Mapping Cultural Paths: Warburg, Deleuze, and the Rhizome. Alexandra Charmaine Ortiz

Transcription

1 Mapping Cultural Paths: Warburg, Deleuze, and the Rhizome Alexandra Charmaine Ortiz Submitted in Partial Fulfillments of the Requirements For 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 and electronic thesis copies of document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Signature of Author and Date / / Christoph Klütsch, 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

2 Mapping Cultural Paths: Warburg, Deleuze, and the Rhizome A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Art History Department in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Art History Savannah College of Art and Design By Alexandra Charmaine Ortiz Savannah, GA August 2012

3 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.

4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my thesis committee for their expert advice and guidance. Special thanks to Dr. Klütsch 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.

5 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures...1 Abstract Introduction..7 Tracing a Path to Mapping Paths: The Nymph and Atlas Plate Maps and Rhizomes 21 Warburg s Library: Lines of Flight and Plateaus Warburg s Mnemosyne Atlas: Lines of Flight and Plateaus Two Projects One Model: The Rhizome 44 Conclusion.. 54 Figures. 56 Bibliography.. 111

6 FIGURES Fig. 1: Aby Warburg, unknown photographer, 1900, from Fig. 2a: Palazzo Schifanoia Frescos, Ferrara, Italy, 1470, from Aby Warburg s 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 into Atlas Plate 27, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 47. Fig. 3a: Tree of Life, from Ernst Haeckel s General Morphology of organisms (1866), in Manuel Lima s Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information, 68. Fig. 3b: Rhizome diagram from Manuel Lima s Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information, 45. Fig. 3c: Rhizome diagram from Manuel Lima s Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information, 55. Fig. 4a: Rhizome diagram from Manuel Lima s Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information, 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, chart/,(12 Aug. 2012). Fig. 5a: Scene from the Third Intermedio of 1589, from Aby Warburg s Theatrical Costumes for the Intermedi of 1589, in Aby 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 ( ), 133. Fig. 5c: Aby Warburg, Hand-drawn diagrams of theatrical Native American masks with the Second Intermezzo, from Photographs at the Frontier: Aby Warburg in America ( ), 58. Fig. 6: Image pairings depicting Warburg s broadening interests in a collective human culture through cross-culture parallels, from Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion,

7 Fig. 7: Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus, 1485, oil on canvas, and Primavera, 1482, oil on canvas, from E. H. Gombrich s, Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography, PL. 5. Fig. 8a: Warburg s examination of pathos formulae within Botticelli s Work, from Gertrud Bing article A. M. Warburg, unnumbered. Fig. 8b: Warburg s examination of pathos formulae, from E. H. Gombrich s, Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography, PL. 6. Fig. 8c: Niccolo Fiorentino, Medals for Giovanna Tornabuoni, from Aby Warburg s Sandro Botticelli s Birth of Venus and Spring, in Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 116. Fig. 8d: Botticelli s classical Greek influence, from Aby Warburg s Sandro Botticelli s Birth of Venus and Spring, in Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 127. Fig. 8e: Warburg s, Sandro Botticelli, in Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 160. Fig. 9: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 39, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 69. Fig. 10a: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 41, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 73. Fig. 10b: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 46, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 85. Fig. 11a: Autobiographical map rhizome drawn by Warburg, date unknown, from Kurt Forster s Introduction, in Aby Warburg The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 41. Fig. 11b: Autobiographical map rhizome drawn by Warburg, date unknown, from Kurt Forster s Introduction, in Aby Warburg The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 41. Fig. 11c: Map drawn by Warburg of Hopi villages and Keam s Canyon, date unknown, from Photographs at the Frontier: Aby Warburg in America , 35. Fig. 12a: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate A, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 9. Fig. 12b: Diagram of Atlas Plate A, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 9. 2

8 Fig. 13a: Aby Warburg, Wanderkarte from The Journeys of Sphaera Barbarica Lecture, 1911, from Dorothea McEwan s Aby Warburg ( ) 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 McEwan s Aby Warburg ( ) Dots and Lines. Mapping the Diffusion of Astrological Motifs in Art History, 257. Fig. 14: Warburg s Early In-house Library, Hamburg, Germany, 1920, from Fig. 15a: Warburg Institute: 1 st Floor: Image, 2012, diagram downloaded from Fig. 15b: Warburg Institute: 2 nd Floor: Word, 2012, diagram downloaded from Fig. 15c: Warburg Institute: 3 nd Floor: Orientation, 2012, diagram downloaded from Fig. 15d. Warburg Institute: 4th Floor: Action, 2012, diagram downloaded from Fig. 15e: Warburg Institute: Classification Scheme, 2012, diagram downloaded from Fig. 15f: Warburg Institute: How To Find A Book, 2012, diagram downloaded from Fig. 15g: Warburg Institute: How To Find A Book and Warburg Institute: Classification Scheme, 2012, diagrams downloaded from and modified by Charmaine Ortiz. Fig. 16: The Warburg Institute, Hamburg, Germany, 1926, from Fig. 17: Warburg Institute: Reading Room with Mnemosyne Atlas, Hamburg, Germany, 1926, from Fig. 18: Warburg Institute s Catalog System: University of London, from Fig. 19. Aby Warburg, Multiple Atlas Plates, , from 3

9 Fig. 20a: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 77, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 129. Fig. 20b: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 77 (rearrangements), , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), XIV. Fig. 21: Aby Warburg, Multiple Atlas Plates, , from Fig. 22a: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate C, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 13. Fig. 22b: Diagram of Atlas Plate C, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 13. Fig. 22c: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 1, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 14. Fig. 22d: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 2, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 16. Fig. 22e: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate B, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 10. Fig. 22f: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 20, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 30. Fig. 22g: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 21, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 32. Fig. 22h: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 22, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 30. Fig. 22i: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 23a, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 34. Fig. 23a: Yumi Takhasi and Ikuyo Shibukawa s Color Coordination, from Edward Tufte s Envisioning Information, 33. Fig. 23b: Yumi Takhasi and Ikuyo Shibukawa s Color Coordination, from Edward Tufte s Envisioning Information, 33, modified by Charmaine Ortiz. Fig. 23c: Yumi Takhasi and Ikuyo Shibukawa s Color Coordination, from Edward Tufte s Envisioning Information, 33, modified by Charmaine Ortiz. Fig. 23d: Yumi Takhasi and Ikuyo Shibukawa s Color Coordination, from Edward Tufte s Envisioning Information, 33, modified by Charmaine Ortiz. 4

10 Fig. 24a: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate B, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 10, modified by Charmaine Ortiz. Fig. 24b: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plates B, 21, 22, and 23a, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), modified by Charmaine Ortiz. Fig. 24c: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plates B, 21, 22, and 23a, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), modified by Charmaine Ortiz. Fig. 24d: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plates B, 21, 22, and 23a, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), modified by Charmaine Ortiz. Fig. 25a: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate B, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), modified by Charmaine Ortiz. Fig. 25b: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plates B, 20, 22, and 23a, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), modified by Charmaine Ortiz. Fig. 25c: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plates B, 20, 22, and 23a, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), modified by Charmaine Ortiz. Fig. 25d: Aby Warburg, Atlas Plates B, 20, 22, and 23a, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), modified by Charmaine Ortiz. 5

11 Mapping Cultural Paths: Warburg, Deleuze, and the Rhizome Alexandra Charmaine Ortiz August 2012 The art historian, Aby Warburg, studied cultural production by creating visual maps composed of literary texts and photographs, the Library and the Mnemosyne Atlas ( ). Conceptually spanning geographical space and time, these maps are known as rhizomes because they expose a vast network of formal and conceptual interconnections within cultural production. This thesis asserts that Aby Warburg s Library and Mnemosyne Atlas anticipated the concept of the rhizome as it was much later theorized by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. This research examines Warburg s Library and Mnemosyne Atlas as complex map-rhizomes using theoretical notions of lines of flight and planes of consistency delineated in Deleuze and Guattari s A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. In addition to utilizing Deleuze and Guattari s text to cross-examine Warburg s Library and Mnemosyne Atlas s rhizomatic capabilities 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 Warburg s extended use of conceptual cartography, which continued throughout his lifetime. The comprehensive examination of Warburg s writings and projects presented in this research affirms that his Library and Mnemosyne Atlas visualize cultural information through map formats, which present organized complexities of decentralized and distributed cultural information. Ultimately these maps provide an invaluable resource for comprehending cultural history s influence on symbolic forms and their conceptual positioning within a broader network of interconnected historical meanings. 6

12 Introduction As a cultural historian, Aby Warburg contributed immensely to the methodologies utilized within art s history. Warburg s implication that works of art are documents 1 of the psychological states of human civilization and his method of mapping these psychological tendencies through an open 2 rhizome are informative to our understanding of cultural history (Fig. 1). Some of Warburg s instruments, The Library and Mnemosyne Atlas can 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 the Library and the Mnemosyne Atlas during the nineteenth century when Wölfflin s formalist theories dominated the art historical discipline. Formalism s narrow scope disregarded the societal and historical implications of an artwork s cultural context by emphasizing its visual form. As a counter to formalism, Warburg sought 3 a new methodology which would provide a more comprehensive understanding of art and include its relations to 1 Kurt W. Forster, Introduction, in Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 1999), 55, 57. Forster writes documents are central to Warburg s approach because they stem from individuals. They cast light on individual psychology and relationship with social institutions. Forster continues to explain Warburg s focus on artworks and literature as the important documents of human civilization stating 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. 2 Ibid., 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, not because 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. 3 Simon 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 somewhat collapse 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 was a 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 are usually thought of as distinct and discrete. Such a smearing is creative In 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. 7

13 anthropology and psychology. 4 In 1912 the Warburgian method 5 was born when Warburg proclaimed the need for the multidisciplinary expansion of art history. 6 In his 1912 lecture, regarding the symbolic meanings 7 within the frescos at Schifanoia s 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 have shown 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 cast light on great universal evolutionary processes in all their interconnectedness. 8 Warburg advocated the interconnectedness of an artifact s 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 dimensions 10 that constituted the creation, recollection, and transformation of visual imagery. 11 Through his Library s symbolically placed texts and the Mnemosyne Atlas s arranged images, Warburg sought to survey the scope of multiplicities present throughout our schizophrenic cultural landscape. The operation of Warburg s Library and Mnemosyne Atlas can be analyzed using 12 Gilles 4 E. 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 religion and art- appeared to me to lead merely to barren word-mongering 5 Gertrud Bing, A.M. Warburg, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 28 (1965), Mark 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. Warburg s 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. 7 E.H. Gombrich, Aby Warburg: His Aims and Methods: An Anniversary Lecture, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 62 (1999), 268. Warburg s 1912 lecture described his analysis of the three figures marking each month within the Palazzo Schifanoia s Ferrara fresco cycle. Warburg concluded that the figures representing Greek decans were derived from classical literary subjects like astronomy. 8 Ibid., Deleuze also advocates the removal of blockages and the interconnectivity of a multiplicity present in the rhizome. 10 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, 66. Gombrich describes Warburg s methodology in relation to the pathos formula and collective memory. He writes that Warburg s concern, as we have seen, is not with the identification of pictorial content but with mental images and their emotional aura. 11 Mark Roskill, The Interpretation of Pictures (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989), John Rajchman, The Deleuze Connections (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2000), 27, Rajchman elaborates on the experimental contacts with the real which are encouraged through Deleuze s philosophies. He 8

14 Deleuze and Felix Guattari s 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 to traits 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, offshoots unlike 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 flight the rhizome 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 Warburg s 15 Library and Mnemosyne Atlas implement 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 Warburg s Library and Atlas can theoretically operate using Deleuze s 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 the paideia of studying past philosophers to show what is still new in them. Thus in Deleuze s studies, each philosopher emerges with fresh features as a kind of contemporary in the process exposing new connections between or across strata. Warburg s projects and cryptic notes have their own philosophy which resonates with contemporary visual theories. Through the new connections made with Deleuze in this analysis Warburg s 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 clichés 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, O Sullivan describes A Thousand Plateaus writing that it was one of the first books I had looked at that successfully performed its content A 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 sense A Thousand Plateaus might 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: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), Ibid., 14. Though Warburg built his Library and Atlas his function as author differs from the term Deleuze uses for Freud, which was General. In Deleuze s 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 General s relationship acting as the power takeover by the signifier being that the lines of flight cannot move naturally and change as they would because an outside 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. 9

