Ray Drainville

Visual Social Media Lab / MMU

<ray.drainville@gmail.com>
ž  Art history has [almost] always been
interdisciplinary
ž  Aby Warburg
•  Technology
•  Research methods & attitude
•  Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg
ž  Photography

ž  Slides

ž  Radicaltechnologies,
now fully internalised

Warburg, Uncle Sam, San Francisco (1896)

ž  Archival Research

ž  Anthropology

ž  Psychology & Evolution

(FT Vischer, Semel,
Darwin)

ž  Bildwissenschaft: more
than fine art is deemed Warburg in a Kachina, USA (1896)
worthy of notice
ž  The arrangement of the library’s contents were meant to create
bridges between disciplines and subjects

ž  ...where in a normal library one would expect to see “Spanish

Literature, Sixteenth Century” or “Biography, American: E663-664,”
there are, instead, signs pointing toward “Magic Mirrors” and
“Amulets” and “The Evil Eye.”
—Adam Gopnik, “In the Memory Ward”, New Yorker (2015)

The KBW in the early days

ž  Aspects of this have remained in the discipline to
this day: archival research, imaging technologies

ž  Butfew art historians look at more popular culture,

including online imagery. Why?
ž  Calcification: hesitancy
–  Subject of research (“fine art” vs “applied art”)
–  Methods (e.g., the limits of iconography)
–  The nascence of Visual Studies

Jacques-Louis David, Rosewine (Deviant Art),

Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1801-05) Batman Riding a Robot Unicorn (2010)
ž  Doesn’t have to be this way
–  Warburg’s vision can be readily applied
–  Bildwissenschaft
–  Engagement with contemporary technologies
–  Well-grounded methodologies
–  Re-situation / re-evaluation, in analysis of new materials

ž  Thank you!
Ray Drainville, VSML/MMU
<ray.drainville@gmail.com>