In a book, as in all things, there are lines of articulationor segmentarity, strata and territories; but also lines of flight, movements of

deterritorialization and destratificationAll this, lines and measurable speeds, constitutes

an assemblage. A book is an assemblage of this kind, and as such is unattributable. It isa multiplicity As an assemblage, a book has only itself, in connection with other

assemblages and in relation to other bodies without organs. We will never ask what a

book means, as signified or signifier; we will not look for anything to understand it. Wewill ask what it functions with, in connection with what other things it does or does not

73Michael Bentley,Modern Historiography: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1999), 125.74Deleuze and Guattari, 6.75Ibid., 5. Deleuze states that even the book as natural reality is a taproot, with its pivotal spine and surrounding

leaves. Taproots Deleuze likens to the rhizomes.


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transmit intensities, in which other multiplicities its own are inserted metamorphosed,

and with what bodies without organs it makes it own converge.76

Warburg was keenly aware of the lines of flight and exteriority of the working matters between

books as evidenced by hisLibrarysbroad range of physical and conceptual placements: books

on the same shelf (adjacent books), on another shelf (a book or books on another shelf), and/or

an entire section (books within the same physical area, or another area). Warburg physically

arranged books according to how their lines of flight would conceptually function by

intertwining and converging onto planes of consistency. Deleuze relates that books as

multiplicities are defined by the outside: by the abstract line, the line of flight or

deterritorialization according to which they change in nature and connect with othermultiplicites.The ideal for a book would be to lay everything out on a plane of

exteriority of this kind, on a single page, the same sheet: lived events, historicaldeterminations, concepts, individuals, groups, social formations.

77

Unlike the Library of Congress, Warburg did not simply categorize his books into sections by

author and subject nor did he establish any definitive ranking order (defining books by what they

mean). Instead Warburg considered the nature of the lines of flight present within each book and

how they functioned with other lines of flight and multiplicities present in other books (defining

books by what they functioned with- other books). Warburgs library assistant, Fritz Saxl

describes these functional book arrangements which Warburg referred to as the good

neighbor law, he writes that Warburg

spoke of the law of the good neighbor. The book of which one knew was in most cases

not the book which one needed. The unknown neighbor on the shelf contained vitalinformation, although from its title one might not have guessed this. The overriding idea

was that the books together- each containing its larger or smaller bit of information and

being supplemented by its neighbors- should by their titles guide the student to perceivethe essential forces of the human mind and its history. Books were for Warburg more

than instruments of research. Assembled and grouped, they expressed the thought of

mankind in its constant and its changing aspects.78

76Ibid., 3, 4.77Ibid., 9.78Gombrich,An Intellectual Biography, 327.


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In this manner, Warburg placed the inner workings of a book so that its lines of flight could

network outside of its physical format, conceptually converging onto plateaus with other books,

and instigating multiplicities through lines of flight which would reach throughout the broader

spaces of the rhizome. Deleuze comments on the inner workings of books and their networking

capabilities writing the cultural book is necessarily a tracing: already a tracing of itself, a tracing

of the previous book by the same author, a tracing of other books however different they may be,

an endless tracing of established concepts and words, a tracing of the world present, past and

future.79

Warburg recognized the endless tracings texts established with other texts as he

utilized the books relative position, or ubi, to dictate their conceptual and spatial position within

the librarys rhizome.80

However

ortiz alexandracharmaine mappingculturalpathswarburgdeleuze arth summer2012

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