15 modification 16 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 his Library, 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 The Deleuze Connections Rajchman 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 Warburg s Library and Atlas do 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 Guattari s observations in A Thousand Plateaus dispel the historical misconceptions surrounding Warburg s Library and Atlas by defining the rhizome s operation 16 Rajchman, 73. Warburg constantly reworked the physical and conceptual organizations of photographs and books within his Atlas and Library. This constant reworking was due to the new encounters and thoughts which would create shifts in his perception. Rachjman describes these shifts in thought writing that to attain the power of thought is thus to lose one s philosophical self-assurance or being through encounter with something that shakes up thought, complicates it, recasts it rules. Warburg s Atlas and Library were his conceptual constructs for his theories on the formal, conceptual, and cross-cultural interconnections within cultural production. Shifts in Warburg s perception through unique encounters were reflected in new arrangements in his Atlas and Library. These encounters would recast the rules, complicate, and shake up any assurance Warburg may have had in previous organization patterns. 17 Deleuze and Guattari, Rajchman,

16 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 Deleuze s and Guattari s philosophies to destabilize the position that Warburg s projects were incomplete, fragmented, or too cryptic for comprehension. 20 The analysis asserts that Warburg s Library and Mnemosyne Atlas anticipate the concept of the rhizome as it was much later theorized by Deleuze and Guattari. Preliminary segments Tracing a Path to Mapping Paths and Maps and Rhizomes provide an informative background to Warburg s constructive 21 processes, while Warburg s Library: Plateaus and Lines of Flight and Warburg s Atlas: Plateaus and Lines of Flight fully exhibit his practice of using rhizomes through historic examples. Through the lens of Deleuzian philosophies Warburg s Library and Mnemosyne Atlas can be seen as comprehensively complete rhizomes which have great explanatory power for 19 Deleuze and Guattari, Simon O Sullivan, Pragmatics for the Production of Subjectivity, Journal for Cultural Research 10, no. 4 (Oct. 2006), 317. O Sullivan writes, Warburg, who wrote his lecture on the serpent rituals of the Pueblo Indians in order to prove (unsuccessfully) that he was fit to leave the sanatorium in which he had been incarcerated. There is a substantial amount of negativity surrounding Warburg s life and his research as reflected in commentaries by not only O Sullivan but Gombrich and Forster. Most accusations center upon Warburg s time spent at the sanatorium and extend his bouts of psychosis to include his writing, and projects (their fragmented, cryptic, and supposedly incomprehensible natures as extensions of his supposed insanity). Warburg s projects are often dismissed because of these psychotic accusations. This lack of credit is misfortune since most of Warburg s original theories formed the theoretical basis of the major essays and publications these writers later put forth to the public. 21 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, 284, 5. Forster, Introduction, in Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 1999), 46. According to Gombrich and Forster, Warburg s later use of rhizomes stemmed from his evolving research processes using collective memory and pathos formula. I have attempted to briefly introduce this development which I feel is necessary for comprehending Warburg s later research methods; however I share a similar perspective to Gombrich. Gombrich wrote that it was indeed my conviction that the ideas underlying Mnemosyne could be made accessible only by tracing their growth in Warburg s mind that sent me back to the earlier notebooks and ultimately led me to a genetic approach. For the history of Warburg s development lies the key, not only to his private language, but also to the form which he ultimately wanted to give to his life s work. Warburg s methodology is deeply rooted in his personal codified language and life-long private studies. Gombrich describes the fuller understanding needed to comprehend Warburg s writings stating that the reader is often confronted with some of Warburg s 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 is known of Warburg s readings and preoccupations. This applies in particular to the fragments on the theory of expression which reached back to Warburg s 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 Warburg s notes the range and ambition of his intellectual aspirations far beyond the confines of art-historical studies. Forster also comments on Warburg s style of research as he states that Warburg s language is often cryptically condensed, and his fragmentary treatment of unusual subjects ran counter to the habits of fellow scholars. 11

17 contemporary visual culture (Fig. 4a-4c). Tracing a Path to Mapping Paths: The Nymph and Atlas Plate 39 Warburg s research on Classical Greece and the Florentine Renaissance served as a point of entry for his later rhizomatic studies on cultural production. His theoretical shift 22 from tracing the definitive classical origin of Florentine 23 Renaissance iconography to a broader 24 mapping of cultural production can be likened to Deleuze s theories of placing a tracing back into the rhizome map. 25 In this section I will examine Warburg s theoretical shift to rhizomatic processes by comparing his early methodology, tracing the path of origin for specific iconography (its definitive root-meaning) to later mapping its paths of formal and conceptual associations (nonorigins nondefinitive meanings). Through the example of the Nymph it 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 Deleuze s and Guattari s theories on maprhizomes. Ultimately, it is the map-rhizome which informs our perspective on the operative 22 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, 98. Gombrich describes Warburg s 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. 23 Gertrude Bing, Editorial Foreword, in Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 82. Gertrude Bing comments on Warburg s expanding interests as she writes once his field of observation had been enlarged to encompass Germany in one direction and the Orient in another, Warburg s 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 West 24 Gombrich, 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. 25 Deleuze and Guattari, Deleuze accounts for the initial tracings and points of entry as evidenced by Warburg s 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 the previous 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. 12

18 functions of Warburg s Library and Atlas. Warburg s early research, tracing the historical transmission of classical motifs and gestures within the Florentine Renaissance via the pathos 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 the pathos formula speculated that society utilized its collective memory 27 to draw upon previously used empathetic motifs 28 and gestures which would adequately signify its 26 Gombrich, Aby Warburg, 271. Gombrich insists that Warburg s theories are heavily influenced by Darwinism, despite Warburg s distaste for evolutionary historical models typically associated with Vienna s formalist school. 27 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, 222, 223. Deleuze and Guattari, Gombrich describes the memory s role in aiding the transmission, metamorphosis, and survival of imagery and symbols which make up the rhizomes in Warburg s 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 objective universe 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 is still capable of arousing in us the primitive phobic reaction of projection together with, and side by side with, the civilized reaction of naming and explanation, which is another word for drawing on the collective reactions of the past for dominating impressions in 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 finds expression 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 Warburg s 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 take psychoanalysis 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 of calculation and treatment. Psychoanalysis cannot change its method in this regard: it bases its own dictatorial power upon a dictatorial conception of the unconscious. Psychoanalysis s 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 the unconscious. 28 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, 261. Gombrich writes that the symbol, in Warburg s reading, was the counterpart, in the collective mind, of the engram in the nervous system of the individual. It continued existence 13

19 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. In Art 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 Warburg s tracing approach writing that he tried to understand the transmission of thought, the transmission and metamorphoses of images; 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 of human 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 the memory of humankind. 31 Warburg traced the journeys and metamorphosis of cultural imagery by studying its projections of the pathos 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 a Leitfossil, 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 evolutions of the symbol in the successive periods of history was to be the aim of the method Warburg hoped to develop. 29 Russell, Between Tradition, 22. Russell states that Warburg s thinking was dominated by Nachleben, 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 had been given formulaic expression in classical antiquity and were long stored in the collective unconscious. 30 O Sullivan, Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari, Dorothea McEwan, Aby Warburg s ( ) Dots and Lines. Mapping the Diffusion of Astrological Motifs in Art History, German Studies Review 29, no. 2 (May 2006), Bing, A.M. Warburg, 309. Gertrud Bing, a fellow scholar and personal friend of Warburg, stated that his pathos formulae permitted him to class together wide ranges of Renaissance works under a common expressive propose rather than formal similarity. 33 Matthew Rampley, Remembrance of Things Past: On Aby M. Warburg and Walter Benjamin (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 2000),

20 characterized the societal-psyche of classical antiquity by its irrational magical-pagan 34 iconography which ultimately threatened 35 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 1880s to 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 of memorizing 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 34 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, Gombrich elaborates on Paganism and the traceable points created by society s 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 the Renaissance.Warburg himself, as we know, was not so easily satisfied with this rediscovery of types and stereotypes. 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 a pathos formula is not seen as a stylistic phenomenon but rather as a psychological symptom, an index of the state of the collective mind. 35 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, 80. Gombrich describes the Classical emotional fervor derived from accessories in motion (identified through the pathos 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 beholder s 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, Warburg believed 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 would recall 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 image s past historical uses the individual creates a reconstruction of the image which informs their present moment of beholding it. 36 Matthew Rampley, Symbol to Allegory: Aby Warburg s Theory of Art, Art Bulletin 79, no. 1 (March, 1997): McEwan,

21 intent on identifying, connecting, and tracing the path of its transference (Figures 5a-5c). Despite Warburg s initial singular focus on tracing the path of the Florentine Renaissance s classical heritage, the vastness 38 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 ( ) elaborates writing that even if we lacked this evidence of Warburg s 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 his Library. 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 him for 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 it from 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 Warburg s construction of the Library s and Atlas s map-rhizomes broadened the capacity for cultural research through a fuller range of materials. However, within Warburg s rhizomes points of his early research can be noted including his tracing of the Nympha s 40 historical path of transmission and metamorphosis. Deleuze explains the potential for these tracings to be plugged 38 Deleuze 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 humankind s 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 Warburg s subjects could be easily divided and that they had a single specific origin. 39 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, Ibid., 122, 127. Gombrich describes the implications of pathos formula and 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 as the 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 Nympha could become the very symbol of liberation and emancipation. He continues to write that Warburg therefore 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 Lamprecht s conception of pictorial art as the direct indicator of a period s mentality. 16

22 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 rhizome If 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 Warburg s Library and Atlas exemplify how he plugged his tracings back into the rhizome-map allowing for paths of formal and conceptual lines of flight 42 to broaden and proliferate (a specific point burgeons lines). Warburg s study of the Nympha 43 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 classical pathos formulae in Botticelli s paintings, Birth of Venus and Spring 44 which he later translated into an Atlas Plate 41 Deleuze and Guattari, Ibid. Deleuze describes the multiplicity s 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 is making the whole piece proliferate. 43 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, 125. After the writing of Warburg s dissertation on Botticelli, he began to focus on a specific motif of striding women in fluttering garments which he called Nympha. For Warburg the image of the Nymph was a highly loaded symbol that embodied the Renaissance s process of imaging the most important 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 of Nympha. Gombrich states that, to Warburg the Nympha was 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 the pagan spirit because in and through her form elemental passions could find an outlet. Gombrich continues to explain the reuse of the Nympha form 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 Nympha the eruption of primitive emotion through the crust of Christian self-control and bourgeois decorum. 44 Aby Warburg, Sandro Botticelli s Birth of Venus and Spring: An Examination of Concepts of Antiquity in the Italian Early Renaissance, in Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 89. The prefatory notes in Warburg s dissertation state that This work sets out to adduce, for purposes of comparison with Sandro Botticelli s celebrated mythological paintings, the Birth of Venus and 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 whenever accessory 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. 17

23 (Fig. 7). 45 In his 1893 dissertation, he identifies the classical meaning of Botticelli s Nympha by 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 Poliziano 47 to comprehend Botticelli s 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, Botticelli s Birth of Venus and Spring signified 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 Botticelli s 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 onto Atlas Plate 39 but with new directions and broader paths (Fig. 9) Martin Warnke and Fernando Checa (Spanish Translation), Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, (Madrid: Spain, 2010), Warburg also transcribed some of his other research projects including his work on the frescos at the Palazzo Schifanoia onto Atlas Plate 27, 28, and Russell, Between Tradition, 22. Warburg read these classical gestures as empathetic devices or pathos formulae which were utilized to recall the primitive symbolism of antiquity. 47 Warburg, Sandro Botticelli s Birth of Venus and Spring: An Examination of Concepts of Antiquity in the Italian Early Renaissance, 90. Warburg writes that there are affinities between Botticelli s painting and the description of a sculptural relief of the birth of Venus in the Giostra of Poliziano. Both of these indication point to the same direction, since Poliziano s description was inspired by the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. The plausible supposition that the concetto was 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. 48 Ibid., 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 could work 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 show how 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. 49 Joaquin Chamorro Mielke, Atlas Mnemosyne (Madrid, AKAL Publishers: 2010),

24 Atlas Plate 39 is an early plate 50 that re-presents Warburg s 1893 dissertation as a visual map-rhizome. In contrast to Warburg s dissertation, which traced the origin of meaning for a specific motif (a path), the Atlas plate does not intend to present a definitive answer to Botticelli s iconography. Instead the Atlas seeks 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 39 and the other Atlas plates 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. On Atlas Plate 39 Warburg 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 lines 51 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 the pathos 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 Ibid., v. (l.c.). Warburg s Atlas was started after 1924, upon returning from the sanatorium. After his traumatic experiences in the psychiatric ward the Atlas s direct method of presentation and its malleable format must have been well received by Warburg. 51 Gilles Deleuze s 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), and redefines 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 plateau s multiplicity is defined by the number of lines of flight which connect upon it. 19

