Memory, Metaphor, and Aby Warburg's Atlas of Images (Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought)
"Johnson's dense, rich, often digressive book defies summary. It is centrally concerned withMnemosyneas a work of cultural memory based not on metonymy, like modernist montages, but on metaphor. . . . He does much both to illuminate theMnemosyneproject and to place Warburg in the larger context of philosophical and critical thinking about metaphor."—Ritchie Robertson,Modern Language Review(January 2014)"Who could ever tire of Aby Warburg and his ceaselessly meandering mind? Can we ever read enough about this idiosyncratic and brilliant thinker? Probably not.Memory, Metaphor, and Aby Warburg's Atlas of Imagesis a most erudite and thoughtful analysis of Warburg’s role in twentieth-century intellectual history. Christopher D. Johnson focuses on the way Warburg’s triumph is rooted in metaphor and metonymy."—Michael Ann Holly, Starr Director of Research and Academic Program, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute"This is a rich and learned book, and also an extremely humane and attractive one. The final chapter, on Warburg and Bruno, has the status of revelation. It is absolutely fascinating, not only as a dialogue in intellectual history but also as a political allegory. Christopher D. Johnson pays close attention to Warburg's ethical and epistemological aspirations when he focuses on Warburg’s final and uncompleted project: theAtlas of Images. Assembled during the years prior to his death in 1929, these collages strove to mount a history of cultural memory via a dense series of images from antiquity to the present."—Michael P. Steinberg, Director of the Cogut Humanities Center and Barnaby Conrad and Mary Critchfield Keeney Professor of History and Professor of Music, Brown University