Amnemosyne Atlas. Plates VIII-IX, 2017
Painted linen Canvas / Curious skin paper / Walnut frame
Mnemosyne (Greek: Mνημοσύνη) was a Titanide in Greek mythology and the
personification of memory, believed by the ancient Greeks to be the origin of words and language. According to Hesiod, kings and poets owed their
exceptional power of speech to Mnemosyne and their special relationship with her daughters, the muses.
Aby Warburg (1866-1929) worked on a comprehensive cultural
encyclopedia that was exclusively built up of images without text.
His Mnemosyne Bilderatlas is considered a cult icon. The goal was to make an image atlas that mapped out the migration of archetypical forms of
expression and images throughout the centuries. It surveyed Antiquity up to the Renaissance, and continued all the way up to Warburg’s own time. A cultural encyclopedia about images, made up of images, without words. The atlas was never completed. This might explain why his ideas, and
particularly the experimental nature of the atlas, remained misunderstood for a long time. The Amnemosyne Atlas Plates VIII-IX, also an uncompleted work, indicates the gaps in our fallible brain.