25 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 it becomes 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 hesitant than 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 O Sullivan describes the relevancy of these functional questions which are associated with Warburg s 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 Warburg s Atlas and Library s rhizomes 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 39 and the other Atlas plates do not contain a single definitive meaning, point of entry, nor path of logic. Rather nonhierarchical nonteleological paths of association (formal and conceptual) happen simultaneously as the viewer interacts with the Atlas by 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 41 and 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. 52 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, O Sullivan, Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari,

26 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 his Library and Atlas (Figures 12a, 12b). This section, Maps and Rhizomes, explains how Warburg s early mapping processes extended into the creation of his Library and Atlas as maps. The conceptual functions of the Library and Atlas are then specifically identified using Deleuze and Guattari s theories as maprhizomes. The following sections Warburg s Library: Lines of Flight and Plateaus and Warburg s Atlas: Lines of flight and Plateaus use Deleuze and Guattari s explanations on the operations of map-rhizomes to comprehend the functions of Warburg s Library and Atlas. These individual analyses then lead into a joint examination of Two Projects One Model: the Rhizome, which compares the Library s and Atlas s shared rhizomatic characteristics using Deleuze and Guattari s commentaries from A Thousand Plateaus. McEwan states that Warburg relied upon a variety of maps, charts, and diagrams to conduct and present his research. She accounts for Warburg s 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 and their journeys over vast territories and timescales. The language and method used by Warburg were those of cartography...a map presents a bird s eye view. It makes it easy to grasp large chunks of information. For Warburg maps were heuristic tools, or finding aids, 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 McEwan s research presents early maps created by Warburg including The Journeys of Sphaera 54 McEwan, 248,

27 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 Warburg 56 which was incorporated into his research on the frescos at Schifanoia s 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 map s 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). 55 Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., 256, 259. McEwan writes the first picture is a map of images, the third the family tree of an important family 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 the Atlas Plate A as the first being the representation of the sky populated by zoomorphic and anthropomorphic images of stars of 1684, the Wanderkarte and a hand drawn Tornabuoni-Medici genealogy. These pictures are captioned Orientation, Exchange and Social Integration. She concludes that Warburg s research into 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 of photographs 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 of roads and understand connections. 58 Ibid., O Sullivan, Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari,

28 Deleuze draws parallels between the map and the rhizome which inform our understanding of Warburg s early research (tracing a path) and his later projects (mapping paths), The Mnemosyne Atlas and Library. 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 In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze uniquely entails rhizomes as a viable diagram method for the mapping of multiplicities. Warburg used rhizomes in his Library and Atlas to 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 The rhizome is altogether different, a map and not a tracing. Make a map, not a tracing What 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 unconscious closed 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 is open 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 60 Rajchman, Deleuze and Guattari, 18. Deleuze continues to express his distrust in the conceptual efficiency of the root-branch and 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 philosophy the 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; animal raising, 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 the tree?...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. 62 A removal of blockages or a leveling of the field can be considered an aspect of Warburg s 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. For example Warburg s 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. 23

29 one of the most important characteristics of the rhizome is that it always has multiple entryways A map has multiple entryways, as opposed to the tracing, which always comes back to the same. The map has to do with performance, 63 whereas the tracing always involved alleged competence. 64 The Library s and Atlas s rhizomatic-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 perspective 66 of human culture. Though specifically created by Warburg, his Library and Atlas 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 making or doing-le multiple, il faut le faire In 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 what its motto is not to predict, but to remain attentive 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 but rather like disparate stones brought together temporally in an as yet uncemented wall 68 in which each element counts on its own, yet in relation to others The intentions of Warburg s Library and Atlas: reading and pulling various books from the shelves and the overall scanning and association of the images on the Atlas plates can be considered as a performance of its rhizome. 64 Deleuze and Guattari, Russell, 23. Russell believed that Warburg viewed pictorial imagery as the product of the human experience. As he explored its manifestations he dissolved the boundary between high art and craft and adopted an approach that was multidisciplinary. 66 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, 127. Warburg continually arranged the materials within his Library and Atlas in a rhizomatic format so that he could comprehend their cultural and psychological implications to human civilization. For Warburg, broader societal concepts including the moral values, religious standpoints such as man s 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 the Library s books he organized and the photos he arranged in his Atlas Plates. Warburg used his Library and Atlas to map and present the networking connections (conceptual and formal) which a culture like Classical Greece established amongst past, present, and future societies. Gombrich comments on this process as he examines some of Warburg s 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 their original 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. 67 Rajchman, Ibid., Ibid.,

30 Warburg s Library and the Atlas constructed 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 intuitive foldings. 70 Warburg s Library: Lines of Flight and Plateaus Warburg s Library is a three-dimensional rhizome map 71 which presents the conceptual interconnections between cultural knowledge and cultural artifacts. Warburg initiated this threedimensional 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 his Library which included many non-art historical works such as aerodynamics, astronomy, and chemistry. Visiting researchers to his early home Library were 70 For additional information on folding see Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1992). Deleuze s notion of folding entails a process of perceiving subjects which are always 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). The bending and blending of differences constitutes the folding process, as links are created by freely twisting and interweaving an infinite number of direct and indirect associations. The practice of folding allows 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 Deleuze s folding process 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 Deleuzian folds can 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 described as 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 (Deleuze s folding). We can now perceive a nature of the paper by the relation of these two corners as seen through a line of flight which created a link through the folding process of association. 71 Kurt W. Forster, Introduction, in Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 52. Forster describes Warburg s Library as a method to display the contents of the collective memory archive in a systematic spatial arrangement. 72 Udo Kultermann, The History of Art History (New York: Abaris Books), 212, Questia e-book, (accessed Nov ). 25

31 baffled by the constantly shifting catalog system he employed (Fig. 14). 73 Despite complaints, Warburg was dedicated to the rationale of his Library which he utilized as a conceptual construct, a three-dimensional map-rhizome for presenting cultural multiplicities. Warburg perceived the books in his Library as 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 radicle 75 with the world itself, as part of the rhizome of connections (chaosmos or chaos- cosmos). This choasmos is physically manifested by Warburg s collection of books which he orchestrated using map like placements within the rhizome of his Library. 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 articulation or segmentarity, strata and territories; but also lines of flight, movements of deterritorialization and destratification All this, lines and measurable speeds, constitutes an assemblage. A book is an assemblage of this kind, and as such is unattributable. It is a 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. We will ask what it functions with, in connection with what other things it does or does not 73 Michael Bentley, Modern Historiography: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1999), Deleuze and Guattari, Ibid., 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. 26

32 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 his Library s broad 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 other multiplicites.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, historical determinations, 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). Warburg s 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 vital information, 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 perceive the 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 Ibid., 3, Ibid., Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography,

33 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 book s relative position, or ubi, to dictate their conceptual and spatial position within the library s rhizome. 80 However, his book s placements were temporal as newly incorporated materials would spur shifts, ruptures, and/or continuances of lines of flight which rippled throughout the library. Deleuze remarks on the fluctuations of the rhizome writing that acentered systems, finite network of automata in which communication runs from any neighbor to any other, the stems or channels do not preexist, and all individuals are interchangeable, defined only by their state at a given moment. 81 Warburg s fluctuating placements of books were conceptually defined by their state at a given moment (a changing moment) being that there was no preexisting plan for their arrangement. Rajchman describes the fluctuating states of the rhizome writing that the bits thus don t work together like parts in a well-formed organism or a purposeful mechanism or a well-formed narrative- the whole is not given, and things are always starting up again in the middle, falling together in another looser way. As one thus passes from one zone or plateau to another and back again, one thus has nothing of the sense of a well-planned itinerary; on the contrary one is taken on a sort of conceptual trip a 79 Deleuze and Guattari, Kurt W. Forster, Aby Warburg: His Study of Ritual and Art on two Continents, October 44 (1996): Deleuze and Guattari,

34 voyage for which one must leave one s usual discourses behind and never be quite be sure where one will land. 82 Through Warburg s continued practice of rearrangement he allowed for multiplicities to be constantly interchanged and their orientations obliterated and rebuilt in a spontaneous instant. Saxl commented that, The arrangement of the books was equally baffling and he may have found it most peculiar, perhaps, that Warburg never tired of shifting and re-shifting them. Every progress in his system of thought, every new idea about the inter-relation of facts made him re-group the corresponding books. The library changed with every change in his research method and with every variation in his interests. 83 Warburg s Library operated on a range of levels, as books networked with other books and meanings converged onto planes of consistency. In this manner, a book was never completely single and whole in itself; rather it depended on other texts (which often physically surrounded it) for a collective function. Warburg s Library operated as an observational watchtower by surveying vast fields of cultural terrain and by providing orientation points for a variety of users. The Library s book arrangements presented cultural information in a map format for any user who wished to observe the multiple paths created by the mind (lines of flight) or to forge new links for the creation of new paths. McEwan examines the Library s function and draws a parallel to placing oneself in an observation vantage point. 84 She writes in order to understand the network of arteries, in order to orient oneself, a vantage point was necessary, from which to see the roads, the traffic the movement of intellectual activity. Warburg s Library was such an observation post. 85 McEwan 82 Rajchman, Fritz Saxl, The History of Warburg s Library ( ), in An Intellectual Biography (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1986), McEwan, 251. McEwan writes that Warburg called his Library the Lyncus Tower an observation post from which one could view far away developments like Argonaut Lynceus. She theorized that Warburg invoked Hamburg traditions of the Colonial Academy and its shipping stations through his Library as a tower observing the trade routes of cultural exchange which scanned our field of vision. 85 Ibid. 29

35 supports her metaphors with letters written by Warburg in which he also describes his Library as the revolving observation tower from which the intellectual past of the Orient and the Occident can be viewed. 86 The modern Warburg Institute concurs with Warburg s observational intent through its current mission statement: the Warburg Library is specifically designed for retracing the many paths through which the Classical tradition has been transmitted from late-antiquity to modern times.it proceeds floor by floor and may serve not only as a point of access to anyone interested in aspects of the survival of the Greco-Roman pantheon, but also as an example of the ways in which the Library s classification is particularly suited to tracking the paths of ideas, themes and images across various disciplines, and across time and space. 87 Multiple paths of cultural information run and connect throughout the books within the Library s three-dimensional structure forming its rhizome. This specific design in turn allows users to perform with its rhizomatic layout (book to book, floor to floor, etc.) through methods of intuition. In contrast to standardized, hierarchical, and biased cataloging systems which organize libraries by subject matter, alphabetically, and numerically, Warburg s nonsystematic Library permits its users to experience and experiment with its rhizome through intuition. The Modern Institute s description of its services elaborates on the performative process of experimental foldings and intuitive associations stating detailed organization makes inspired connections between different fields of endeavor and study. Readers access to the open shelves of the library leads them to books which they would not otherwise find, while the unique arrangement of the sections enables them also to make more intuitive connections. 88 Warburg took into account the individual s role in interacting with the Library s rhizome through methods of intuition, memory, 86 Ibid. 87 A Guide to the Planetary Gods in the Warburg Library, Warburg Institute, 2012, (accessed Dec ). 88 Description of Services, Warburg Institute, 2012, (accessed Dec ). 30

36 and recollection/reconstruction. His intentions for users to respond to the Library s rhizomatic arrangements through memory can be seen in an inscription he had placed above the Library s former entrance. Edgar Wind describes that Warburg had the Greek term MNHMOΣYNH (Mnemosyne) placed above the Library s entryway writing that Warburg was convinced that in his own work, when he was reflecting upon the images he analyses, he was fulfilling the analogous function to that of pictorial memory The word MNHMOΣYNH, which Warburg had inscribed above the entrance to his research institute, is to be understood in this double sense: as a reminder to the scholar that in interpreting works of the past he is acting as trustee of a repository of human experience, but at the same time as a reminder that this experience is itself an object of research, that it requires us to use historical material to investigate the way in which social memory functions. 89 The processes of using intuition and memory for perceiving the historical present s relation to its past is thoroughly explained in Bergson s Matter and Memory. Deleuze was particularly interested in Bergson s theories and he comments on aspects of using memory for understanding our perceptions in the present (durée). Deleuze explains that at each instant, our perception contracts an incalculable multitude of rememorized elements ; at each instant, our present infinitely contracts our past: the two terms which have been separated to begin with cohere closely together Bergson invokes metaphysics to show how a memory is not constituted after present perception, but is strictly contemporaneous with it, since at each instant duration divides into two simultaneous tendencies, one of which goes toward the future and the other falls back into the past. 90 In this aspect, our contemporaneous past constructs our present perception and informs our processes of responding to cultural-historical stimuli through the reactivation of stored memories. Warburg encouraged his Library s users to tap into these rememorized elements to construct associations which could link cultural knowledge and imagery across past, present, and future historical scenarios. This linking process also relied upon methods of intuition which Deleuze also describes as an aspect of Bergsonism. Deleuze writes that 89 Edgar Wind, The Eloquence of Symbols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) Questia e-book, (accessed Nov. 2009), xvi. 90 Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism (NY: Zone Books, 1991), 74,

37 Bergson saw intuition not as an appeal to the ineffable, a participation in a feeling or a lived identification, but as a true method. This method sets out, firstly, to determine the conditions of problems, that is to say, to expose false problems or wrongly posed questions, and to discover the variables under which a given problem must be stated as such. The means used by intuition are, on the one hand, a cutting up or division of reality in a given domain, according to lines of different natures and, on the other hand, an intersection of lines which are taken from various domains and which converge. 91 Through processes of reconstructed memories, intuition, and association users perform with the Library s map- rhizome through individual responses to cultural knowledge and imagery. Connecting into the Library s rhizome the user interacts book to book as well as floor to floor, folding subjects as they physically and conceptually move throughout the Library s threedimensional space. 92 Rajchman describes the process of continuous foldings which allow a user to move throughout the physical and conceptual spaces of the Library s map-rhizome, writing that Deleuze says a multiplicity is not what has many parts; it is what is complicated, or folded many times over and in many ways such that there is no completely unfolded state, but only further bifurcations, as in Borge s fable of the garden of ever-forking paths. Such in the original sort complexity that can never be reduced to a logic of simplicity or generality. As one unfolds or explicates an implication, one is led to another, which in turn helps rethink the first while pointing to others- folds coming from folds. 93 In the Library s rhizome the user is presented with conceptual pathways in a map-like format, multiplicities that exemplify numerous foldable connections a point of entry has across a variety of topics via the Library s books, book shelves, and physical floors (books functioning with other books). These pathways allow the user to independently fold subjects for plotting their own unique course throughout the library s physical structure (not leading them to only one book but multiple interrelated books). For example in the modern Warburg Institute when researching 91 Ibid., In this aspect users navigate Warburg s rhizome through paths of association and intuition by physically moving throughout its three-dimensional format via structural floors. In contrast, the Atlas s rhizome presents interconnected photographs on a two-dimensional surface in which the eye (rather than the whole body) moves across a flat plane linking imagery. 93 Rajchman,

38 Diana or Apollo one could initially enter into the first, second, third, or fourth floor which correspond to Image, Word, Orientation, and Action. 94 The first floor would provide information concerning the imagery involved with the rediscovery of the classical motif among European painting schools from the Late Middle Ages to the eighteenth century. The first floor also contains information on the applied arts which would provide further threads to study the images of the gods in furniture, pottery, glass, textiles, embroidery, lace, tapestry, engraved gems, medals, ivory, amber and garden planning. 95 The second floor which corresponds to Word, provides major literature including Classical Fables and Ovid s Metamorphoses which allows the researcher to study a multitude of shifts within a pictorial symbol, such as Apollo or Diana. The illustrated editions of Ovid s Metamorphoses are the most important literary genre to provide such a variety and abundance of images of the Ancient gods. These vary from country to country and change across time. 96 The third floor relates to Orientation: religion and philosophy and includes religious cults of Rome and Greece divided into individual deities. In this section one could for example find imagery of an Indian Ganesh which gives the elephant god the contrapposto of an Apollo and the lunar attribute of Diana. Similarly a North American procession derives obviously from Classical relief. Thus, if according to researchers classical form and contents were reunited in the Renaissance, the 'Classical' style had such impact on artistic education that it became the medium for representing non-classical religions. 97 The fourth floor provides a space dedicated to religion with information regarding science as well subsections devoted to cultural and political history, anthropology, folklore, festivals, trade, technology, law, and sociology. 98 Information in this area could include how a naval battle that took place in Florence on the Arno in 1612 involved a fleet of Diana, Mercury, Apollo and 94 Description of Services, Warburg Institute. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. 33

39 Jupiter. 99 Unlike standard cataloging systems not all related information is entirely categorized or grouped together by subject, instead researchers must use their intuition as a method to navigate the Library s physical and conceptual spaces (books conceptual functions with other books), beginning, and ending at any point (Figures 15a-15g ). By not leading the user to a single conclusion: one book or one end point (similar to a dead-end tracing), Warburg s Library allows the user to independently respond to a network of texts by intuitively folding subjects (responding to all possible directions on a map). Gombrich accounts for the Library s variety of entry points, paths, and foldablity, writing that However subjective his reaction to certain images may have been, however deeply his cultural psychology may have been rooted in nineteenth century evolutionism and associationism, he had worked day and night to provide the means of transcending his own limitations by amassing and arranging the books which were to enable scholars to ask ever fresh questions in pursuit of the quest he had begun. It is the creation of this Library that can continue to function even though the ideas of its user may no longer be those of its founder which provides the true measure of his genius.every section of the Library still reflects Warburg s original conviction that the responses of primitive man in language and imagery can lead to what he called orientation in religion, science or philosophy, or be degraded into magic practice or superstition, that the historian of literature and of art must reflect on the nature of these responses in language and imagery; and that no frontier police should deter him from crossing these conventional borders of academic fields. 100 Warburg s Library transcended his own interests through the multiplicity of cultural content present in its rhizome which ceaselessly established a range of conceptual connections across time, space, and varied disciplines. When the Warburg Institute reopened in Warburg continued to construct rhizomes to comprehend the multiplicities present within cultural-historical and 99 Ibid. 100 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, Mathias Bruhn. Aby Warburg ( ): The Survival of an Idea, Enciclopedia e Hipertexto, (accessed Oct. 10, 2009). Bruhn states that Saxl reclassified Warburg s collection by giving the books call numbers and entitles including image, word, orientation, and practice which attempted to simulate Warburg s original system. 34

40 cultural-psychological contexts (Fig. 16). Reflecting his increasing concern for the multidisciplinary direction of art history, his Library acquired new resources which attracted scholars of religion, philosophy, literature, music, archeology, and philosophy who could now lecture and publish their research at the new Institute (Fig. 17). 102 By the end of the twenties Warburg s extensive Library had grown to around 60,000 volumes and included a collection of over 2,000 photographs. Warburg s collection came to a halt in 1929 when his life s work was threatened by the burgeoning Nazi regime that burned books they considered to be subversive. In 1933 the entire Warburg Institute was boxed and transferred from Hamburg, Germany to the University of London for safekeeping. 103 Fortunately, the migration to England 104 expanded Warburg s capacity 105 to engage non-german researchers and secured the continuation of his rhizomatic methodologies (Fig. 18). 106 Concurring with Warburg s collection and arrangement of 102 Micheal Diers, Warburg and the Warburgian Tradition of Cultural History, New German Critique 65 (1995) Diers writes the establishment of Warburg s Institute coincided with Warburg s return from the mental asylum. Warburg never published anything from his newly formed institute, but continually worked on other projects including the Mnemosyne Atlas which remain fragmented. 103 Shulamith Behr and Marian Malet, Arts in Exile in Britain : Politics and Cultural Identity (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), 280. Warburg s Library was initially acquired by the University of London on a three year loan period. After the loan, Warburg s Library was transferred to Samuel Courtauld s Courtauld Institute, all of which was eventually reincorporated into the University of London. 104 Bing, A.M. Warburg, 300. Gertrud Bing was among the concerned scholars who secured the transference of Warburg s materials to London. She stated that the foundation for the extension of the work he had initiated had been transferred to England. The irony of his fortuna is emphasized by the fact that it was this very emergency which helped to give his name greater currency, in that the migration of the Institute to another country, and its incorporation in the University of London, opened to Warburg s closely collaborators a new era of activity. Warburg died in 1929 before his Library was moved for the second time. 105 Description of Services, Warburg Institute. The Warburg Institute is still functional as of 2012, with an active online catalog which has digital copies of over 99.5 % of the Library s holdings. The website states that Warburg s Library has grown to nearly 350,000 volumes and that the unique classification system of the library which was established by Aby Warburg and Fritz Saxl, has been refined, extended and reorganized by three generations of scholar librarians. It now structures Warburg s original material into four sections including: image, word, orientation and action. 106 Classification Scheme and Principle Areas of Strength, Warburg Institute. Unlike Warburg s organic cataloging system, The modern Institute details a new organization of Warburg s materials under categories of Image, Word, Orientation and Action which constitute the main divisions of the Warburg Institute Library and encapsulate its aim: to study the tenacity of symbols and images in European art and architecture (Image, 1st floor); the persistence of motifs and forms in Western languages and literatures (Word, 2nd floor); the gradual transition, in Western thought, from magical beliefs to religion, science and philosophy (Orientation, 3rd & 4th floor) and the survival and transformation of ancient patterns in social customs and political institutions (Action, 4th floor). In other words the Library was to lead from the visual image, as the first stage in human's awareness (Image), to 35

41 materials for his Library, 107 he also gathered numerous photographs to construct a two dimensional rhizome, the Mnemosyne Atlas. 108 Warburg s Mnemosyne Atlas: Lines of Flight and Plateaus The Mnemosyne Atlas functioned similarly to the Library through its physical simulation of Warburg s theories through a map-rhizome. 109 In this manner, the Mnemosyne Atlas and Library both present information in a map-like format which serves to construct symbolic meanings within cultural symbolism and knowledge by surveying their contextual properties (historical multiplicities revealed through paths of associable irrational and rational forms and concepts). 110 Warburg s Atlas rhizome was assembled 111 like a collage but it focused on the construction of meanings and visual forms 112 rather than the presentation of an aesthetic language (Word) and then to religion, science and philosophy, all of them products of humanity's search for Orientation which influences patterns of behavior and actions, the subject matter of history (Action). 107 Forster, Ritual and Art, 21. Forster states that Warburg s unorthodox selection and paring of imagery represented his extraordinary command of a vast field. 108 Kurt W. Forster, Introduction, in Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 45. The Mnemosyne Atlas was Warburg s last project which exemplified his broadening perspective on cultural history. Forster describes the all inclusive attributes of the Atlas writing that the extraordinary breadth of Warburg s horizons is revealed by the project to which he devoted the last years of his life. This was his attempt to answer fundamental questions about the transmission of images and their role in the cultural economy. His old theme that of exploring the function of personal and social memory, now found an application on the vast scale of European history. 109 Bruhn, The Survival of an Idea, Fritz Saxl hoped that the Mnemosyne Atlas would provide Warburg a means to clearly document his theories since he was incapable of producing a linear text due to his continuing illness. 110 Kurt W. Forster, Introduction, in Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 52. Forster describes the Atlas as a visual instrument of invocation, and its plates, with their meticulously arranged objects, had much in common with the ceremonial alter superstructures of the Hopi. Though worlds apart, both altar and Atlas are experimental arrays, assembled to create and convey, with the aid of specific individual objects, the powerful dynamic connections between the energies that rule the world. 111 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, 261. Gombrich describes the format of the Atlas stating that they were large but light wooden frames over which black hessian was stretched served as a background to photographs suspended on the cloth by light clips. Warburg, it seems, immediately responded and used this tool to assemble such motifs as had engaged his interest. Moreover, in the new public role which the Library had assumed this method was a welcome aid in explaining the scope and purpose of the Library s research. During the last few years of Warburg s life a number of such exhibitions were arranged in Hamburg, and when he went to Italy he found that he could not travel without these frames. 112 Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Gerhard Richter s Mnemosyne Atlas : The Anomic Archive, October 88 (1999): 117. Buchloh considers the formal parallels between graphic collages, like Gerhard Richter s Mnemosyne Atlas, and 36

42 art-object. Similar in function to Warburg s early autobiographical map-drawings which used multiple points, the Atlas format also utilizes an arrangement of multiples which span historical time and geographical locations. These multiple photographs directly depict comparisons which allow viewers to analyze, compare, and differentiate by amplifying, intensifying, and reinforcing the meaning of the images. 113 Like the Library s books, the Atlas s plates allowed for constant repositioning enabling Warburg to present lines of flight through association creating plateaus of consistency (presented via the individual physical panels). Gombrich describes this process stating that The method of pinning photographs to a canvas presented an easy way of marshalling material and reshuffling it in ever new combinations, just as Warburg had been used to re-arranging his index cards and his books whenever another theme became dominant in his mind. The scholar who wrote with such difficulty and who felt the need to recast his formulations incessantly was here presented with a method which would ease his labors Every individual work of the period he had made his own and was to him not only connected forward and backward in an unilinear development- it could be understood by what it derived from and by what it contradicted, by its ambiente, by its remote ancestry and by its potential effect in the future. Even in his early notes Warburg had been fond of mapping out these complex relationships in diagrammatic form in which the work he was studying was represented as an outcome of various forces. 114 Warburg s Atlas was actively developed from and consisted of over one thousand photographs arranged on more than 60 plates. 115 Rather than studying a single plate at one time Warburg often arranged and viewed several Atlas plates placing them side by side (Fig. 19). This method of viewing allowed for local as well as collective comparisons to be seen and analyzed. The formally and conceptually arranged photographs included reproductions of a their similarities to Warburg s project. Buchloh concludes that the other graphic colleges appear formally similar but their content and construction of meaning differs. 113 Edward Rolf Tufte, Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative (Connecticut: Graphics Press, 1997), Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, Ibid.,

43 variety of artwork by known and unknown artists as well as images of applied arts 116 including stamps, pottery, leaflets, pamphlets, coins, and votive statues. 117 Like the Library s books the photographs in the Atlas were arranged according to how they functioned with one another rather than by subject matter. For example Atlas Plate 77 includes an assortment of images which formally and conceptually function by relating to public reception and the inversion of exaltation (Fig. 20a). 118 In the panel Warburg has included alongside the paintings of Eugene Delacroix clippings of contemporary golf championships, ads for eating fish, a cover of a fish cookbook, an announcement for toilet paper, commemorative seals, as well as commemorative postage stamps of Queen Victoria in the carriage of the conch shells. 119 Warburg relied on a rhizome s characteristic state of flux as he constantly reworked his plates (Fig. 20b). For example, figure 20b presents Atlas Plate 77 with its final shifts, newly incorporated materials, and pictorial references to other plates within the Atlas s collective rhizome (Fig. 20b). 120 The Mnemosyne Atlas s mobile positioning and a broad group of materials exemplifies Warburg s broad survey of a cultural context using a malleable rhizome model. The dual symbolism in the photographs in the Atlas derives from Warburg s early 116 Ibid., 265. Deleuze and Guattari, 7. Warburg s Atlas combines symbolic photographs of both high and low forms of cultural production. Warburg protested the division between fine art and applied art when studying cultural history and advocated the Deleuzian concept of the removal of blockages. Warburg writes works of applied art have the misfortune of being regarded as products of the lower faculties of homofaber and of being relegated to the basement of the museum for the history of the human mind where, at best, they are shown as creations of technical interest. Who would so easily hit on the idea of responding to such precious showpieces as to sensitive reflectors of the outward and inward life of their period? Deleuze concurs with the rhizome s ability to connect with all forms, writing that the rhizome itself assumes very diverse forms, from ramified surface extension in all directions to concretion into bulbs and tubers. When rats swarm over each other. The rhizome includes the best and the worst: potato and couchgrass, or the weed. Animal and plant, couchgrass as crabgrass. 117 Bing, A.M. Warburg, 307. Warburg s research on the portraits within Sta. Trinita utilized information from contemporary life-size wax votive figures which were a common custom. The use of the magical votive figures suggested a surviving form of pagan magical practices within Christian beliefs. 118 Warnke and Checa, Ibid. 120 Ibid., XIV. Plate 77 is labeled as Panel 77 of the next to the last version of the Atlas, It differs significantly in comparison to the other documentation photo of the same plate through its inclusion of additional imagery. Photos of two other Atlas plates exemplifies that Warburg s Atlas was self-referencing and that he frequently laid material out for cross referencing. 38

44 interests in mapping the paths of cultural-historical transmissions via the pathos formula. For Warburg comprehending cultural symbols required the study of their previous contextual meanings and forms seen through both rational and irrational mental states. The Mnemosyne Atlas presented this development through photographs which functioned as associable examples of a symbol s changing form and changing expression (rational and irrational) seen throughout different historical periods. For example in Atlas Plate C the photographs collectively portray the conceptual and formal paths of ideas associated with Mars and cosmic space, moving beyond the anthropomorphic conception of image- harmonic system and sign (Fig. 22a, 22b). 121 In the Atlas plate, image 4 depicts The Children of the Planet Mars with Perseus from a German codex (fifteenth century). This pagan-magical imagery (irrational-dionysian) is paired with scientific depictions (rational-apollonian) of cosmic space such as image 2: The Orbit of Mars According to Kepler (1609) and image 3: The Planetary Orbits According to the Modern Concept of Brockhaus s Konversations-Lexikon (1905). Modern conceptions of mankind s relation to the cosmos are also included in the plate s bottom photographs of two Hamburg newspaper ads of the Graf Zeppelin (1929). Atlas Plate C s photographs function by presenting balanced imagery of both irrational and rational mental responses (both form and concepts) to earth and man s relation to the cosmos. This functional arrangement continues throughout other Atlas plates including Plate 1, Plate B, Plate 2, Plate 20, Plate 21, Plate 22, Plate 23a (Fig. 22c- 22i). 122 The photographs Warburg arranged onto physical panels were also valued for their abilities to stimulate lines of flight and convergences through formal and conceptual associative 121 Ibid. 122 It is likely, considering the numbering of the plates that Warburg placed these panels physically next to one another to view local as well as collective associations among the images. 39

45 assimilations. 123 Through processes of associative parallelism the Atlas s photographs create lines of flight which formally and conceptual link across a single flat panel (local comparisons) as well as across other panels (collective comparisons). As a result, lines of flight created through consistently similar associations form convergences through their commonality. This consistency in turn forms an information plateau (signified by the actual physical Atlas panel), a leveling of information onto a single plane that is defined by the number of connections (lines of flight) which are made on it. 124 O Sullivan describes the construction of meanings which occur when lines of flight interact and converge onto plateaus, he writes meaning is this process, an encounter between forces, or lines of force (which themselves are complexes of other lines), an event, dynamic rather than static and in a constant process of being. Here meaning is a material process, the expression of one force on another. 125 The converging interaction between conceptual and formal lines of flight seen through the expression of difference forces is presented as an event signified by a plate within the collective Atlas. However, despite their singularity in physical format an Atlas plate can jointly function with all the other plates through simultaneous lines of collective formal and conceptual associations (the Atlas as a collection of events). Edward Tufte clarifies the local and collective linking processes which occur when viewing arranged multiples (like photographs) in his example of Yumi Takahasi and Ikuyo Shibukawa s Color Coordination (Fig. 23a-23d). Tufte writes that 123 Forster, Ritual and Art, 21. Forster remarks that the unusual grouping of unorthodox imagery immediately calls into question their relationship to one another. On this level, the associative activities conducted by the viewer to pair and understand the imagery as a whole, functionally parallel the collective memory s assimilation of the same imagery. 124 Deleuze and Guattari, 9. Deleuze describes the convergence of multiple lines of flight, multiplicities, writing that all multiplicities are flat, in the sense that they fill or occupy all of their dimensions: we will therefore speak of a plane of consistency of multiplicities, even though the dimensions of this plane increase with the number of connections that are made on it The line of flight marks: the reality of a finite number of dimensions that the multiplicity effectively fills: the impossibility of supplementary dimensions, unless the multiplicity is transformed by the line of flight; the possibility and necessity of flattening all of the multiplicities on a single plane of consistency or exteriority, regardless of their number of dimensions. 125 O Sullivan, Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari,

46 small multiples, whether tabular or pictorial, move to the heart of visual reasoning- to see, distinguish, choose. Their multiplied smallness enforces local comparisons within our eyespan, relying on an active eye to select and make contrasts rather than bygone memories of images scattered over pages and pages. We envision information in order to reason about, communicate, document, and preserve that knowledge. 126 Warburg forged links across a variety of Atlas plates by placing them side by side. This visual presentation allowed for him to construct lines of associations through both local and collective comparisons. Unlike local comparisons, collective comparisons create sprawling links by fostering connections through different fields of study and plateaus of meaning (lines of flight conceptually cross over into other Atlas plates). Collective comparisons and associations are an aspect of the rhizome since they allow the user to broadly survey vast territories of information, crossing cultural-historical boundaries, and accruing differences into complex wholes. The Atlas s photographs serve as points on a flat plane which establish lines of flight through paths of formal associations. Tufte describes the formal associative processes in his text Visual Explanations Relying on the links of parallelism, well-crafted multiples provide high-resolution views of complex material For a broad range of problems in presenting numbers and images, small multiples will serve quite well. Since many slices of information are displayed within the eyespan, alert viewers may be able to detect contrasts and correspondences at a glance- uninterrupted visual reasoning. 127 Warburg s Atlas displays reproductions of a variety of artworks and scales their complexities into a surveying map-view. These different photos establish networking lines of association through visual reasoning, as viewers draw links between images defining their lines of flight through formal differences and similarities. For example when viewing Atlas Plate B local formal associations regarding man as the center of a circular orb can be simulated across a single plate (Fig. 24a). This association locally links a given number of points (images) on a 126 Edward Rolf Tufte, Envisioning Information (Connecticut: Graphics Press, 1990), Tufte, Visual Explanations,

47 single plateau and can also be used when viewing other individual Atlas Plates including 21, 22, and 23a (Fig. 24b). In Fig. 24c man as the center of a circular orb can be seen as collective formal association which creates lines of flight across different Atlas Plates, conceptually bridging diverse cultures, time periods, and historical meanings (Fig. 24c). As the viewer interacts with the Atlas s rhizome of possible formal interconnections, local and collective comparisons can happen simultaneously (Fig. 24d). In this manner the Atlas functions as an open map of possible routes where the user draws their own paths through a multiplicity of cultural domains. The Atlas s photographs also orchestrate paths of conceptual associations through lines of flight which connect cultural imagery on a single plate as well as across other plates. This process of conceptual association uniquely involves the individual, memory, and intuition. Gombrich describes the conceptual associative processes and its relationship to memory (for information retrieval and connection) stating that for if the theory of the collective mind was found at all acceptable, even personal associations might point to links in the social Mneme. Moreover, Warburg s philosophy of Mneme appeared to justify the hope that what he called a ghost story for the full grown-up ( Gespenstergeschichte für ganz Erwachsene ) could be told in pictures alone. For in this philosophy the image fulfilled the same role in the collective mind as the engram fulfilled in the central nervous system of the individual. It represents an energy charge that becomes effective through contact. Here was another reason why lengthy explanations of the images might have been redundant. Warburg certainly hoped that to behold would respond with the same intensity to the images of passion or of suffering, of mental confusion or of serenity, as he had done in his work. Once more the comparison of Mnemosyne with a symphony comes to mind. We are expected to re-live the vicissitudes of Perseus on successive screens as we react to the changing moods of Beethoven s Eroica. All the text could do, in his view, was to provide something like programme notes. 128 Warburg felt that the Atlas s imagery could reactivate stored memories of its associated past histories (empathy and collective memory) and connect them with the present, revealing paths of 128 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography,

48 transmission. 129 These stored memories would then inform the Atlas user s present perception on the interconnected natures of all cultural histories. Theoretically as biologically shared memories, collective memory would allow users to naturally create conceptual links within the Atlas s imagery rather than relying on inscriptions or instructions. Gombrich elaborates writing To Warburg these documents spoke with such immediacy that he felt that he had only to present them for their message to be clear. Here is the root of that discrepancy between the public image of Warburg as an erudite scholar who knew how to connect some outof-the-way texts with images of the past, and the picture that emerges from a reading of his notes where the theoretical concerns are always openly formulated. It is a discrepancy that was ultimately to lead to the abortive project of Warburg s last years in which he hoped to explain his philosophy of civilization in terms of a picture Atlas with scarcely any comment 130 This unbiased setup encourages users to naturally respond and interact with the Atlas s rhizome, whether through revived memories and/or intuition, forging conceptual connections both locally and collectively. For example, when viewing Atlas Plate B lines of conceptual associations can be created considering the body in harmony with zodiacal practices (magic vs. science). In Fig. 25a local conceptual comparisons are exemplified across the individual plate through imagery such as a balanced body delivered through magical practices of bloodletting according to specific months and zodiac signs (Fig. 25a.). This local association can also be used to conceptually compare and associate imagery on other individual Atlas Plates including Plates 20, 22, and 23a (Fig. 25b). In contrast to local comparisons, collective conceptual comparisons construct comprehensive planes of consistency through different cultures and time periods. By considering the broader context of the body in harmony with aspects of magic, including 129 Deleuze, Bergsonism, 63, 70. Deleuze describes Bergson s theories regarding the recollection of imagery through image evocation writing that when on the other hand, we speak of evocation, or of this recall of the image, something completely different is involved: Once we have put ourselves on a particular level where recollections lie, then, and only then, do they tend to be actualized. The appeal of the present is such that they no longer have the ineffectiveness, the impassivity that characterized them as pure recollections; they become recollection-images, capable of being recalled. They are actualized or embodied. This actualization has all kinds of distinct aspects, stages, and degrees Recollection-images restore distinctions of the past in the present-at least those that are useful. 130 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography,

49 practices of prayer, magical amulets, and stones, paths of associations are broadened and multiplied (Fig. 25c). As the Atlas s local and collective conceptual comparisons occur simultaneously they create a rhizomatic network of associative lines of flight (Fig. 25d). Warburg s Atlas panels function by presenting lines of flight and plateaus of consistency which illuminate an image s formal and conceptual paths of associations across varying confines of European humanist culture and societal memory. 131 Semantically linking word with image, Warburg s rhizomes provided a unique instrument for mapping the components of a symbol (form and concept) through the exploration of its historical paths of transmission and cultural interrelations. Two Projects One Model: The Rhizome Warburg thought in terms of multiplicities by relying on the interconnected, nonhierarchical, and constantly developing characteristics of a rhizome to present conceptual arrangements of cultural concepts and forms within his Library and Mnemosyne Atlas. His orchestration of lines of flight presented in plateaus of information (via physical book shelves, and Atlas Plates) mapped the transmission of imagery throughout mankind s varied historical and psychological states. 132 In his pursuits the rhizome provided Warburg with an ideal open 131 Buchloh, Gerhard Richter, Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, Gombrich goes into extensive detail describing Warburg s direct influence from his former professor Karl Lamprecht ( ). In Karl Lamprecht s theories psychology, anthropology, and art were blended in cultural history. Gombrich explains Lamprecht s theories stating according to this view the mind is a tabula rasa on to which the senses are writing their story. The problem of psychology is to explain the peculiarities of thought, of memory, of language, and of art on the basis of this theory. The sense impression leaves a residue in our consciousness which can combine with other such residues in more or less stable ideas or Vorstellungen. But consciousness has no room for many such ides or images within its narrow beam. The more vivid or stronger ones will push the weaker traces beyond the threshold of consciousness, where they will await their cue until some chain of association pulls them again into the conscious mind. Gombrich continues to explain Warburg in the light of Lamprecht s theories stating that in the visual arts man s attitude towards the outer world crystallized in simple images which could be placed side by side and compared with ease. And what could be more symptomatic of the mentality of a period than these records of man s attempts to picture the surrounding world? Art, then, is the supreme indicator of the psychological make-up of a given period and an understanding of 44

50 model to present the paths of ever shifting lines of flight, parallel continuums, and multiplicity of intersections in which symbolic imagery arises (nondefinitive origins), travels, changes, and intersects (reemergence) within history and mankind s consciousness. Sixty years later, Deleuze and Guattari have provided the theoretical articulation necessary to comprehend Warburg s Library and Atlas as practical rhizomes. The non-definitive nature of Warburg s Mnemosyne Atlas and Library, exemplified by the constant shifting and incorporation of new materials, is explained through Deleuze and Guattari s perspectives in A Thousand Plateaus. Though some of Warburg s new materials initially appeared irrelevant to any single point 133 of his research, he insisted on their conceptual importance and fundamental placement within the broader scope of his observations on human culture. Gombrich describes Warburg s varied collection process stating these trends of ideas obviously took Warburg once more far out of the sphere of art history. With the help of two assistants he systematically extended the range of the Library as a research instrument to include the history of cosmology- a field not then represented in the ordinary academic curriculum. But he never regarded academic pursuits as something divorced from life. In everything he had written there was an implied message to his time which sprang from his own profound involvement. 134 Deleuze concurs on the abilities of a rhizome to orchestrate itself within a variety of unseeingly its underlying principles must lead us straight to the centre and core of the epoch. Gombrich remarks on the influence of social change and Warburg s theories of collective memory stating that Warburg remained Lamprecht s follower throughout his life. He also remained deeply impressed by Lamprecht s interest in the problem of transition from one period to the other His theory is mainly sociological. Social change, he argueswhether engendered by economic or by political developments- results in an inrush of new stimuli which can no longer be absorbed by the old and customary groups of associated ideas. This leads to dissociation the breaking-up of mental balance and a feeling of crisis till a new idea can serve as a dominant point of crystallization. The new period finds its balance on a higher level of differentiation. In this context Lamprecht introduces the notion of psychic range which remained equally important for Warburg. Gombrich concludes by stating that On the contrary, if there is one man who may be called Warburg s real teacher, it is Lamprecht. The interest in psychology, the wide evolutionary perspective, the determination to see and investigate all manifestations of culture impartially and to class art and artifacts among them, the interest in periods of transition for what they can tell us of the psychological dynamics of progress- all this and more remained with Warburg. 133 When considered in points, one references the tree-branch and linear models of understanding history. These are limited in view and scope and Warburg did not view his research in this manner. Warburg was conceptualizing information as a rhizome, that is why the irrelevant could be made relevant, and fragments could be whole. He was not plotting points in space with clear progressions, as this would have created only a limited understanding of a single subject, the Florentine Renaissance. 134 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography,

51 places and materials. He believes that the observer should be willingly open to new directions and formations despite one s initial point of entry: in other cases, on the contrary, one will bolster oneself directly on a line of flight enabling one to blow apart strata, cut roots, and make new connections conversely, a tree branch or root division may begin to burgeon into a rhizome A new rhizome may form in the heart of a tree, the hollow of a root, the crook of a branch. Or else it is a microscopic element of the root-tree, a radicle, that gets rhizome production going. 135 In accordance with Deleuze s perspective, Warburg collected materials so that his rhizomes could continue their becoming within and throughout the varied cultural subjects and images presented within his Library s books and Atlas photographs. Brian Massumi, the translator of A Thousand Plateaus, details the rhizome s inclusive nature writing what interests us are the circumstances. Because the concept in its unrestrained usage is a set of circumstances, at a volatile juncture. It is a vector: the point of application of a force moving through a space at a given velocity in a given direction. The concept has no subject or object other than itself. It is an act. Nomad thought replaces the closed equation of representation, x=x=not y (I=I=not you) with an open equation:.+y+z+a+.( +arm+brick+window+ ) Rather than analyzing the world into discrete components, and reducing their manyness to the One of identity, an ordering them by rank, it sums up a set of disparate circumstances in a shattering blow. It synthesizes a multiplicity of elements without effacing their heterogeneity or hindering their potential for future rearranging (to the contrary) A Thousand Plateaus is conceived as an open system. It does not pretend to have the final word. 136 The rhizomatic operations of Warburg s Mnemosyne Atlas and Library constantly absorbed new materials, was rearranged, and continued to fold various cultural concepts without generalizing or establishing a definitive ranking order. Rather than limiting itself to tracing a path of origin or a single meaning of a symbol, Warburg s rhizome-maps created expansive views of mankind s historical and psychological tendencies for symbolic imagery (mapping paths). The rhizomatic arrangements of Warburg s Library s shelves and Atlas s plates are comprehensible through Deleuze and Guattari s delineations for creating plateaus of converging 135 Deleuze and Guattari, Ibid., xiii. 46

52 lines of flight. These lines of flight stemmed from the multiplicity of cultural content (myth, religion, science, agriculture, astronomy, astrology, etc.) found in the symbolic signifiers Warburg arranged: cultural knowledge (books) and cultural objects (photographs). Through intuitive foldings and associative assimilation the user simulates the conceptual and formal lines of flight which link book to adjacent book, photo to adjacent photo while also moving and linking throughout further reaches of the rhizome. Deleuze describes the convergence of lines of flight within a rhizome stating all multiplicities are flat, in the sense that they fill or occupy all of their dimensions: we will therefore speak of a plane of consistency of multiplicities, even though the dimension of this plane will increase with the number of connections that are made on it. 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 other multiplicities. 137 Deleuze emphasizes that in the rhizome these plateaus or planes of consistency are not progressive steps towards a single destination as in teleological models (they are not a definitive tracing). However, like an open-ended map a plateau is always in the middle, not at the beginning or end. A rhizome is made of plateaus. 138 Deleuze elaborates on the middle condition of the plateau stating A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. The tree is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance. The tree imposes the verb to be, but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, and and and This conjunction carries enough force to shake and uproot the verb to be. 139 Warburg s Library and Atlas do not contain a beginning nor end, but always a middle in which the user is coming, going, and constantly bringing together differences to construct new paths, lines of flight, and plateaus (a map of possibilities). In this manner, the arrangements of the 137 Ibid. 138 Ibid., Ibid.,

53 Atlas s plates and Library s shelves are not definitive but open and inclusive. As a middle segment, the Atlas Plate and the book shelf constantly spill over from their singular formats connecting into the broader conceptual spaces of the collective rhizome ( and and and ex: photo to photo, photo to entire plate, plate to plate, plate to all plates, all plates to future plates, all combination of movements simultaneously). Deleuze describes the line of flight s ability to establish malleable and persistent semiotic chains stating that a rhizome may be broken, shattered, at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or new lines. You can never get rid of ants because they form an animal rhizome that can rebound time and again after most of it has been destroyed. Every rhizome contains lines of segmentarity according to which it is stratified, territorialized, organized, signified, attributed, etc. as well as lines of deterritorialization down which it constantly flees. There is a rupture in the rhizome whenever segmentary lines explode into a line of flight, but the line of flight is part of the rhizome These lines always tie back to one another You may make a rupture, draw a line of flight, yet there is still a danger that you will reencounter organizations that restratify everything, formations that restore power to a signifier, attributions that reconstitute a subject- anything you like, from Oedipal resurgences to fascist concretions. Groups and individuals contain microfacisims just waiting to crystallize. Yes, couchgrass is also a rhizome. Good and bad are only the products of an active and temporary selection, which must be renewed. 140 For Warburg, shattered points within the rhizome were illustrated by new plateaus of information: new Atlas plates and new sections within his Library. These points of expansion and continued lines of flight were also testimonies to human culture s ability to proliferate cultural ideologies despite historical breakages and blockages. 141 The immense variety of books and photographs within Warburg s Library and Atlas ceaselessly establish cultural connections (outside of the user), generating a multitude of conceptual pathways for art historical and non-art historical researchers. The linking and folding 140 Ibid., For example Warburg was particularly interested in the breakages of paganism, which initially appeared to die out and was overcoded by the more dominate cultural trend of Christianity. However paganism was never completely destroyed but it was in essence absorbed back into the rhizome where conceptually coalesced with a new line of flight or remained on its old line only to reappear later in history (either in conceptual fragments or in whole cultural revivals). 48

54 of vast concepts using books and images as symbolic signifiers for broader elements within human culture including religion, science, and the arts is explained by Deleuze as a quality of a rhizome. Deleuze states that a rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles. 142 He elaborates on the rhizome s ability to establish connections without the biases of its creator stating that Puppet strings, as a rhizome or multiplicity, are tied not to the supposed will of an artist or puppeteer but to the multiplicity of nerve fibers, which form another puppet in other dimensions connected to the first. Call the strings or rods that move the puppet the weave. It might be objected that its multiplicity resides in the person of the actor, who projects it into the text. 143 In this respect, Warburg is not the connector of the rhizome s materials, in that he does not will them to a specific direction as other standardized catalog systems. In contrast, he merely bears witness to and presents the lines of flight, converging planes of consistency, and connections which are constantly being generated within his Library s and Atlas s rhizomes. In essence a user can modify the rhizome s map by interacting with its cultural materials individually and independently. Fritz Saxl describes Ernest Cassirer s experience visiting the Library in which Cassirer was taken by its alive intensity. Saxl describes his response as he decided either to flee from it (which he did for some time) or to remain there a prisoner for years (which for a 142 Deleuze and Guattari, 7. Deleuze speaks of the ability that language has to be splintered into a multiplicity since there is no language in itself, nor are there any linguistic universals, only throng of dialects, patois, slangs, and specialized languages. There is no ideal speaker-listener, any more than there is a homogeneous linguistic community.there is no mother tongue, only a power takeover by a dominant language within a political multiplicity. Language stabilizes around a parish, a bishopric, a capital. It forms a bulb. It evolves by subterranean stems an flows, along river valleys, or train tracks; it spreads like a patch of oil. It is always possible to break a language down to into internal structural elements, an undertaking not fundamentally different from a search for roots. Warburg research shift from specific motifs found in the Florentine Renaissance to a broader pursuit of understanding the primitive mind and the psychological tendencies from a pagan world views (biological in nature, brain functions, nature to symbol) I believe was a result of his interests in the splintering of ideas and concepts (how it splintered, why, and where the splinters fell). 143 Ibid., 8. 49

55 certain period he enjoyed doing in later years). 144 Saxl concludes that in consequence it will never be as easy to find a book in the Warburg library as in a collection which is arranged according to alphabet and numbers; the price to pay is high- but the books remain a body of living thought as Warburg had planned. 145 The non-labeled and fragmented natures of Warburg s rhizomes aid in their unbiased presentation as an open map-model. This initial chaotic impression is only a misconception to the rhizome s inclusive nature which renders the model open to change, multitude interpretations, and other types of users (different points of entry). The rhizome comprehensive nature thrives off fragments, 146 just as Warburg s Library and Atlas thrive off fragmented materials and seeming chaos, i.e. single books, single images, random materials, etc. Warburg and Deleuze encourage the process of being rhizomorphous through their mapping instruments and theoretical insight. Rajchman explains that To think in terms of multiplicities rather than identities- to make or construct multiplicities- requires us to rethink a range of practical concepts of person, action, and belief. Only then can we understand the basic principles in Deleuze s practical philosophy surrounding those problematizing moments that require thinking and in which thinking intervenes- the peculiar time of those questions for which there preexists no automatic or habitual response, no ready program or project, not even an accepted language or description of judgment, which we must experiment and experiment with ourselves to see. Only then do we see the practical problem of making visible and thinkable what is unattributable and new in what is happening- and so what has happened or might yet happen-to us Fritz Saxl, The History of Warburg s Library ( ), in An Intellectual Biography (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1986), Ibid. 146 Deleuze and Guattari, 6. Deleuze rectifies the rhizomatic quality of fragments using a comparison to William Burroughs folding and cut-up methods as he writes take William Burroughs s cut-up method: the folding of one text onto another, which constitutes multiple and even adventitious roots (like a cutting), implies a supplementary dimension to that of the texts under consideration. In this supplementary dimension of folding, unity continues its spiritual labor. That is why the most resolutely fragmented work can also be presented as the Total Work or Magnum Opus. 147 Rajchman, 81. Rajchman s chapter on Life in Deleuze Connections uses a practical application of Deleuze s philosophy to the perception of ourselves and our being in the world. He continues to clarify stating that to think of ourselves and one another as multiple, or as composed of multiplicities, is not to image that we have many distinct identities or selves (personalities, brain modules, etc.) On the contrary, it is to get away from understanding ourselves in terms of identity and identification or as distinct persons or selves, however many or 50

56 Like Warburg, Rajchman advocates experience through experiment where we must construct and connect with rhizomes thinking in terms of multiplicities instead of definitive ends. Warburg trusted in experimental experiences for understanding cultural history through the construction of rhizomes (which pre-dated the theoretical explanations of Deleuze and Guattari, there was no set plan of action nor applicable rhizome theory for Warburg to use). In his processes he was able to understand aspects of cultural history: what had happened and what might happen. He then provided the tools, the Atlas and the Library, for future generations to experience through further experimentation. Deleuze states that to be rhizomorphous is to produce stems and filaments that seem to be roots, or better yet connect with them by penetrating the trunk, but put them to strange new uses. 148 Enacting upon Deleuze s proclamation this examination intends on being rhizomorphous by stimulating new roots of thought which run throughout Warburg s projects. In this manner, these roots of insight penetrate the trunk of our historical past, reconnecting, and reenacting the lines within Warburg s rhizomatic projects enabling their use for future generations. Warburg cannot be defined as a single entity, such as a root or father of Iconology with only one connection to culture. His contributions exist in the rhizome where they connect and converge with other lines of flight and planes of consistency. Warburg forged semiotic chains spurred by cultural production. His legacy which is embodied within his notes, Atlas, and dissociated. Multiplicity is not diversity, and making it requires another conception of Life- it is rather as if, under the second nature of our persons and identities, there lay a prior potential Life capable of bring us together without abolishing what make us singular. Warburg s statement concerning the schizophrenia of mankind aligns with Rajchman s observation: in that Warburg did not view mankind through a singular lens of identity (no singular answer, endpoint or teleological logic). Warburg believed that mankind was composed of multiplicities, his reference to mankind as being schizophrenic at all times concerns the multiple in the nonliteral sense. Warburg rhizomes exhibit this interest in multiplicities by mapping the multiple lines of flight, interconnections, and planes of consistency which constitute mankind s cultural productions (mankind s way of seeing the world seen through his reactions: art). 148 Deleuze and Guattari,

57 Library has continued on its line of flight and has once again re-intersected with contemporary culture. Though Warburg did not publish many elaborate books or essays during his career 149 he broadened the perspective of Art s History through his rhizomatic surveying and mapping tools. Forster writes true, he had made his mark with his archival work and with his originality in the definition of research topics, but his articles amounted to no more than the scattering of dots on a map. Warburg had linked his various areas of work with highly provisional pathways, and had left swatches of historical terra incognita for later exploration. 150 In this perspective Warburg opened the search for experimental searches and validated the existence of not one but many Deleuzian paths of exploration. Warburg s rhizomes created usable maps by scattering the points for other users to follow and deviate from. Gombrich writes that It is a characteristic of Warburg s mind and method that he worked with a limited number of motifs and elements but that he tried them out in ever new permutations and combinations. A slight shake of the kaleidoscope leads to a new pattern. Indeed if the reader persists he may come to find that nothing is more impressive in Warburg s life work than this restless search, born of a deep dissatisfaction, this need to reshuffle and rearrange elements of the picture, had an almost paralyzing effect on Warburg. The picture refused to set. 151 Warburg s tireless efforts to conceptualize the interconnections of cultural artifacts and documents have left a lasting imprint, and it is this imprint which has allowed contemporary Kurt W. Forster, Introduction, in Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 1999), 46. An interesting comparison can be made between Deleuze and Forster s comments on the characteristics of the rhizome and Warburg s life s work (his fragmented notes). Deleuze optimistically describes the rhizome as being in the middle where things often pick up speed. Forster also uses a similar middle term, a human torso, to describe the attributes of Warburg s writing and projects (the library and the Atlas). Forster writes in his library of Cultural Studies, the mesmeric (but also Medusa-like) Warburg had created a durable institution; but in the eyes of his institutional heirs, Saxl and Bing, he had left no scholarly lifework to guarantee its future survival. Warburg s scattered essays did not pass muster as a scholarly oeuvre of seminal quality. Measured by the conceptual range of their author his writings were a mere torso. It appears in Forster s perspective that as a torso, Warburg s work could not fully function without an organized head, center, or leading point. However, in Deleuze s analysis, the torso, the middle, is where things can and always do become more interesting. Rhizomes thrive in fragments; they are all the more complete for being fragmented. 150 Ibid. 151 Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, Joe Fyfe, Mining The Field, Art in America no. 11 (2012): 90, Gombrich, An Intellectual Biography, 244, 183. Fyfe describes the practice of contemporary artist Charline von Heyl. From the vantage point of von 52

58 culture to better understand 153 its own historical and psychological states of being. O Sullivan describes the rhizome s relation to broader aspects of human culture writing on a broader level we might position the system of arts in general as rhizomatic, each of the arts, and indeed each individual art work, connecting, or having the potential to connect, to every other. In fact, the Heyl s 10-year survey at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art, Fyfe states that Von Heyl unleashed the libidinal drive in painting, only to find that it would mate with anything. Fyfe then proceeds to inform the reader of the von Heyl s spoken intentions and influences, as he writes Von Heyl has long been influenced by the writing of the German art historian Aby Warburg ( ). Warburg s Mnemosyne Atlas ( ) gathered a wealth of photographic reproductions to demonstrate the influence of antiquity on the figurative imagery of later epochs, from the Renaissance and Baroque periods to the early 20 th century. Warburg was unusually ecumenical for the times, including in his study objects of design and artifacts of popular culture, from newspaper photographs to postage stamps to furniture. In her Hammer lecture, von Heyl referred to Warburg s Mnemosyne Atlas as a community of images linked through affinity. She lectures about her own work in a similar fashion, mining visual history and culture for formal resonances (works using an interior border, works that have yellow as the main color, etc.). She is drawn, a la Warburg, to African rugs, Native American pottery and comic books; to major artist, such as Marsden Hartley, and minor or discarded ones, such as Bernard Buffet or Jedd Garet.Von Heyl reanimates the image bank of painting, her own and others, manipulating sources drawn from her community of affinities to breath life into effigies. And her source is visual and art history, not nature.informed by Warburg, she sees painting as a palimpsest, a collection of signs and fissures leading back to earlier, freighted simulations. I believe that, in her Warburgian approach, she makes a genuinely new contribution to the dialogue on contemporary art. In essence, contemporary artists like Charline von Heyl mine the field of art s history which consists of a multitude of historical styles all of which are still valid (not outmoded forms or concepts) and heavily loaded with cultural references. The audience s recognition and recollection (via Warburg s concept of collective memory, the same principle which operates in his Atlas) of the cultural references and past histories enacted by the artist s symbolic use and blending of a specific historical style or styles, is both a conceptual and formal process which allows the paintings to move freely throughout a range of meanings. Gombrich describes this process of historical borrowings in relation to Warburg s examination of the enduring hallmark of cultural symbols from a period which define it. Gombrich describes that, whether by heritage or by contact, the artist who comes into touch with these symbols once more experiences the mnemic energies with which they were charged. He then concludes that in the end it is up to the artist what use he makes of the heritage into which he enters. Many contemporary artists select from a variety of hallmarks or superlative motifs which resonate easily for their audiences. This allows them to revitalize its associated heritage, by bringing it back into the forefront of contemporary dialogue. This process operates as a conceptual springboard, allowing the artist to challenge old topics/meanings and/or to show audiences a past historical perspective that can be paralleled to a modern societal issue. In the Warburgian view, painting has never been dead, it has been and will always be in the continual act of becoming. 153 New American Paintings, no. 98 (2012), and Warburg s theoretical foresight has directly contributed to contemporary culture in the methods in which artists create art and the ways in which humankind conceptualizes and recalls its own history via the visual image. Artists are reacting to the realization of operating within a rhizome and it is most notably seen within contemporary painting. Members of the art world have frequently cited an awareness of the past as a defining characteristic of postmodernism, in both architecture and art. Such awareness, however, extends beyond mere citation. People have described it as a self-consciousness on the part of artist about their place in the continuum of art history. Not only do artists demonstrate their knowledge about past art, but they also express awareness of the mechanism and institutions of the art world. For many postmodern artists referencing the past moves beyond simple quotation from earlier works and styles and involves a critique of or commentary on fundamental art historical premises. In the Northeast edition of New American Paintings vol. 98, a quarterly juried publication that presents contemporary painting, an array of postmodern stylistic blendings and historical references can be noted amongst the artist s works. The Baroque/Tweet messages of Shawn Huckins paintings and the Fauvish/Tribal patterned works of Roxa Smith exemplify how contemporary painting, unlike any other period, enjoys a unique range of blending, referencing, and lifting of various historical styles. 53

59 arts themselves might be said to be in rhizomatic contact and communication with other manmade, or indeed natural systems. 154 As such, our state of cultural existence can be described as a constantly developing middle within a cross-cultural rhizome. Conclusion This research project has questioned the popular position that Warburg s Library and Atlas were incomplete projects composed of inexplicable fragments. The thesis has argued that the Library and Atlas are comprehensive map-rhizomes by considering them as methodological extensions of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari s modern theories. Developed sixty years after Warburg s death, Deleuze and Guattari s A Thousand Plateaus provides the theoretical articulation necessary for comprehending the functional mechanics of Warburg s Library and Atlas. As map-rhizomes the Library and Atlas simulate formal and conceptual lines of flight which converge onto plateaus of consistency. Historic examples from both the Library s catalogue and the Atlas s Plates exhibit their rhizome s functional paths of association which locally and collectively link a multiplicity of cultural materials. This research draws the conclusion that Warburg s Library and Atlas are an extension of his earlier cartographic processes, tracing to mapping. As maps they provide points of orientation for mankind to survey, comprehend, and remember his cultural historical landscape. Specifically as rhizome-maps, Warburg s Library and Atlas provide a fuller perspective of cultural history by fostering a multiplicity of associative interconnections, removing historical blockages, combining art and non-art documents, and bringing differences together into an open and complex whole. This line of investigation has productively explored Warburg s rhizomatic processes by using the philosophies of Deleuze and Guattari. The potential to initiate further dialogues between 154 O Sullivan, Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari,

60 Warburg s collective memory and Bergson s Matter and Memory, as well as Warburg s schizophrenic plurality of humanity/visual culture with the plurality of postmodernism, also appear as paths of promise. 55

61 Figures Fig. 1. Aby Warburg, unknown photographer, 1900, from Fig. 2a. Palzzo Schifanoia Frescos, Ferrara, Italy, 1470, from Aby Warburg s Italian Art and International Astrology in the Palazzo Schifanoia, in Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity,

62 Fig. 2b: Aby Warburg, Palazzo Schifanoia retranslated into Atlas Plate 27, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation),

63 Fig. 3a. Tree of Life, from Ernst Haeckel s General Morphology of organisms (1866), in Manuel Lima s Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information, 68. A centered tree diagram which exhibits a hierarchy. Fig. 3b. Rhizome diagram from Manuel Lima s Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information, 45. Evolution of acentered systems to the rhizome (as later entailed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari s A Thousand Plateaus). 58

64 Fig. 3c. Rhizome diagram from Manuel Lima s Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information, 55. In contrast to a centralized tree branch model, Warburg s Library and Atlas utilize a rhizome that is decentralized and distributed. Fig. 4a. Rhizome diagram from Manuel Lima s Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information, 70. Example of a typical rhizome similar to Warburg s. 59

65 Fig. 4b.. Alfred Barr, Cubism and Abstract Art (NY, 1936) book jacket. A rhizome-like map which exemplifies various paths of cultural production (the historical movements of visual forms and conceptual content-theory- across time and geographical space) between

66 Fig. 4c. Daniel Feral, Graffiti and Street Art, from Street Art and Graffiti Gets a Barr Chart, C-Monster.Net, 2011, (accessed Aug ). A rhizome-like map which exemplifies various paths of cultural production within contemporary visual culture (historical movement of visual forms and conceptual content-theory- across time and geographical space) between

67 Fig. 5a: Scene from the Third Intermedio of 1589, from Aby Warburg s Theatrical Costumes for the Intermedi of 1589 in Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 373. Warburg was interested in the many guises of Greek Pagan ideologies which remerged in the inspired dramas and festivals of the Florentine Renaissance. This image depicts theatrical costumes and a scene from the Third Intermedio of

68 Fig. 5b: Aby Warburg, Dance at Oraibi, May 1896, from Photographs at the Frontier: Aby Warburg in America ( ), 133. Photographs taken by Warburg while in Arizona depict similar pagan theatrical events such as the dance at Oraibi, on May of Mapping parallels in cultural symbolism and ideology. 63

69 Fig. 5c. Aby Warburg, Hand-drawn diagrams of theatrical Native American masks with the Second Intermezzo, from Photographs at the Frontier: Aby Warburg in America ( ), 58. Diagrams drawn by Warburg that compare theatrical masks of antelope-dance head-dresses of Native Americans to the drawing of a mask for a dancer within the second Intermezzo. Symbolic motifs and shared color symbolism of pagan groups. 64

70 Fig. 6. Image pairings depicting Warburg s broadening interests in a collective human culture through cross-culture parallels (Native Americans, Pagan Greeks, Florentine Renaissance). Images taken from Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion,

71 Fig. 7 Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus, 1485, oil on canvas, and Primavera, 1482, oil on canvas, from E. H. Gombrich s, Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography, PL. 5. Fig. 8a. Warburg s examination of pathos formulae within Botticelli s Work, from Gertrud Bing article A. M. Warburg, unnumbered. 66

72 Fig. 8b. Warburg s examination of pathos formulae in depictions of the Nympha, from E. H. Gombrich s, Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography, PL. 6. The classical Greek roots of Nympha s flowing hair and garments. Image groupings associated with Warburg s dissertation. 67

73 Fig. 8c. Niccolo Fiorentino, Medals for Giovanna Tornabuoni, from Aby Warburg s Sandro Botticelli s Birth of Venus and Spring, in Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 116. Botticelli s Nympha s as derived from popular classical tropes. Tropes also used on the reverse sides of medals for Giovanna Tornabuoni by Niccolo Fiorentino (left- The Three Graces, right- Venus Virgo). 68

74 Fig. 8d. Botticelli s classical Greek influence, from Aby Warburg s Sandro Botticelli s Birth of Venus and Spring, in Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 127. Image pairings utilized by Warburg which examine Botticelli s classical Greek influence. (Left- Pomona, Right- Pallas). 69

75 Fig. 8e. Warburg s, Sandro Botticelli, in Aby Warburg: The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 160. Drawing attributed to Botticelli of the Nymph of Achelous exemplifying classical Greek influence. 70

76 Fig. 9. Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 39, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 69. Atlas Plate exhibits Botticelli s ideal Style, Ancient Love and the Nympha. Photographs within the Atlas Plate are derived from Aby Warburg s dissertation on Sandro Botticelli s Birth of Venus and Spring (1893) and exemplify how Warburg located the Greek origins and offshoots of empathetic gestures to map the information back into a rhizome. 71

77 Fig. 10a. Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 41, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 73. Atlas Plate 41 depicts the Pathos of destruction: The Nympha as a witch through the liberation of expression. This Atlas Plate exhibits how rhizomatic lines of flight from one plate (Atlas plate 39 s Nympha) can spill out and converge onto new plateaus. 72

78 Fig. 10b. Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 46, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 85. Atlas Plate 46 depicts the Nympha as domesticated. This Atlas Plate exhibits how rhizomatic lines of flight from one plate (Atlas plate 39 s Nympha) can spill out and converge onto new plateaus. 73

79 Fig. 11a. Autobiographical map rhizome drawn by Warburg, date unknown, from Kurt Forster s Introduction in Aby Warburg The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 41. Early rhizomemap drawn by Warburg. This diagram is autobiographical and maps Warburg s family origins to Amsterdam and closes a loop from his native Hamburg (spans geographical space and time). It also touches on Strasbourg where he earned his doctorate and Arizona where he came into contact with the Native Americans. Fig. 11b. Autobiographical map rhizome drawn by Warburg, date unknown, from Kurt Forster s Introduction in Aby Warburg The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, 41. Early rhizomemap drawn by Warburg. This diagram is autobiographical and it maps Warburg s life routes and origins including his Jewish emigration into Europe: from the Holy Land to Amsterdam as well as prominent cities in his life. 74

80 Fig. 11c. Map drawn by Warburg of Hopi villages and Keam s Canyon, date unknown, from Photographs at the Frontier: Aby Warburg in America ,

81 Fig. 12a. Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate A, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 9. Warburg s Atlas uses photographs and map drawings to present different systems of relationships in which man can find himself immersed: cosmic, terrestrial and geographical. 76

82 Fig. 12b. Diagram of Atlas Plate A, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), Representation of the firmament with the constellations from Enkhuizen, 1684, 2- The Map of Routes of cultural interchanges between the North, South, East and West, map drawn with facts from Warburg, 3- Genealogical tree of the Medici/Tornabuoni families drawn by Warburg. 77

83 Fig. 13a. Aby Warburg, Wanderkarte from The Journeys of Sphaera Barbarica Lecture, 1911, from Dorothea McEwan s Aby Warburg ( ) 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 McEwan s Aby Warburg ( ) Dots and Lines. Mapping the Diffusion of Astrological Motifs in Art History,

84 Fig. 14. Warburg s Early In-house Library, Hamburg, Germany, 1920, from 79

85 Fig. 15a. Warburg Institute: 1 st Floor: Image, 2012, diagram downloaded from The rhizomatic organization of books within the modern Warburg Institute, floor one: Image. 80

86 Fig. 15b. Warburg Institute: 2 nd Floor: Word, 2012, diagram downloaded from The rhizomatic organization of books within the modern Warburg Institute, floor two: Word. 81

87 Fig. 15c. Warburg Institute: 3 nd Floor: Orientation, 2012, diagram downloaded from The rhizomatic organization of books within the modern Warburg Institute, floor three: Orientation. 82

88 Fig. 15d. Warburg Institute: 4th Floor: Action, 2012, diagram downloaded from The rhizomatic organization of books within the modern Warburg Institute, floor four: Action. 83

89 Fig. 15e. Warburg Institute: Classification Scheme, 2012, diagram downloaded from the The rhizomatic organization of books within the modern Warburg Institute, description of blended levels (single topic found on multiple levels and shelves). 84

90 Fig. 15f. Warburg Institute: How To Find A Book, 2012, diagram downloaded from the The rhizomatic organization of books within the modern Warburg Institute, all four levels. 85

91 Fig. 15g. Warburg Institute: How To Find A Book and Warburg Institute: Classification Scheme, 2012, diagrams downloaded from the and modified by Charmaine Ortiz. Modification indicates points of entry within the Library (red), indicating the physical levels or plateaus of information which one could enter when researching the specific subject: Man (rather than woman) as knife bearing shaman in Pre-Islamic Art. Lines indicated in blue are paths of logic in which one can travel between floors when researching: Man (rather than woman) as knife bearing shaman in Pre-Islamic Art (travel by folding information through association). 86

92 Fig. 16. The Warburg Institute, Hamburg, Germany, 1926, from The Warburg Institute newly constructed and adjacent to Warburg s home. Fig. 17. Warburg Institute: Reading Room with Mnemosyne Atlas, Hamburg, Germany, 1926, from Multiple Atlas panels displayed for simultaneous and cross connections among and between different physical panels. 87

93 Fig. 18. Warburg Institute s Catalog System: University of London, from 88

94 Fig. 19. Aby Warburg, Multiple Atlas Plates, , from Warburg s arrangements of multiple Atlas Plates within his Library. The inclusion of multiple plates side by side when viewing indicates Warburg s processes of visualizing information through an expansive rhizome map. This rhizome establishes connections across different plateaus of information via different plates. 89

95 Fig. 20a. Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 77, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 129. Atlas Plate 77 incorporates modern resources including commercial magazine ads and stamps. The plate exemplifies Warburg s broadening of the rhizome through its incorporation of contemporary elements. 90

96 Fig. 20b. Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 77 (rearrangements), , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), XIV. Atlas Plate 77 exemplifies the shifting of photographs and incorporation of new materials into the rhizome. Atlas Plate 77 also contains images of other plates from within its collective rhizome (self-referencing center photographs). 91

97 Fig. 22a. Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate C, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 13. Atlas Plate C indicates the evolution of the ideas about Mars and includes both rational and irrational forms of imagery surrounding a central concept (science and magic- Dionysian and Apollonian). 92

98 Fig. 22b. Diagram of Atlas Plate C, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation),

99 Fig. 22c. Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 1, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 14. Atlas Plate 1 indicates the projection of the cosmos onto a part of the body to make predictions. The Official Babylonian astrology, a practice originating from the East. 94

100 Fig. 22d. Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 2, , from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 16. Atlas Plate 2 indicates the Greek representation of the cosmos. Mythological figures in the firmament. Apollo and the muses as his companions. 95

101 . Fig. 22e. Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate B, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 10. Atlas Plate B indicates the diverse degrees of projection of the cosmic system on man. Harmonic Correspondence. Posterior reduction of harmony to abstract geometry instead of to that which is cosmically conditioned. 96

102 Fig. 22f. Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 20, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 30. Atlas Plate 20 indicates the evolution of Greek cosmology toward the Arabic practice. Abu M shar and its occupation with the planets. 97

103 Fig. 22g. Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 21, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 32. Atlas Plate 21 indicates Eastern Antiquity. Ancient gods in an eastern version including seven planets according to the Middle Eastern conception. 98

104 Fig. 22h. Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 22, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 30. Atlas Plate 22 indicates Hispanic-Arab practices (Alfonso). The cosmic system as a cosmic chess board. Prophecy, the art of magic, and magic stones. 99

105 Fig. 22i. Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate 23a, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 34. Plate 23a indicates the regular solid as micro-universe in the game of dice. The flipping through books as a reading of the universe. Representation of the wheel of Fortune as an ineluctable Fairy. 100

106 Fig. 23a. Yumi Takhasi and Ikuyo Shibukawa s Color Coordination, from Edward Tufte s Envisioning Information, 33. Arranged pictorial multiples (similar in function to Warburg s Atlas) which allow for local as well as collective formal comparisons and associations. 101

107 Fig. 23b. Yumi Takhasi and Ikuyo Shibukawa s Color Coordination, from Edward Tufte s Envisioning Information, 33, modified by Charmaine Ortiz. Example of visual reasoning from a local formal association: yellow as an undershirt (lines of flight and association represented by connected blue lines). Fig. 23c. Yumi Takhasi and Ikuyo Shibukawa s Color Coordination, from Edward Tufte s Envisioning Information, 33, modified by Charmaine Ortiz. Example of visual reasoning from a local formal associations: yellow as an over-shirt (lines of flight and association represented by red lines). Fig. 23d. Yumi Takhasi and Ikuyo Shibukawa s Color Coordination, from Edward Tufte s Envisioning Information, 33, modified by Charmaine Ortiz. Example of visual reasoning from simultaneous formal associations: yellow as over-shirt and undershirt. (lines of flight and association represented by both red and blue lines) 102

108 Fig. 24a. Aby Warburg, Atlas Plate B, from Martin Warnke s Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (Spanish translation), 10, modified by Charmaine Ortiz. Example of local formal associations on one plate: Man as center of circular orb. (represented by blue lines of flight). 103